In June we launched the #BigSaltPrize, your chance to win the next twenty books we publish. We sent out raffle tickets for every book we sold on the online store until 31 August – totalling an impressive 765 tickets. Well, today we drew the raffle. Cameron gave us a hand, and picked the following winners:
1st Prize – Rosie Garner – winner of the next twenty new Salt titles, including all Crashaw Prize and Scott Prize winning debut collections, and many more quality poetry and fiction books.
2nd Prize – Anthony Linde – winner of a free signed copy of his choice, plus the chance to ask the author five burning questions.
3rd Prize – Duangchanok Hanna – winner of a free Salt book.
Congratulations to all three winners, and thanks to everyone who ordered through our online store this summer.
20th October 2010 LONDON
Venue to be confirmed
Choice of morning or afternoon course limited to 16 delegates per session
Overview
One of literary publishing’s most established editors — Salt’s Chris Hamilton-Emery — gives aspiring and experienced writers an unparalleled insight into the world of the web for writers, looking at websites, blogs and using a wide range of social media to build relationships with publishers, readers and other writers.
Details
A three hour introductory workshop for writers on how you can use the web to promote your books and your writing lives. You will learn practical insights about using websites and blogs, collaborating with other writers on bulletin boards and mailing lists, as well as practical steps in using a wide range of social media including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Goodreads and more.
The day will be split into sections with activities and interactive feedback for delegates as well as a question and answer session.
The course includes:
3 hour workshop on aspects of the web vital to contemporary writers
A handy course pack
A special discount off Salt books purchased at www.saltpublishing.com
About the tutor
Chris Hamilton-Emery, he is Publishing Director of Salt Publishing an independent literary press based in Cambridge, England. He was formerly Press Production Director at Cambridge University Press. He was awarded an American Book Award in 2006 for his services to American literature. Hamilton-Emery currently sits on the Board of the Independent Publishers Guild and Planet Poetry, and has worked widely as a consultant in the publishing industry in the United Kingdom. In 2008 Salt won 2008 Nielsen Innovation of the Year award in the Independent Publishing Awards for work with social networking and viral marketing. He is author of two volumes of poetry, Dr Mephisto and Radio Nostalgia, a writer’s guide 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell and editor of Poets in View: A Visual Anthology of 50 Classic Poems, he also writes the annual poetry section in The Writer’s Handbook. He lives in Great Wilbraham with his wife and three children.
“What really worries me, most of all, is, it’s not writers, it’s readers, because this whole crap about ‘It’s Gutenberg.’ You know, the thing is, that Gutenberg put books on the shelves, the digital revolution is gonna take books off the shelves. So how’re you gonna find them, if you don’t know what you’re looking for?” —Jeanette Winterson on The Review Show at the Edinburgh Festival: Part 2
How do we make our choices when reading? Perhaps we’re increasingly moving to read online, part of the vast network of human experience taking place through social media, that vast, interconnected semi-fictional experience that millions are participating in. Creating our characters, portrayals, narratives, depictions, making our networked lives matter. Surely this is becoming a primary form of experience for many?
But if we read books, how do we find them, how do we choose them? Do we imagine we make our choices as an act of self-determination, creating our reading experience, or are we more passive, and are directed to choices? As an experiment, we’d like you to list that last five books you bought (or can remember buying) and tell us how you heard about them and what made you choose them?
I’ve just opened a heavily-taped parcel of Wena Poon’s novel, Alex y Robert. A book that marks some new developments at Salt — our first book to be distributed by Turnaround in the UK, our first book to be printed at CPI Cox & Wyman, our first mass-market trade paperback and our first book to be serialised on BBC Radio 4.
Andrew Taylor‘s The Unhaunting has been shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Literary Awards.
The short list for the 2008 and 2009 Western Australian Premier’s book awards have been announced by Culture and the Arts Minister John Day.
Mr Day said record entries had been submitted following the announcement earlier this year of the widening of the eligibility criteria and increased prize money.
“There were 404 entries in the 2009 awards, compared to 300 for those in 2008,” he said.
“I am pleased to see so many entries, which reflects a healthy literary sector in Australia.
“The Premier’s Book Awards have a long and proud history and the prize money rose this year from $72,500 to $110,000, along with increased funding for judging, promotion and administration costs.”
Due to the high number of entries, the judging panels were increased from four to six members.
To be eligible, the work must have been published or produced in either the years 2008 or 2009. Authors must be citizens or permanent residents of Australia or the work must have Australia as its primary focus.
The award winners will be announced by the Premier at a special ceremony on Wednesday, September 1.
Writing detours through digital and other media, returning with new forms and genres, new ways of thinking philosophy, the body, religion, and everything else.
From urban nature poems, to noir nightmares, Adrian Slatcher’s collection provides a new take on our globalised experience, seeing us as small parts in “a colossal machine.”
The witty, modern fable of Alejandra, a young American woman determined to become a matador, and Roberto, a reluctant star Spanish bullfighter whom she recruits to help her.
From a Seventh Day Adventist boarding school to a traveling exhibition of plasticine bodies, Vollmer’s twelve stories are at once sorrowful, exuberant, and absurdly comical.
Every now and again, a book comes along for a publisher which captures the popular imagination and becomes a bestseller. Today we sent Tania Hershman’s The White Road and Other Stories off to press for its fifteenth reprinting in two years. The book remains one of Salt’s bestselling titles and, by any measure, this is one of the most successful volumes of short stories published in the UK in recent times.
The book is also available on Kindle, you can download and be reading this book in under one minute. Try it now.
“Echo Train reverberates with remnants of everything from souvenir T-shirts to ancient hymns while emerging
into the jagged sound of its own present moment.” — Geoffrey O’Brien
We caught up with Aaron Fagan to ask him a few questions about what influenced the poems in his latest collection.
1) What is the significance of the book title: Echo Train?
The term “echo train” leapt out at me while working on an article for Scientific American. I really liked how the words looked together and they immediately made me think of the relationship between causality and human behavior (verbal behavior in particular). The piece was about an experimental portable MRI technology used for medical purposes but also used to determine whether master paintings are fakes or not. The aspect that captured my interest most was that scientists would generate a radio-frequency pulse—or echo—and then add echoes to echoes to form an echo train. Like an echo train, actions have consequences and consequences have consequences. It made my head swim and felt appropriate as a title for the kinds of poems I was making.
2) How did working for Scientific American magazine influence your poetry?
As a poet, working for Scientific American was a delight. As I read and edited articles where language was being used so literally, I could not help myself from drawing figurative associations at times. It was a kind of dream come true to work there. A.R. Ammons—one of my favorite poets—said in an interview that he read the magazine. I have always been interested in science as an artist. C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures makes it clear to me that the relationship cannot be ignored.
3) Which poem in Echo Train would best reflect your poetic style? And why?
Style is one of those things that would best be left for others to comment on if it’s there. For example, you never hear truly humble people talking about how humble they are. I think I have a few different modes that I work in. There are the bare-bones lyrics like “Love” or “Splice” that come to me nearly complete and I never change a word. And then there are the ones that I slowly piece together, building them over time like “No Black Scorpion is Falling Upon this Table” or “Echo Train” or “Panopticon.”
4) Where does Echo Train fit within contemporary American poetry?
It is not for me to say where this collection fits—if it fits—in the hyperpublishing landscape of poetry. I would not know where to begin to guess. I am not interested in any brand of poet or poetry. I see “American poetry” as a brand and I am also not stoked about any kind of nationalism in any way. I have always written out of a great hatred of language and how it is used rather than any great love for it. My entire interest in poetry is propelled by a need to participate in the larger human conversation in some small way.
Echo Train is available to buy from our online store. Click here.
Click on the player below to hear Aaron read ‘My Entrepreneurial Spirit’.
