MAMMOTH PUBLICATIONS REPORTS ITS NEWS: New Books, Reading Success, Author News

MAMMOTH WRITING NEWS, MAY, 2014

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*MAMMOTH READING APRIL 29, 2014, KU STUDENT UNION Jayhawk Ink Bookstore at KU was the site of a Mammoth author reunion and reading. Denise Low opened the event and described how E. Donald Two-Rivers’s book Powwow, Fatcats, and Other Indian Tales was the first Mammoth book in 2003. This was in association with Woodley Memorial Press, where Low was a board member at the time. Then Mammoth became independent, and LANGSTON HUGHES IN LAWRENCE, co-authored by Low and Tom Weso, was the next project. Tom Weso read from the Langston Hughes book and also his new food memoir.
 Barry Barnes, author of WE SLEEP IN A BURNING HOUSE, recited poems from his book and announced his participation in the International Cajun and Zydeco Festival in the Netherlands, the next day, with the Ernest James Zydeco Band. His photos on Facebook are amazing. Elizabeth Schultz read from WHITE-SKIN DEER: HOOPA STORIES, based on 1950s stories told to her by Hoopa elders.
Stephen Meats arrived from Pittsburg State University and read from DARK DOVE DESCENDING, his 2013 poetry and fiction book. Mammoth has just reissued a new edition of his book LOOKING FOR THE PALE EAGLE.

Global Green proprietors Julie Unruh and Oliver Hall showed their books, VEGETABLE GARDEN and GETTYSBURG ADDRESS, respectively, and read from them. Global Green is one of several groups that Mammoth cooperates with by counsel and other publication support. Thanks to them for a generous donation.

 Xánath Caraza finished the event with readings from her first book, CONJURO. Caraza’s awards include Number one Author of the 2013 Top Ten “New” Latino Authors to Watch (and Read) by LatinoStories.com. The International Latino Book Awards 2013 recognized CONJURO for Second Place: Best First Book Written in Spanish; Award Winning Finalist, Multicultural Fiction; and Honorable mention, Best First Book Written in Spanish, Mariposa Award. She has published two more books, What the Tide Brings In (Mouthfeel Press) and Noche de Colibríes: Ekphrastic Poems (2014) if from Pandora Lobo Estepario Press. Mammoth will publish another book of poetry in 2015. Mammoth is honored to be her first book publisher. Lisa Eitner of Jayhawk Ink facilitated the project and provided publicity. This is the second event for Mammoth sponsored by the KU bookstore, and we appreciate the support.

*MAMMOTH ASSOCIATE’S PROGRAM Mammoth has been able to advise several community groups and individuals involved with publishing. Mammoth associates include Global Green Publications, Parcel literary journal, A Kansas Bestiary and its authors, and more.  Look for “Published in association with Mammoth Publications” for this cooperative venture. Congratulations to Global Green Productions for their books VEGETABLE GARDEN, GETTYSBURG ADDRESS, and MLK. JR., MEMORIAL, words by Martin Luther King, Sculpture by Lei Yixin, and Photography by Oliver Hall. The book has been nominated for a Coretta Scott King Book Award. Global Green presented Mammoth Publications with the first copy of the book. We sincerely thank them.
MAMMOTH ANGELS APPEAR! If you have ever wondered what wooly mammoth angels looks like, they are not giant pachyderms with large wings. They are more subtle and appear in human form to us mortals. Two such angels have asked for our catalogue list and then bought every single book. That income has helped us pay for the next book set-up costs. We are not a non-profit, which helps us keep our independence. We appreciate the support of angels and all ordinary folk who buy our books, review them on media, give us encouragement, and otherwise act as angels.
NEW MAMMOTH BOOKS  Robert Day’s TALK TO STRANGERS AND STOP ON BY: Essays on William Stafford and Other Folk of the American High Plains, with an Introduction by Scott Bontz, was published just in time for the Washburn University William Stafford conference, March 30, 2014. Thank you to The Land Institute for a grant to help fund this publication. http://mammothpublications.net/writers-a-to-l/robert-p-day-we-should-have-come-by-water/
Stephen Meats has updated his 1994 collection of poetry LOOKING FOR THE PALE EAGLE and added interviews, revision notes, and a “Letter to a Young Poet.” http://mammothpublications.net/writers-m-to-z/meats-stephen-prose-and-poetry/
Caleb Puckett is the newest Mammoth author, and I hope to meet him one day soon! His FATE LINES / DESIRE LINES is poetry moving among histories and digital media. His experimental poetry satisfies the mind and makes emotional connections. http://mammothpublications.net/writers-m-to-z/puckett-caleb-fate-lines-desire-lines/
NEWS FROM MAMMOTH AUTHORS   Elizabeth Schultz has a new book of poetry, The SAUNTERING EYE, from FutureCycle Press. Join her and Mammoth friends when she reads from it at the Raven Bookstore May 22, Thursday, 7 pm.  Denise Low has a new book of poetry, her first since the award-winning Ghost Stories of the New West (Woodley 2010). MÉLANGE BLOCK (Red Mountain Press), blends Low’s ancestries with history and landscape to create aggregate-like poems. http://redmountainpress.us/melange-block-by-denise-low/ Readings are Santa Fe, June 15, 2:30 pm, op cit bookstore; June 25, Lawrence, Raven bookstore, 7 pm.  Xánath Caraza started a new international poetry project called “US Latino Poets en español.” This online poetry column is published monthly and is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum and Periódico de Poesía. She will be traveling summer 2014 and presenting readings in Spain, Portugal, and El Salvador.  Stephen Meats is working with another Mammoth author, William Sheldon, in preparing a book of interviews with Kansas writers. Mammoth will publish the book in 2015.  Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is working on three forthcoming books: Poem on the Range: A Poet Laureate's Love Song to Kansas (Coal City Press), Caryn's memoir about the political and geographic journey of her poet laureate years, will be out this summer; Chasing Weather: Tornadoes, Tempests, and Thunderous Skies in Word and Image (Ice Cube Press), her collaboration with weather photographer and storm chaser Stephen Locke, is being released in September; and Transformative Language Arts in Action, the anthology she's co-editing with Ruth Farmer, will be out toward the end of 2014.  Lana Wirt Myers reports she is retiring from her job with the Harvey County Historical Society spring of 2014. She has plans for another book. Her Mammoth book PRAIRIE RHYTHMS: THE LIFE AND POETRY OF MAY WILLIAMS WARD received a Kansas Notable Book recognition from the state library and Kansas Center for the book. 

MAMMOTH AUTHORS AND ALLIES, PLEASE LET US KNOW YOUR NEWS, AND WE’LL POST IT IN OUR NEXT NEWSLETTER.

 

Dear Poetry Friends,

This Ad Astra Poetry Project electronic broadside celebrates the writing of Elizabeth Schultz. She is a talented poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Many people are aware of her distinguished teaching and scholarly career at the University of Kansas, which is highlighted at the University of Kansas Kansas Women’s Hall of Fame website: http://www2.kumc.edu/etwrc/schultz_elizabeth.html .

All are invited to hear presentation of her latest book, The White-Skin Deer: Hoopa Stories, Wed., Nov. 18, 7 pm, at the Haskell Cultural Center (at the entrance to campus).

Schultz wrote these stories based on experiences living on the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s land during the 1950s. This was a time period when Bureau of Indian Affairs policies of assimilation were at their height. Like all good fiction, these stories prompt reflection. Embedded within them are the conflicts facing most American tribal peoples at that time and continuing to this day. For further information, see www.mammothpublications.com .

Denise Low

AD ASTRA POETRY PROJECT # 41: ELIZABETH AVERY SCHULTZ (1936 - )

Elizabeth Schultz, of Lawrence, combines enthusiasm for art and nature in her writings. As a literature professor at the University of Kansas, she encouraged thousands of students to examine stories closely and then to link observation with reflection. She brings that sense of joyful scrutiny to her creative writings, which include essays and poetry. Often she lings these to nature. Since retirement in 2001, she has continued to be active as a Fulbright scholar, poet, and ecocritic activist. She is a member of the Committee on Imagination & Place and consultant to its press; she also writes for the Nature Conservancy and other organizations.
Schultz delights in patterns, whether crafted by natural processes or artisans. She engages deeply with both, as seen in this poem. A great blue heron’s carcass has an unexpectedly beautiful form. The poet compares it to a macramé dream catcher; crochet-work; an amulet; and also its vertebrae are frets of a guitar. As insects scour its bones, the this erasure creates yet another pattern. And so the poet humanizes an emblem of mortality—the skeleton. The most descriptive words and phrases of the poem are set like gems along strands of short lines, so that “dark amulet,” “polished blade,” and “shining insects,” along with other terms, resound fully.
The poem shows paradox in uncovering aesthetic joy in river refuse. The title is also paradoxical: how does this mostly decayed beast, lodged on a sandbar, tell about the Kansas River? Forces of the river that sustained the living bird cause the final dissolution.

Watching the Kansas River


On a sandbar
a heron is laid
out with care.
A dream catcher,
its design is
pressed into sand.
Its wings stretch
in skeletal symmetry.
Feathers crochet
its light bones.
Its feet curl into
dark amulets,
and its beak is
a polished blade.
Scarabs bead
its intricate fretwork.
Relentlessly,
remorselessly,
the shining insects
devour the design,
releasing the bird
into a river of light.


Education: Elizabeth Schultz received a BA in European History (Wellesley 1958), and MA (1962) and PhD (1967) in English from the University of Michigan. She taught English at the University of Kansas 1967-2001. She has published extensively in the fields of African American fiction and autobiography, nineteenth-century American fiction, American women's writing, and Japanese culture. She was a Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer at the Beijing Foreign Studies Institute (2008) and co-organized an international conference in ecocriticism (2008).
Career: Schultz is the author of Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth Century American Art (University Press of Kansas 1995); a memoir, Shoreline: Seasons at the Lake (Michigan St. U. Press 2001); Conversations: Art Into Poetry at the Spencer Museum of Art (2006); poems, Her Voice (Woodley Press 2008); The White-Skin Deer: Hoopa Stories (Mammoth 2009), fiction; and essays in The Nature of Kansas Lands (University Press of Kansas 2009).
_________________________________________________________________________________
©2009 Denise Low AAPP 41 ©2009 Elizabeth Schultz “Watching the Kansas River”

Small Literary Press Mammoth Publications Rolls Out New Titles

My husband Thomas Weso, and I have a small press, Mammoth Publications, which is presenting a number of book events this fall:

1. Aug. 30 Sunday 4 pm Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, poet laureate of Kansas, performs poems and songs from her new book/CD LANDED, with co-lyricist and outstanding musician Kelley Hunt, at the Lawrence Public Library. Dinner on your own afterwards at Local Burger.

2. Sept. 4 We Should Have Come by Water: Poems by Robert Day, a fine press (handset type on fine paper) chapbook with prints by Kathy Jankus (representend by the Strecker-Nelson Gallery in Manhattan), limited edition! Signing party details to be announced). Robert Day received his MFA in poetry, but is better known as a prose writer. This is his first publication of poetry.

3. The White-Skin Deer: Hoopa Stories (signing & reading in Oct.) by Elizabeth Schultz

4. We are reprinting E. Donald Two-Rivers’ 2003 book Powwows, Fat Cats, & Other Indian Tales, late August

5. And we also will be publishing the collection of Ad Astra Poetry Project electronic broadsides, a Kansas poetry anthology with commentary by Denise Low, in cooperation with Washburn’s Center for Kansas Studies.

Advance copies of these books are available through www.mammothpublications.com or in Lawrence: the Raven Bookstore and Oread Bookstore.

Denise Low, former Ks. Poet Laureate