Speed Rack co-founder and mixologist Lynnette Marrero and co-founder Ivy Mix have reached an agreement with Abrams to write an untitled cocktail book based on her work with the organization, subtitled: Recipes, Wisdom, and General Badassery from the Women Shaking up the Cocktail World. Marrero and Mix launched Speed Rack in 2011 as a high-speed bartending competition designed to highlight up-and-coming women in the cocktail industry and give back to those impacted by breast cancer. Inspired by their incredible journey building Speed Rack into a major charity and a leading voice for women in the cocktail world, the book will offer classic and original recipes organized in a uniquely intuitive way and will profile some of the formidable women to have participated in Speed Rack competitions.
Gullah Geechee Home Cooking Hits NYT Best Seller List
Gullah Geechee Home Cooking by Emily Meggett has just landed at #7 on The New York Times Best Seller list in the Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous category, following on the heels of the author’s heartwarming “CBS Mornings” appearance late last month. Highlighting the food and culture of the Sea Islands of coastal South Carolina and Georgia, it has also been named a top cookbook of 2022 so far by NPR while earning praise and admiration from numerous other outlets.
Camper English's Doctors and Distillers Published July 19
Last week marked the release of Camper English’s Doctors and Distillers: The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits, and Cocktails from Penguin Books (published simultaneously in the United Kingdom by HarperCollins as The Perfect Tonic). The book has received strong reviews from The New York Times, Scientific American, and Publishers Weekly, among others. English, the cocktails and spirits expert who runs the website Alcademics, was also prominently featured in an article in The Washington Post Magazine that described Doctors and Distillers as “a rollicking, quirky story of alcohol and medicine’s ‘inextricably intertwined history,’” while the Wall Street Journal published an excerpt from the book.
Jonah Straus to Appear at Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference
Jonah Straus will be one of the featured speakers at the 2022 Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference held in Northern California this August 4, 5, and 6. His talk will survey the landscape of book publishing, covering how to compare offers from publishing houses and other difficult decisions. He will also present on panels and be available for private manuscript consultations. Other presenters at the conference will include Lydia Kiesling, Jean Chen Ho, Claudia Castro Luna, Anastacia-Reneé, Miah Jeffra, and keynote Karen Tei Yamashita. For more information (and to register before the June 30 deadline) visit mcwc.org.
John Keene's Punks Wins Lambda Literary Award
Two days ago, John Keene’s collection Punks received a prestigious Lambda Literary Award in the category of gay poetry. Selected this year by a panel of over 60 literary professionals from 1,300 book submissions by more than 300 publishers, the Lambda Literary Awards represent the premier honor in LGBTQ writing. The win extends Keene’s lengthy list of achievements, which include a MacArthur Fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Whiting Foundation Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and the American Book Award. A roundup of critical praise for Punks is featured at the website for the book’s publisher, The Song Cave.
Michael Parks' Grass People Sold to Bloomsbury
Michael Parks has reached an agreement with Bloomsbury to write Grass People, an adventurous examination of the world’s grasslands — the largest terrestrial biome and the source of most of our food. A graduate of the Yale School of the Environment and contributor to High Country News, the Atlantic, and Sierra magazine, Parks will chronicle journeys through the African savanna, the Mongolian steppe, the American prairie, the Brazilian cerrado, the Patagonian plains, and the pastures of France and Spain. On the way, he will show how grasslands have shaped human history, and how scientists, herders, ranchers, farmers, and Indigenous leaders are using ancient knowledge and modern research to understand and protect the vast grandeur of this vital habitat, whose preservation will be critical to preventing species loss and fighting climate change.
Emily Meggett's New Cookbook Featured in The New York Times
Edisto Island matriarch and Gullah Geechee elder Emily Meggett has received a mountain of publicity upon the release of her new book Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, published by Abrams on April 26. The New York Times ran an extensive and illuminating profile on her this week, while Eater and Food & Wine have just named her book to its best of spring lists. She can be heard on recent broadcasts of WNYC’s “The Takeaway” and on The Southern Fork, and has lately been featured in The Washington Post, MarthaStewart.com, and Saveur.
Lindsey Smith Climate Change Feature Published by San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle has published a longform article by Lindsey Smith on managed retreat in California, a strategy for adapting to climate change that communities across the state and around the world are starting to embrace. Smith has just concluded a climate reporting fellowship with the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism at Ohio University, and was recently chosen as one of five writers for inclusion in the 2022-2023 class of the Lisa Brown and Daniel Handler Writer’s Residency.
Kyle Paoletta's American Oasis Sold to Pantheon
Journalist Kyle Paoletta has accepted an offer from David Treuer at Pantheon to publish American Oasis: How the Cities of the Southwest Forecast Our Sweltering, Multicultural Future, a set of interwoven narratives exploring the region’s Indigenous and colonial history as well as its unique modern culture. In the book, Paoletta — a New Mexico native and contributor to Harper's, The Believer, and The Nation, among others — will examine the stories of these cities through the lives of such noted local characters as the modernist architect Judith Chafee in Tucson, the Chicano poet Jimmy Santiago Baca in Albuquerque, and the washed up celebrity detective Jay J. Armes in El Paso, as he makes the case that the climatic and demographic shifts taking place in the Southwest foreshadow what will soon face the nation as a whole.
Update, April 21, 2022: Paoletta’s related longform article “We Woke Up and We Lost Half Our Water” has been published by New York Magazine.
John Keene's Punks Embraced as Singular Achievement
In addition to a starred review in Publishers Weekly describing Punks as a “brilliant, expansive collection” that is “brimming with energy and memorably phrased insights,” John Keene’s newly published volume of poetry has continued to receive praise since its release late last year. Heralded for superbly evoking both queer and African American experiences, the book’s press highlights include a lengthy essay from the Poetry Foundation and an in-depth interview with Keene conducted by Bookforum. Links to more coverage can be found at the publisher’s website, where the book is available for purchase.
