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Here Below Books

@herebelow.bsky.social

Books for the subversive work of being human.

23 Posts19 Follower 2 Folgt

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 7h ago

Charlotte Donlon: “And here’s one thing that’s true for all writers: moving toward more freedom in your writing practice and your creative identity is always a good idea. Always.” Read more and preorder Spiritual Direction for Writers by Charlotte Donlon here: https://loom.ly/9vc74rA

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · last wk.

Books are our favorite social media. Check us out in the July issue of Harper’s Magazine!

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 2w ago

Heartbreaking, hopeful, and blazingly honest, Rift: A Daughter’s Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Cait West is both exposé and invitation—a reminder that freedom is possible for those determined to claim a different life for themselves. Preorder here: https://loom.ly/zn6ilSY

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 3w ago

Digital platforms sell the illusion of infinite feeds, perfect memory, and frictionless abundance. But the “cloud” shrouds the messy reality of our digital lives: We will die, and so will everything we make. Preorder The Internet Will Die and So Will You: https://loom.ly/7gfqhFc

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · last mo.

“A powerful meditation on what it means to be trapped and what it takes to break free.”  —Publishers Weekly (starred review) #HereBelowBooks #CoverReveal

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“Written with unusual sensitivity and unflinching honesty, [this] is a story of aching loss and gritty resilience, of brokenness, beauty, and hope.”  —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne Cover reveal coming next week. #HereBelowBooks

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“A Place of Encounter is the testimonial of a great thinker who for decades seems to have thought by teaching, as poets think by writing. —Shane McCrae, author of The Many Hundreds of the Scent #HereBelowBooks #CoverReveal

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Quoted from "A Devotional Temperament," a conversation between Garth Greenwell and James K. A. Smith held at Seattle's Hugo House, published in Image Journal, volume 106.

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“This memoir is both devastating and gorgeous. Kilcup tells an unflinching story of longing, both for God and for human connection, and the human frailty—what the author calls sin—that gets in the way. —Joanna Eleftheriou, author of This Way Back

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Between the Light and Me “is a propulsive, harrowing, and ultimately ennobling book. Kathleen Kilcup has been to the abyss and back.” —Christian Wiman, author of Zero at the Bone Cover reveal coming next week.

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Our lodestar.

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Attention is precious. The Internet Will Die, and So Will You (by John West) #HereBelowBooks #CoverReveal

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 3mo ago

is official with Publishers Weekly

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Look closely. Spiritual Direction for Writers (by Charlotte Donlon) #HereBelowBooks #CoverReveal

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 4mo ago

#HereBelowBooks champions books for readers whose journeys don’t map neatly onto well-worn paths. We curate beautiful, ambitious writing and foster good-faith conversations about the subversive work of being human. Curious. Restless. Paying attention.

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 4mo ago

When plans make it out of the group chat. 🪩 #HereBelowBooks

John West @johnwest.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Presenting THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU, out in September from @herebelow.bsky.social, a new imprint doing awesome things. Here's the cover, a lil' excerpt, and the tagline of the press: "Books for the subversive work of being human." herebelowbooks.com/978080288542...

The cover of a book (my book): THE INTERNET WILL DIE, AND SO WILL YOU.

Just one more byte

It’s possible that to store is entirely the wrong verb. Maybe it ought
to be to attend, to give our digital lives the same attention we are
called to give our physical ones. Attention, as a noun, comes to
us through Latin and French, and, from those languages, carries
the sense of to stretch toward, as though my brain, pinned behind
my skull, might reach out, feel the tight restriction of muscle as
it grasps at the world. But, by and large, attention words point in-
ward, not out. We attract it and call it. We can gather it like wheat
in a field or draw it up like water from a well. Always, though,
attention moves from the world into us—except when it’s to be
minted and spent. “Pay attention,” we say, as though it is a com-
modity, bought, sold, and traded by brokers.

The digital world both beleaguers and demands our attention.
The quality of our focus and the metaphors we surround it with
have diminished even as we’re asked to spend more of it. I’ve felt
it, lately, in the very medium of the book, which rests ever more
uneasily in my hands, though I’ve published two, including this
one. I’ve read, I would guess, a couple thousand books in my life.
It’s harder now, harder than ever. And as it’s grown harder, it’s
grown more meaningful, those acts of attentional resistance, as
straightforward as reading a book for pleasure—a refutation of
market logic, a proletarian revolution in even the word attention,
not something I pay for and sell on an open market but, instead,
something I stretch toward.

“Whole strata of reality are lost to us at the speed at which
we live, our ability to perceive them is lost,” Garth Greenwell
writes in his novel Small Rain, “and maybe that’s the value of
poetry, there are aspects of the world that are only visible at the
frequency of certain poems.” Greenwell advances an argument
best advanced in literature, in fiction or poetry, buttressed as it is
by the logic of allusion. This logic stands in stark contrast to the
totalizing, seductive logic of instrumentalism, which would have
us see everything, every act and artifact, as for something else.
Reading under instrumentalism is pointless at worst and a form
of self- betterment at best—merely a way to refill the coffers of
attention before spending it again. Greenwell argues for poetry,
for reading, for all those many varied noninstrumental activities
that demand this “unmixed attention,” to use the philosopher
Simone Weil’s language, which are a species of prayer. I mean
this in the same way Weil does—in the best and truest sense of
the word: prayer not as an attempt to change the world, but as a
chance to attune ourselves to a greater will, one that asks of us,
Be more human.

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Q: What does “Here Below” mean? A: Our name was inspired by a line from Marilynne Robinson’s The Death of Adam where she writes, “With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle is here, among us.” [Continued in the comments] #HereBelowBooks

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We’ve been busy assembling something worth your attention. 👀 First titles coming soon. #HereBelowBooks

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Our logo comes from a simple practice: learning how to look. Artist Corita Kent once sent students into the world with empty slides—small frames meant to help them notice what usually goes unseen. The lesson: attention makes the ordinary extraordinary. #HereBelowBooks begins there.

Here Below Books @herebelow.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Pay attention. Something beautiful is taking shape. #HereBelowBooks