The Longest Drink in Town
Cover image: Bronwyn Lloyd / Cover design: Ellen Portch & Brett Cross
We're excited to announce the publication of our first new book for 2015: Tracey Slaughter's novella The Longest Drink in Town. Ever since I first encountered her work and - shortly afterwards - Tracey herself, when she came to teach for us at Massey, I've considered her one of our very finest writers. I remember well driving out to Thames with my friend and colleague Jenny Lawn for the launch of Tracey's first book of stories and poems, Her Body Rises, published by Random House.
Bronwyn shares my love of Tracey's work, so a while ago now we began to moot the exciting plan of putting out one of her stories ourselves, as a little chapbook - and a taster, now, for the more substantial collection Deleted Scenes for Lovers due out from Victoria University Press in 2016.
Photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd (12/1/15)
So, to make a long story short - this was no exception to our usual practice of going through a long series of different layouts and other possible design solutions - earlier this year we set out to find a cover image. First of all we checked out Thames. No dice - the photographs insisted on coming out too picturesque (though Bronwyn did get some nice ones in the picnic area down by the waterfront). Then we drove on to Paeroa.
Photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd (12/1/15)
Just along from a lovely little cafe down a side-street, we found these two gnomic arrows. I'm not sure what their author intended them to mean, but they seemed perfect for our purposes: genuine graffiti, but with a kind of ragged edginess to them - a bit like Tracey's story, in fact.
Rather than tell you a lot more about it, I'd prefer just to quote from the blurb:
Like William Faulkner’s tour-de-force As I Lay Dying, Tracey Slaughter’s hard-hitting novella The Longest Drink in Town traces the history of a single traumatic event against the backdrop of small town life. Her characters seethe with anger and lust – with a strange, wistful tenderness persisting within them, however hard they work to conceal it. This is a major work by one of our most accomplished short story writers. Follow the arrow and open the page.
Tracey Slaughter’s first collection of poems and short stories, her body rises, was published by Random House in 2005. Her work has been widely published and anthologized, and received numerous awards, including the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award (twice). She lectures in Creative Writing at Waikato University.
In his judge’s report for the 2014 UK Bridport Prize, novelist Andrew Miller commended her mastery of “the difficult art of selecting the telling moment, the detail that speaks,” praising her for her “determination to find what is luminous in what is plain.”
The cover design, including the brilliant graffiti font, was done for us by our good friends Ellen Portch and Brett Cross of Titus Books.
If you'd like a copy, you can order one from us here on the website. Alternatively, if any of you happen to be In Palmerston North on the evening of Friday 17th April, please feel free to come along to our "Off the Page" writers event at 6.30 pm at the Palmerston North City Library.
I'll be chairing a panel on short-stories, with renowned writers Owen Marshall, Jaspreet Singh, and - Tracey Slaughter. Books by all three of the panelists will be on sale, including The Longest Drink in Town. It'd be great to see you there.
The Longest Drink in Town is available in an initial print-run of 100 copies.
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Reviews & Comments:
- Graham Beattie, "Double Booklaunch - Tracey Slaughter / Jack Ross - Monday 25th May at 6.30 pm." Beattie's Book Blog (May 18, 2015):
Jack Ross advises:
I'm pleased to report that there's going to be a double booklaunch for Tracey Slaughter's latest, the novella The Longest Drink in Town, published by Pania Press, together with my latest, the poetry collection A Clearer View of the Hinterland, published by HeadworX of Wellington.
Here are the details of the event:
Joint Launch of
Cover image: Bronwyn Lloyd / Cover design: Ellen Portch & Brett Cross
The Longest Drink in Town
By Tracey Slaughter
(Auckland: Pania Press, 2015)
&
Cover image: Graham Fletcher / Cover design: Ellen Portch & Brett Cross
A Clearer View of the Hinterland:
Poems & Sequences 1981-2014
By Jack Ross
(Wellington: HeadworX, 2014)
Monday 25th May at 6.30 pm
At the Art Fusion Gallery
Waikato University
003 Student Centre (Next to the hairstylists)
Gate 5, Hillcrest Road, Hamilton
The event is co-organised by Mayhem literary journal. You can find further details here.
Jack Ross
See you there!
- "Cambridge-based international author to launch book in Hamilton." Waikato Times (May 19, 2015):
It's been a bumper few months for writer and lecturer Dr Tracey Slaughter.
The international award winning writer moved from Thames to Cambridge at the start of the year to be close to the University of Waikato where she lectures in creative writing.
Next Monday Dr Slaughter will launch a novella The Longest Drink in Town and later in the year Victoria University Press will publish her collection of short stories.
Slaughter won the United Kingdom's's Bridport short story writing prize late last year, and was a finalist in the Manchester Poetry Prize.
The publisher, Pania Press, describes it as a "hard-hitting novella tracing the history of a single traumatic event against the backdrop of small town life." It follows the points of view of a group of children going through the fallout of divorce, with the drama coming to a crisis on a single afternoon on a small town roadside.
At the same event, writer and publisher Jack Ross will also launch his new collection of poetry, A Clearer View of the Hinterland.
Slaughter has twice won New Zealand's Katherine Mansfield short story prize and teaches creative writing at the University of Waikato.
Her new book will be launched at the Art Fusion Gallery on campus, located in the base of the Student Centre, on Monday, May 25, at 6.30pm, and copies will be available to buy from the Gallery or from the Pania Press website.
Her short story collection deleted scenes for lovers will be published by Victoria University Press early next year.
Currently teaching two papers this semester, Creative Non-fiction and Voice and Image, Dr Slaughter has a sabbatical planned for the second half of the year.
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