Beloved Journal garden correspondent Amy Stewart dwells on the dark and deadly side of the plant kingdom in Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities , forthcoming from Algonquin Press in May. Above: Please find the book’s chilling, creee-eeee-eepy trailer!
books
Posted inArts + Scene
Shut Up and Read
In 1935, President Roosevelt decided to give unemployed writers a job. “Why not?” he said. “They are human beings. They have to live.” That might not have been the kind of ringing endorsement writers were hoping for, but hey, there was a depression on. The Federal Writers Project, a program of the WPA, put writers […]
Posted inMusic
Spook Country
William Gibson is best known for a series of sci-fi novels he wrote in the ’80s, beginning with the seminal cyberpunk work, Neuromancer , a labyrinthine examination of a future where hackers cruise through virtual towers of data ruled over by shadowy megacorporations. In many ways, the future he envisioned has come to pass. Maybe […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Write more righter: Hone skillz with the masters on the banks of the Mattole
I’ve been taking a painting class for several years now. I didn’t think I’d like oil painting, but the process is surprisingly similar to writing and I’m drawn to it for that reason. A writer has to put boundaries around a story, to figure out where it begins and ends. The painter has to do […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against the Chinese
Late on the night of February 6, 1885, a gallows was built on Fourth Street between E and F Streets on the edge of Chinatown, in Eureka, a foggy lumber town on California’s North Coast." When Jean Pfaelzer’s new book arrived in the mail, it opened to that page and I almost dropped it. A […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Spring books
This winter, I took a break from serious, I-better-read-this-because-it’s-good-for-me nonfiction. Instead, I went down to the library in January and checked out every novel that I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t gotten around to. Two of them stood out; check them out yourself and see if you agree. I don’t know what I was […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Celia Homesley’s Crimson Leaves
Celia Homesley’s first book of poetry, Body of Crimson Leaves, is an absolutely lovely collection of quietly beautiful poems. Most of us don’t buy many books of poetry in a year, but I suggest that you start off 2007 by adding this one to your library. You can also meet Celia at Booklegger this Saturday […]