New Books by NER Authors
It’s been a busy publication month for
NER authors! Emily Pittinos, published in
NER40.1, released her debut book of poems, The Last Unkillable Thing (University of Iowa Press), a compilation of tender reflections both elegiac and ecological rooted in the domestic and natural worlds.
Essayist, poet, and pie lady Kate Lebo recently published
The Book of Difficult Fruit (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), a collection of twenty-six lyrical essays (with recipes) centered on fruit, giving “insights into relationships, self-care, land stewardship, medical and botanical history, and so much more.” Her essays have appeared in
Jehanne Dubrow’s
Five PNW memoirs to read for Independent Bookstore Day 2021
From Brandi Carlile’s ascent to stardom to an aching memoir of love in times of war, add these books to your spring reading list.
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From left, Northwest writers Kate Lebo (photo by Melissa Heale), Mortada Gzar (Jonathan Reibsome), Sonora Jha (Ellie Kozlowski), Brandi Carlile (Austin Hargrave) and Elissa Washuta (Marcus Jackson), all of whom have new memoirs out this spring.
Itching to connect with humanity again? Maybe even meet some people outside your pod? Public health officials are still urging us to keep our (social) distance, but on the eve of Independent Bookstore Day (April 24), consider this workaround: read a memoir.
ever is coming to Washington. Half a year after its theatrical release in Japan,
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train will tour American theaters. Yes! Movie theaters. We can go to those now. The movie is based on
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, the wildly popular anime and manga series that follows Tanjiro Kamado, a teen who turned to demon-slaying after a demon killed his entire family and turned his sister, Nezuko, into a demon.
In season one, Tanjiro and a pacified Nezuko comb Japan looking for a way to turn Nezuko human again, fighting a lot of demons along the way. The movie picks up where season 1 left off and acts as a canonical bridge between season 1 and the soon-to-be-released season 2. During just its opening weekend in Japan last year,
In
The Book of Difficult Fruit, author Kate Lebo regularly references the Doctrine of Signatures, ancient theory found in multiple cultures that one can glean the medicinal properties of plants by the part of the body they resemble. God made it easy for us, the theory goes, and made flowers that look like eyes to treat eye infections, plants with red extracts for the blood, and womb-shaped fruit for birth. It’s pseudoscience of the highest order, but the point is not whether it works, but what it means that this logic held sway for so long. It’s not that fruit cures liver disease. It’s that fruit is so integral to our lives that we obviously give it meaning.