Emily Winfield Martin's Blog, page 2

Maybe you'll come see us at the cutest bookstore in town?

Maybe you'll come see us at the cutest bookstore in town?

cutest bookstore in town?

[image error]cutest bookstore in town?

Maybe you'll come see us at the cutest bookstore in town?

Maybe you'll come see us at the cutest bookstore in town?

The Littlest Family is Out Today!

Today is a really Big Day, because The Littlest Family arrives in bookstores today! (I wanted to be sure to show you one of my favorite things in the whole book, the endpapers...I love endpapers & I'm especially proud of these.)

I know the family will arrive with their suitcases in hand, ready to go out on a wander.

I am so excited that this book is really real and is going to be on shelves and making its way out in the world. It's my tribute to going walks, to exploring new places, to how big the world feels, to all things tiny...

I love these mini-bears & I hope you will too!

More soon (there's a lot of process art that went in to making the book, so stay tuned...)

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The Littlest Family's Big Day

The first real copies of my next book came in the mail:

The Littlest Family's Big Day comes out in October, but you can preorder your own leaf-covered copy now!

From the Random House catalog:

Who is only under 5 inches tall and has just moved to the woods? The cutest and littlest bear family you have ever seen���and their adopted teeny tiny fox tot! What happens when they venture out to explore their new world���?

I can't wait to show you more of this book, like my favorite endpaper/flap situation ever.

More in October! :D

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Help Genevi��ve

Genevi��ve Elverum (author of the beautiful, aching memoir Susceptible) is one of my favorite artists.
She is also very sick & needs our help.

 

 

My Shirley Jackson Year

    The year of Shirley Jackson actually began the year before. In my stack of Christmas presents was a copy of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and when I read the first few pages, I was done for. It is, to me, a Perfect Book, beautiful and meandering and dangerous and sad -- the kind of book that seems so right & that you love so much you wonder how on earth you it didn't find you before.

And thus the year of Shirley Jackson began. It wasn't planned or organized, I just ended up spending most of 2015 reading everything that is even remotely in print. And just when I'd run out, a collection of mostly uncollected things came out near the end of the summer (Let Me Tell You) so that was nice timing.

Shirley Jackson is so modern. She belongs with us, now: unconcerned about what is highbrow or lowbrow (in her influences or her work.) Uncaring for the divisions between what is important (capital-L) Literary fiction & what is genre writing, just fiercely herself. I think Jonathan Lethem talks about that in the lovely introduction he wrote to the Penguin Classics edition of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

She reminds me of my beloved Angela Carter in that way -- wild hearted, but feet firmly on the ground. Both with rare, magical minds but also earthy and wry and funny as hell. Amateur witches who thought about fairy tales and vampires a lot but also raised babies and gave the side-eye and laughed, I presume, all the time. And though they both have beloved novels, they might be, above all, masters of the short story, of small moments and self-contained worlds. You could do much worse than The Bloody Chamber & The Lottery for desert island material.

If I were to create my own Essential Shirley Jackson (and I've given it a lot of thought) I've landed on a fat little volume comprised of one novel, one set of memoir stories & one set of short stories: We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Raising Demons (which I really prefer to Life Among the Savages, and which contains a beautiful story about clothespin dolls) & then, finally, The Lottery collection of short stories (especially Flower Garden & Seven Kinds of Ambiguity.)

Though I hate to leave out Hangsaman, if only for weirdness' sake. 

I also love her writing-about-writing, the few essays & lectures collected in Come Along with Me & Let Me Tell You. She is, in her advice and prescriptions about craft, as she as always appears to me, utterly enchanting but utterly real.

And people who are both are in such short supply.

 

 

Bits of a New Book

Hello there!
I've been hard at work finishing my next picture book and now that it is really & truly finished, I'm planning on doing nothing.
(Just kidding, I'm beginning the art for another book.)

I've been sharing these little bits & pieces over on instagram, and I wanted to see them all together. The art has only been finished for a little over a month & already I miss this book (and its occupants) so badly.

I can't wait to see the real thing (and for you to see it too.)

More on this little book when the time is right!

Saltwater Fabric Collection

Do you remember these seafaring designs from earlier in the year?
They were for my first fabric collection! Full of mermaids, sailors and sea monsters, we named it Saltwater. 

It's slated to come out next year (2016) and I'm so excited.

You can visit the entire collection here at Birch Fabrics -- and here's a peek at some of my personal favorites:

  

  

I can't wait to make a dress of constellations, or little sailor guys...and cut & sew dolls! (!)

 

Kimonos Postcard Set

I just got this Kimonos postcard set back from the printer and I'm so happy with how it came together. Already works on paper, they just seemed so right for stationery.
You can find the set in the shop (I've squirreled away a big stack for my own purposes)

I'm currently working furiously all hours finishing up my next book, nestled away painting and painting and painting while wintery rain falls outside. So the rest of the new things (more Wolves & Wonders prints and postcards) will come to the shop in the new year.

I hope you are having a wonderful December!