Recent Writing News 11/09

My biggest literary news of late is that Mercer University Press has accepted ABANDONED QUARRY: NEW & SELECTED POEMS to be published in spring/summer 2011. This collection will pull back into print all of my previous poetry collections (AS THE WORLD AROUND US SLEEPS, AGAINST INFORMATION, DEAD FATHER POEMS, etc.) plus add about 20 new poems. 

Also, go to Terrain.org, a journal of built and natural environments if you want to read a recent long piece of prose by me:

 http://www.terrain.org/articles/24/lane.htm

It's a piece (sort of a cross between reporting and personal essay) that I wrote last year about archaeologist Terry Ferguson's site in Pickens County, SC and it's mostly about time. There are some good photos that go along with the piece.

 This summer I finished two other prose pieces and that will appear in collections in next year and a half:

 —"Keowee," an essay about William Bartram will appear in a collection of essays by Southern nature writers to accompany the reprint of Bartram's TRAVELS (Mercer University Press, fall 2010).

— 'Still Under the Influence," a piece about the bioregional influences in the orgins of the Hub City Writers Project (Spartanburg) will appear in an anthology on bioregionalism to be published by Univeristy of Georgia Press sometime in the next two years.

I have one more personal essay "in press," a good long piece called "Sardis" about a Mississippi paddling trip/book tour. It will appear sometime next year or so in Prairie Schooner.

 Besides all that, I'm hard at work on "Paddle to the Sea," my next memoir/personal narrative.

 JL