The "Evolution" Issue
For Immediate Release : February 3, 2009
Ecotone is proud to announce the release of its special double-length "Evolution" issue celebrating the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth and the sesquicentennial of the publication of The Origin of Species. The issue features dozens of award-winning authors and scientists writing on the subjects of evolution and survival, including seventeen essays from authors such as Tim Winton, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Jan DeBlieu, Sven Birkerts, Peter Nichols, Francisco J. Ayala, and Stephen Jay Gould; twelve stories from luminaries like Ron Rash, Ben Fountain, Edith Pearlman, Arthur Phillips, Steve Almond, and Brock Clarke; poems from David Wagoner, Robert Wrigley, Pattiann Rogers, and Bob Hicok; maps of sixteenth-century bloodletting, Sarah Palin's path to reincarnation, and Darwin's tree of life; an introduction by David Gessner; contest winners chosen by Jennifer Ackerman; full-page color photos of Hurricane Katrina aftermath from acclaimed photographer Barry Goldstein; and much more.
Ecotone is a literary journal of place that seeks to publish creative work about the environment and the natural world while avoiding the hushed tones and cliches of much of so-called nature writing. Our mission has always been to reimagine a new literature of place - one where writing reached across genre boundaries and seeks the edges between the scientific and the literary, the urban and the rural, and the personal and the biological. Essays, stories, and poems from past issues has been reprinted and noted in Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. Our contributors for the "Evolution" issue include winners and finalists of the Pulitzer Prize, the Pen/Hemingway Award, the Booker Prize, the Puschart Prize, the O. Henry Prize, the Barnes & Noble Discovery Award, and the National Magazine Award, among others. Our striking covers, which often feature unexpected and startling images from the natural world, seek out new ground just like the writing we publish, and have featured painters like Joan Snyder, our cover artists for our third issue, who won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2007. The "Evolution" issue's cover features a colorized image by noted cartoonist Ivan Brunetti.
Issue/Number: Ecotone Volume 4, Numbers 1 & 2, Winter 2008
Length: 464 Pages
Price: $12.95
January 2, 2009
Congratulations to the winners of the 2008 Ecotone Evolution Contest. This was a contest spanning all genres. First prize - and $1,000 - goes to Emily Taylor for her short story "Beginning," which our judge, Jennifer Ackerman, calls "a beautifully imagined, evocative portrait of the sensory and emotional life of our pre-language ancestors." Second prize is awarded to Kathryn Miles for her essay "Dog is Our Copilot," a "witty and lively exploration of Darwin, dogs, and the complicated human bond with a beloved domesticated species." And our third-prize winner is Lynn Pedersen, for her poem "On Reading about the Illness and death of Darwin's Daughter Annie," which "offers warm insight into Darwin's personal struggles."
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