LANA K. W. AUSTIN
Author of the Debut Novel Like Light, Like Music from West Virginia University Press (August 1, 2020) & of the Full-Length Poetry Collection Blood Harmony (2018) from Iris Press.
Like Light, Like Music (August 1, 2020)
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REVIEWS
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“Austin has written a highly original and captivating novel filled with the mountain music and lore she loves so much—haints, broonies, banshees, shades, and revenants share the stage with all the memorable real characters of Red River, Kentucky. Contemporary issues merge with a developing romance in this spellbinding story, truly a ballad itself.”
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“Like Light, Like Music captures the way the past haunts us and shapes our reality. With the help of their ancestors, the resilient McLean women are determined to prove the innocence of one of their own. The pulse of this lyrical novel beats: Believe women. Believe women. Believe women.”
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“This is a novel about the light of vision, and music in the blood. Emmeretta has the ‘mountain gift’ of synesthesia, and she sees with her ears as well as with memory and imagination. But Like Light, Like Music is also a mystery story about uncovering secrets of the past, of family bonds and family ghosts. It is about the pain at the heart of country music, and joy in the place the music comes from. It is a story of the complexity of family ties and romances, and of the way confronting painful truths can make us free. It is a ballad of a novel, both timely and timeless.”
Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls and Guests on Earth
Savannah Sipple, author of WWJD and Other Poems
Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek and Chasing the North Star
BIO
Author of the novel Like Light, Like Music (West Virginia University Press 2020), Lana K. W. Austin’s poems and short stories have recently been featured in Mid-American Review, Sou’wester, Columbia Journal, The Pinch, Appalachian Heritage, etc. Winner of the 2019 Alabama State Poetry Society Book of the Year Award, a 2019 Hackney Poetry Award & the 2018 Words & Music Poetry Award, Austin has been a finalist and semi-finalist in multiple other competitions, including the James Wright Poetry Award, the Crab Orchard Review First Book Award, the Zone 3 Book Award, the American Short Fiction Award, the Still: The Journal Fiction Award, and the Machigonne Fiction Award. Born and raised in rural Kentucky, Austin studied creative writing at both Hollins University and the University of Mary Washington and has an MFA from George Mason University. Her full-length poetry collection, Blood Harmony, is from Iris Press (2018) and her chapbook, In Search of the Wild Dulcimer, is from Finishing Line Press (2016). Austin currently resides in Alabama, where she teaches writing in the English department at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She is also a member of the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance.
CONTACT
For any media or booking inquiries, please contact LKWA Inquiry:
Telephone: 256-303-5852 Email: lanakwaustin@att.net
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