Reading Period Results: River River Books Class of '25!

We are beyond delighted to announce the two books we’ve selected from our Summer 2023 open reading period:

·       Pastoral, 1994 by Joe Wilkins

·       Your Mother’s Bear Gun by Corrie Williamson

These two remarkable books — chosen from among more than 300 manuscripts we received in June and July — will be published in early 2025. They could not be a better pairing. Though we did not set out to choose collections that spoke to and with each other so clearly, these two share deep roots in the landscapes of the American West.

Pastoral, 1994 calls softly into the lyric quietness, labor, and landscape of the rural West and its communities, bringing readers close to the earth, to the ditches, to the “flowery stink of alfalfa / hot breath of wheat.”

Your Mother’s Bear Gun takes on questions of violence and self-preservation, seeking the sometimes-difficult balance between loving the land and living on it; these poems sing to the “flat and fertile” prairies of middle America.

Joe Wilkins was born and raised on the Big Dry of eastern Montana and now lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon. He is the author of a novel, Fall Back Down When I Die. A finalist for the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the High Plains Book Award. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and four previous collections of poetry. His second novel, The Entire Sky, is slated for publication in July 2024 with Little, Brown. Wilkins directs the creative writing program at Linfield University and is a member of the low-residency MFA faculty at Eastern Oregon University.

Corrie Williamson was born and raised on a small farm in southwestern Virginia and now makes her home in Montana. She is the author of two previous poetry collections, The River Where You Forgot My Name, selected for the Crab Orchard Series and a finalist for the 2019 Montana Book Award; and Sweet Husk, winner of the 2014 Perugia Press Prize. Her work has appeared recently in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Pleiades, Copper Nickel, Cascadia Field Guide, and many other venues. She was the 2020 Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency fellow, spending 7.5 months living off-grid in southwest Oregon’s Rogue River wilderness.

We are grateful to everyone who sent us their manuscripts for consideration and proud to be publishing these two excellent books.

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Rachel Edelman and Carla Sofia Ferreira’s Broadside Bundle is now available!

Preorder A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us by Carla Sofia Ferreira

Preorder Dear Memphis by Rachel Edelman