WritersCast

East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg – Gordon Ball – Counterpoint Press – 416 pages – paperback – 9781619020177 – $18.95 – December 11, 2012 – ebook edition available at lower prices

Gordon Ball reads from his excellent memoir about Allen Ginsberg’s upstate New York farm.

“In the late 1960s, poet Allen Ginsberg bought an isolated, broken-down farm in upstate New York as a retreat for himself and his worn-out, burned-out friends. Ginsberg hoped to create an Elysium where they could escape from the urban pressures and drug addictions that had laid Kerouac, Corso, Orlovsky, and Huncke so low. Only a masterful story-teller like Gordon Ball could turn a depressing tale of poets at rock bottom into a triumph of the human spirit.”—Bill Morgan, author of I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg

Gordon Ball’s own website includes a gallery of his photographs of Ginsberg and others.

Alternative Remedies for Loss – Joanna Cantor – Bloomsbury – Hardcover – 9781635571714 – 320 pages – $26.00 – May 8, 2018 – ebook editions available at lower prices. Paperback comes out One of the great things for me about doing this podcast is that I have been introduced to such a varied range of […]

Rough Animals – Rae DelBianco – Arcade Publishing – hardcover – 9781628729733 – $24.99 – June 5, 2018 – ebook editions available at lower prices. I’ve long believed that Cormac McCarthy is the most recent heir to the position held previously by William Faulkner, being the most intense and stimulating writer of his generation. Having […]

Three Sides Water – short novels – Peter Donahue – Ooligan Press – paperback – 978-1-932010-98-5 – $17 – ebook versions available at lower prices – May 1, 2018 Ooligan Press is an unusual publishing operation; it’s a Portland, Oregon based independent publisher that draws its books from the rich literary communities of the Pacific […]

Eternal Life – A Novel – Dara Horn – W.W. Norton – Hardcover – 978-0393608533 – 256 pages – $25.95 – ebook versions available at lower prices – January 23, 2018 I have to admit I had some trepidation about reading this novel, when I first approached it. I was aware that Dara Horn is […]

Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture and have now expanded the series to include conversations that go beyond the future of publishing. I’ve talked with editors and publishers who have been innovators and […]

Urban Shocker: Silent Hero of Baseball’s Golden Age – Steve Steinberg – University of Nebraska Press – Hardcover – 9780803295995 – 352 pages – $32.95 – ebook versions available at lower prices – April 1, 2017 Even avid baseball fans may be forgiven for not knowing much about Urban Shocker, one of the best pitchers […]

The Burning Girl – Claire Messud – W.W. Norton – Hardcover – 9780393635027 – 256 pages – $25.95 – ebook versions available at lower prices – August 20, 2017 (paperback forthcoming June 5, 2018) The Burning Girl is an extraordinary novel. Messud, whose work and reputation I knew of, but had never read before discovering […]

Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. As every media business continues to experience disruption and change, I’ve been talking with some of the people involved in our industry about how publishing might […]

A Mother’s Tale – Phillip Lopate – Mad River Books (Ohio State University Press) – Hardcover – 9780814213315 – 196 pages – $24.95 – ebook versions available at slightly lower prices – January 12, 2017 It might be said that a good memoir is a hard thing to find. It takes a special touch from […]