James Chapin (Ride South Until the Sawgrass) in conversation with Tauno Biltsted (The Anatomist's Tale) on writing historical fiction informed by the now, hosted by The Head & The Hand. This is a virtual event.
Reserve your tickets and pre-order the book here
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Summary of Ride South Until the Sawgrass:
"James Chapin brings a fraught era and place into electrifying focus in this thrilling and torrential southern. He is definitely a writer to watch."
—Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
From the moment Nat Quinto and his wife Lucy set foot in the Florida Territory, they can't seem to steer clear of Jake Primrose, a rancher whose schemes to increase his already plentiful wealth ensnare everyone around him. Between Primrose's greed and the brutal conflicts brewing in the Territory surrounding them, will the Quinto family be able to stay true to themselves?
In four tales, the paths of the Primrose and Quinto families cross, separate, and inevitably intertwine in this virtuosic debut set during the tumultuous years of the Florida Territory's Second Seminole War and early statehood.
Ships October 27, 2020
About the Author: James Chapin’s writing has appeared in Slate, Catapult, the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Marginalia channel, and the Tampa Bay Times. He is from north Florida, where he lived while writing this novel. He currently lives in Georgia with his wife and their animals.
Summary for The Anatomist's Tale:
"With all the authenticity of the social historian, Biltsted writes in a swift, beautiful style. These ‘confessions’ lead to an inevitable destination, leaving the reader pensive, satisfied, and ever willing to lend a hand, hoist a sail, and set out anew.”
—Peter Linebaugh, author of Red Round Globe Hot Burning
Born into abject poverty in the British Empire, our narrator aspires to a better life as a ship’s surgeon—until a tyrannical captain provokes a mutiny, forcing him into a life of piracy and eventually to a tropical commune of maroons called New Madagascar.
Told through a series of confessions to those who visit the narrator during his imprisonment at Marshalsea, The Anatomist's Tale relates one man’s brush with the heady freedom of outlaws—and the price of returning to “civilization.”
About the Author: Tauno Biltsted has been a cab driver, squatter on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, mediator and facilitator, and roustabout construction worker. His fiction has been published in Rosebud Magazine and the Akashic Books Mondays are Murder series, and his nonfiction has been published in World War 3 Illustrated, Wobblies!: A Graphic History of the IWW, and Perspectives on Anarchist Theory. He holds a master’s degree in International Relations.
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ABOUT LANTERNFISH PRESS:
Lanternfish Press, founded in Philadelphia in 2013, publishes literature of the rare and strange: fiction that crosses the boundary between literary and speculative; real or imagined tales of characters at the margins of history; essays rooted in a strong sense of place; a cabinet of curious Victorian reprints. We seek the grotesque, the alien made familiar, the “I don’t know what this is—but I love it.”