At an independent bookstore, staff picks, handselling, and author events are ways to twig readers to authors that might’ve otherwise skipped their notice. Porter Square Books wanted to find a new way to alert the reading public to certain authors. To that end, they’ve organized a Renee Gladman Symposium to explore and celebrate her innovative writing with the presentation of essays on the work, a Q&A with the presenters, and a reception afterward. The lauded small press Dorothy: A Publishing Project, is publishing a re-issue of “ To After That ,” one of Gladman’s earlier works, as well as her latest book, “ My Lesbian Novel .” Presenters include Jacob Wren, author and happening-maker; PSB regular Rachel Hands; writer and researcher Hilary White; Andrea Martinez Corbin, a writer who ran the Speculative Boston Reading Series; and academic Laurel Reynolds. Gladman, poet, artist, novelist, is the author of 14 books that press the edges of what narrative can be. The Renee Gladman Symposium takes place Thursday, Sept. 5, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Porter Square Books: Boston Edition, 50 Liberty Drive, in Boston. For more information and to register, visit portersquarebooks.com . The National Endowment for the Humanities recently announced its grant recipients for humanities projects across the country. Literary-related grantees in Massachusetts include: $300k to Northeastern for a book project on the history, architecture, and landscape of Boston’s Southwest Corridor; $300k to UMass Boston for publication of an English translation of the Mesoamerican pictographic text “The Tlalamatl Cuaxicala”; $600k to Brookline’s Verse Video for the eight-episode television series on American poetry and American culture; $194,347 to Harvard for the publication of handwritten diaries of Egyptian foreman who helped American archeologists in the mid-20th century; $197,030 to Harvard for the publication of the English translation of five volumes of modern Ukrainian literature; $50K to Peter Filkins for a book on Ingeborg Bachmann; $600k to the Center for Independent Documentary in Newton for a film on the history and cultural impact of the Nancy Drew novels. The NEH is giving $37.5 million to 240 projects across the country. For more information and a complete list, visit neh.gov . Stan Hynds at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vt., recommends “ The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature ” by J. Drew Lanham (Milkweed): “From his middle-class childhood in a small town in South Carolina to his 2022 MacArthur Genius Grant, Lanham’s story is fascinating and beautifully told. His life is a testament to the importance of staying curious and loving the natural world. The Clemson University professor is best known as an ornithologist. As drawn as I was to his descriptions of nature, ‘The Home Place’ is very much about family, place, and what it is to be a Black man working in a discipline where so few people look like Drew Lanham.”
CONTINUE READING
