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5/15/2008: Coffee House Press Newsletter - May 2008
Strategic Planning: This summer, our staff and board will begin work on a strategic plan to secure the future of the press, and to assure that good books will continue brewing here for decades to come. In a world that seems to keep changing for the worse, Coffee House plans to provide a little stability with our continuing tradition of publishing fully caffeinated literature.
A Request: The early years of this decade were not always kind to Coffee House Press, but with help from writers and readers like you, we began turning things around. As we near June 30, 2008, we hope you will help us end our fourth consecutive fiscal year in the black, assuring that our plans for the future will become a reality. To make a tax-deductible donation to Coffee House Press, please visit our web site.
Our Thanks: To the many people, companies, and foundations whose donations have helped us provide a continuing literary wake-up call to readers everywhere, our grateful thanks.
In Memoriam: Rochelle Ratner died on March 30, 2008, after a two-year battle with cancer. Born on December 2, 1948, she began writing poetry as a high school student, and moved to New York City in the fall of 1969, shortly before her twenty-first birthday. That's when and where we met. We had both enrolled in a class at the New School taught by Diane Wakoski, and in the same classes at the St. Mark's Poetry Project.
In the summer of 1970, I moved to Iowa City, but Rochelle and I kept in touch. And when she sent me a poem called "Variations on a Theme in Blue," I decided I had to try printing it letterpress, with white ink on dark blue paper (fools rush in, etc.). Rochelle's poem was the first letterpress Toothpaste Press publication that was identified as such in print. In the early years of Coffee House, we published two of her novels, Bobby's Girl (1986), and The Lion's Share (1991). During that period, I started joining Rochelle and her husband, Ken Thorp, for dinner when I went to New York for sales conference. Having a friendship that stretched back that far was a great pleasure for both of us. Poet, novelist, essayist, reviewer, editor, teacher, and a gifted photographer, Rochelle Ratner brought a steady determined energy to everything she undertook. She is missed.
—Allan Kornblum
To Coffee House Interns, Past and Present Coffee House Press could not run smoothly without the help of our interns, who assist our small, six-person staff with editorial, marketing, and administrative tasks. A recent survey of 150 former interns showed that over one-third have gone on to work in publishing houses or magazines. We're grateful for the volunteer help we receive from our interns, and proud that participation in our program may have played a role in landing some of those jobs.
But we fear we've lot touch with too many of you. We're not even certain which former interns are receiving this newsletter. And we'd like to start an e-mail newsletter just for you, our former interns, posting announcements of new jobs and awards, and filling you in on news from the press. For example: Congratulations to Chris Martin, a former Coffee House Press intern and editorial assistant, who recently received the Hayden Carruth First Book Award from Copper Canyon Press!
If you are a former intern, please e-mail Diana at diana@coffeehousepress.org with your contact information. We would love to hear where your lives and careers have taken you!
Featured Title: The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang The launch party for Kao Kalia Yang's The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir was held on April 10, 2008, at Concordia College in St. Paul. Hosted by the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia, the event was co-sponsored by The Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, the Hmong American Institute for Learning, and Coffee House Press. Though it was a cold, sleety night, over 300 people attended this momentous occasion, including many visiting scholars and members of the local Hmong community. There was food and drink during the reception before the reading, and we sold over 130 books. Kalia read to a hushed audience who was eager to hear from the first book-length literary work published by a Hmong person in the United States. We are delighted by all the attention the book is receiving both locally and nationally, and how we have been able to reach new audiences and forge new partnerships through Kalia's work. To listen to Kalia discuss her memoir, visit Minnesota Public Radio.
"Everything changes for late-night radio talk show host Annette Majoris after she jokingly tells her Twin Cities audience that the Vietnam War was a government hoax. Where Annette had been struggling, careerwise and financially, she quickly finds herself grappling with a multiplying caller-base, national syndication and the romantic attentions of wealthy Republican Party mover-and-shaker Walter Bishop. Guided by Walter, who co-opts Annette's message to launch a presidential hopeful, and supported by Stan Marlin, the erstwhile leader of a radical conservative organization, Annette persists on the air that Vietnam never really happened, provoking outrage and disgust and attracting a following among veterans who, haunted for decades by their participation in the war, find in Annette's questioning the possibility for closure and healing. While Annette defends her argument persuasively for a time, it's a house of cards that comes crashing down. Hawley's characters are fully realized people, with their own set of ambitions, insecurities and competing desires, and her great achievement is to have constructed out of their lives a deft and hilarious sendup of media and political culture."
Q: As a poet, I constantly face the issue of readers considering the speaker in the poem to be the author herself. Do you find this to be true in fiction? Obviously Annette, the main character in Open Line, has some of your background and experiences—coming from New York to live in Minneapolis, hosting a radio show. How do you feel about the possibility of readers thinking you're Annette?
A: An editor recently returned a new manuscript to me with some very astute criticisms and some suggestions for a rewrite. One of the possibilities she raised was rewriting the novel as memoir—something I can't do, since it's very much fiction. So it's not just readers who assume that fiction (or poetry, or falsified and highly popular memoirs) must be true, but people who work in the lit-biz as well. Half of me considers that a compliment—I convinced a damn good reader that this story actually happened. The other half wants to reach for the phone and blither until I've told her every possible way that the character is not me. And that's with a character I wouldn't mind being mistaken for. I never stopped to think that anyone would mistake me for Annette, who I like for her fast mouth and her energy but who, even I have to admit, is a terrible excuse for a human being. Me? Annette? No, no, no.
We do overlap, though. As you mentioned, I used to host a late-night call-in show, KQ Scope, in the Twin Cities. I had a terror of dead air time. I grew up in New York and moved to Minnesota. I don't know any more about wine than she does. As far as I can remember, that's about the extent of the overlap. But you can't write without drawing on parts of yourself and on your experience of the world. If you try to leave that out, you have nothing to work from. So yes, Annette grew out of me, but that's very different than saying that she is me.
Q: You can't really read Open Line without thinking about the role of talk radio hosts and shock jocks in this culture. Do you think they have an obligation to their listeners beyond providing entertainment? Is Annette irresponsible?
A: That we can ask the question at all, never mind treat it seriously, strikes me as a symptom of cultural insanity. Of course radio talk show hosts have a responsibility. Of course Annette has one. Doesn't any human being? What kind of a culture do we live in if we can question whether we have any obligation to each other beyond, possibly, being entertaining?
Congratulations! Coffee House Press writers have received numerous awards so far in 2008, and the list just continues to grow. In addition to being named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Elaine Equi's poetry collection Ripple Effect is a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, which will be announced at a ceremony in Toronto on June 4th. Quincy Troupe took home the 2008 Premio Fronterizo Award, and Kao Kalia Yang received the In the Spirit of Carleton Award, just prior to the April 1st publication of her beautifully touching debut, The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, which is garnering incredible acclaim.
On April 12th at an Awards Gala in St. Paul, Wang Ping's short story collection, The Last Communist Virgin, won the Minnesota Book Award, and at yet another Minnesota awards ceremony scheduled for May 14th, we will find out whether Linda Koutsky and Kathryn Strand Koutsky will take home the Midwest Book Award for their lavishly illustrated compendium, Minnesota State Fair: An Illustrated History, which was also a Midwest Booksellers Association Midwest Favorite. Yuko Taniguchi's debut novel, The Ocean in the Closet, was awarded an honorable mention for the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, was named a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book, it won the 15th Annual Skipping Stones Honor Award, and is a finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Editor's Choice Award. Saltwater Empire, Raymond McDaniel's second poetry collection published just this spring, has already appeared on the Book Sense Poetry Top Ten List. Congratulations to our authors on these recent awards and honors!
To make a tax-deductible donation to Coffee House Press or to browse our library, read reviews and interviews, and find out about events in your area, please visit www.coffeehousepress.org.
From all of us at Coffee House, thank you for your support!
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