Description
Winner of the 2018 Dzanc Nonfiction Prize
"Knock Wood is an absolute wonder, and Jennifer Militello is at the top of her form."
-Andre Dubus III, author of Townie and The House of Sand and Fog
In Knock Wood, the first nonfiction collection by award-winning poet Jennifer Militello, a knock on wood to ward off illness sets in motion a chain of events and memories that call into question the very structure of time.
Anchored by a wooden ring, Militello explores her life through the lens of three intertwined elements: the story of a mentally ill aunt in an abusive marriage; a high school romance with a boy who eventually dies of a heroin overdose; and an extra-marital affair characterized by an otherworldly connection. Cause and effect reverse as significant events-an arrest for a felony committed in high school, a trip by train to meet an illicit lover, and a suicide attempt on those same New York tracks-seem to influence one another outside of time and space. As Militello delicately threads each memory to the next, she explores the themes of family damage and the precarious ties of love.
Militello has been recognized many times for her work in poetry and prose, including honors such as the Yeats Poetry Prize from the W.B. Yeats Society of New York, the Betty Gabehart Poetry Prize, and the Tupelo Press First Book Award. Her collection Body Thesaurus was named one of the top poetry books of 2013 by Best American Poetry.
Regional author tour, including New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, and Maine
Timed publication of excerpts, essays, and features in The Paris Review, Conjunctions, The Rumpus, Entropy, The Believer, The Masters Review, and more
Seeking coverage in local media outlets including the Boston Globe, Goffstown News, The Hippo, Concord Monitor, Union Leader, Providence Journal, and more
Local promotion through Gibson's Bookstore (author has a connection to the owner), along with a dedicated galley mailing to New England indie bookstores
Promotion at the New England Book Festival, NEIBA, Brattleboro Literary Festival, Bookstock, Burlington Book Festival, Winter Wheat Festival of Writing, and the Boston Book Festival
Advertising Budget Available
Co-op Budget Available
Major National Review Push
Mass Galley Mailing
Giveaways through Instagram and Amazon
Egalleys available on Edelweiss
About the Author
Jennifer Militello is the author of A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments (Tupelo Press, 2016), called "positively bewitching" by Publishers Weekly, Body Thesaurus (Tupelo Press, 2013), named one of the top books of 2013 by Best American Poetry, and Flinch of Song, winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award. Her poetry and nonfiction have been published widely in such journals as American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Poetry, and Tin House. She teaches in the MFA program at New England College.
Reviews
"These are hard tales of relationships gone haywire, the pull of love and the helplessness of mental illness and drug addiction. Militello makes order out of chaos sentence after sounding sentence, and succeeds in helping us at least try to understand human frailties. ... By the end of this contemplative and fascinating exploration, the reader may be moved to knock wood for good luck." -Booklist "Militello's part-memoir, part-poetic contemplation smooths out time and space so that we may see the All in front of us; it shows us that there is no such thing as an isolated incident, that everything we've lived continues to happen within us, that loss transcends love transcends time....She taps into a collective heartbreak, one we have, at different points, inflicted on ourselves by knowing better than to love the ones we choose to love." -The Rumpus "Knock Wood is a poet's memoir, filled with rich, beautiful language and metaphor. ... Militello's prose is haunting and sharp, her emotional nakedness a gift to the broken shards inside each of us." -Mom Egg Review "Speaking the music that exists within barren and uncompromising landscapes takes not only courage, but art. These Jennifer Militello has in abundance." -Tupelo Quarterly "With the lyrically textured and crystalline prose of a master poet, Militello's Knock Wood captures the elusive and mysterious nature of time itself, of our one dance on this earth that may not be our last, this urgent need of ours to love and to be loved, our propensity to fail at both and to try again, to suffer and to rise and to fall and yes, to perhaps live once more. This brave and mesmerizing memoir lays bare all of this with sentence after evocative sentence whose shimmering beauty I will never forget. Knock Wood is an absolute wonder, and Jennifer Militello is at the top of her form." -Andre Dubus III, author of Townie and The House of Sand and Fog "The twenty-nine short essays that make up Knock Wood delight and astound. Each piece is as multifaceted as a gemstone, deeply hued, image-dense, burnished by perspective, precise as a poet's tear. But each piece also links in surprising ways, creating a narrative that offers the pleasures of deeper meditations on time, memory, and destiny. Readers with Knock Wood close at hand are lucky indeed." -Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs "The essays in Knock Wood are perfect and petrified: to look inside is to witness the remains of transformation, once wood becomes stone becomes a blood that sins becomes an arrival, at a train station, and who will be waiting?" -Lily Hoang, author of A Bestiary
Awards
Winner of Yeats Poetry Prize, W.B. Yeats Society of New York 2018 (United States) and Tupelo Press First Book Award 2009 (United States). Runner-up for Sheila Margaret Motton Prize 2016 (United States) and New Letters Prize for Nonfiction 2018 (United States) and Eric Hoffer Book Award 2016 (United States) and Cleveland State University Essay Collection Competition 2018 (United States).
Book Information
ISBN 9781945814969
Author Jennifer Militello
Format Paperback
Page Count 144
Imprint Dzanc Books
Publisher Dzanc Books
"Knock Wood is an absolute wonder, and Jennifer Militello is at the top of her form."
-Andre Dubus III, author of Townie and The House of Sand and Fog
In Knock Wood, the first nonfiction collection by award-winning poet Jennifer Militello, a knock on wood to ward off illness sets in motion a chain of events and memories that call into question the very structure of time.
Anchored by a wooden ring, Militello explores her life through the lens of three intertwined elements: the story of a mentally ill aunt in an abusive marriage; a high school romance with a boy who eventually dies of a heroin overdose; and an extra-marital affair characterized by an otherworldly connection. Cause and effect reverse as significant events-an arrest for a felony committed in high school, a trip by train to meet an illicit lover, and a suicide attempt on those same New York tracks-seem to influence one another outside of time and space. As Militello delicately threads each memory to the next, she explores the themes of family damage and the precarious ties of love.
Militello has been recognized many times for her work in poetry and prose, including honors such as the Yeats Poetry Prize from the W.B. Yeats Society of New York, the Betty Gabehart Poetry Prize, and the Tupelo Press First Book Award. Her collection Body Thesaurus was named one of the top poetry books of 2013 by Best American Poetry.
About the Author
Jennifer Militello is the author of A Camouflage of Specimens and Garments (Tupelo Press, 2016), called "positively bewitching" by Publishers Weekly, Body Thesaurus (Tupelo Press, 2013), named one of the top books of 2013 by Best American Poetry, and Flinch of Song, winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award. Her poetry and nonfiction have been published widely in such journals as American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Poetry, and Tin House. She teaches in the MFA program at New England College.
Reviews
"These are hard tales of relationships gone haywire, the pull of love and the helplessness of mental illness and drug addiction. Militello makes order out of chaos sentence after sounding sentence, and succeeds in helping us at least try to understand human frailties. ... By the end of this contemplative and fascinating exploration, the reader may be moved to knock wood for good luck." -Booklist "Militello's part-memoir, part-poetic contemplation smooths out time and space so that we may see the All in front of us; it shows us that there is no such thing as an isolated incident, that everything we've lived continues to happen within us, that loss transcends love transcends time....She taps into a collective heartbreak, one we have, at different points, inflicted on ourselves by knowing better than to love the ones we choose to love." -The Rumpus "Knock Wood is a poet's memoir, filled with rich, beautiful language and metaphor. ... Militello's prose is haunting and sharp, her emotional nakedness a gift to the broken shards inside each of us." -Mom Egg Review "Speaking the music that exists within barren and uncompromising landscapes takes not only courage, but art. These Jennifer Militello has in abundance." -Tupelo Quarterly "With the lyrically textured and crystalline prose of a master poet, Militello's Knock Wood captures the elusive and mysterious nature of time itself, of our one dance on this earth that may not be our last, this urgent need of ours to love and to be loved, our propensity to fail at both and to try again, to suffer and to rise and to fall and yes, to perhaps live once more. This brave and mesmerizing memoir lays bare all of this with sentence after evocative sentence whose shimmering beauty I will never forget. Knock Wood is an absolute wonder, and Jennifer Militello is at the top of her form." -Andre Dubus III, author of Townie and The House of Sand and Fog "The twenty-nine short essays that make up Knock Wood delight and astound. Each piece is as multifaceted as a gemstone, deeply hued, image-dense, burnished by perspective, precise as a poet's tear. But each piece also links in surprising ways, creating a narrative that offers the pleasures of deeper meditations on time, memory, and destiny. Readers with Knock Wood close at hand are lucky indeed." -Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs "The essays in Knock Wood are perfect and petrified: to look inside is to witness the remains of transformation, once wood becomes stone becomes a blood that sins becomes an arrival, at a train station, and who will be waiting?" -Lily Hoang, author of A Bestiary
Awards
Winner of Yeats Poetry Prize, W.B. Yeats Society of New York 2018 (United States) and Tupelo Press First Book Award 2009 (United States). Runner-up for Sheila Margaret Motton Prize 2016 (United States) and New Letters Prize for Nonfiction 2018 (United States) and Eric Hoffer Book Award 2016 (United States) and Cleveland State University Essay Collection Competition 2018 (United States).
Book Information
ISBN 9781945814969
Author Jennifer Militello
Format Paperback
Page Count 144
Imprint Dzanc Books
Publisher Dzanc Books
