Introducing Lookouts

A new nonfiction series at Belle Point Press

“Stick around and read” has been our mantra for a while now. As we’ve settled into our identity as a press and have continued to solidify our commitment to writers in and around this Mid-Southern, “middle-of-somewhere” region (to borrow This Land’s motto), we’ve been eager to think more deeply about the ways we can give voice to the complexities of our place.

Beginning this fall, we’re adding a new series to our catalog to reflect this growth: Lookouts, a smaller ongoing series of nonfiction titles. These books will lean less literary and/or be more critical in nature, while still appealing to a wider audience. Why “lookouts”? A few reasons. The general definition and the images it conjures speak to the visionary sense of books in this collection. They also remain rooted to the places that inform their authors’ perspectives, a common theme across our catalog in all genres. Also, the dual nature of the term—as noun and verb—reflects a consistent way of reading the books we will publish in this imprint: seeing these authors as voices that both inspire inward reflection and offer calls to meaningful action in whichever areas their books explore.

To introduce Lookouts in November, we are thrilled to publish two remarkable books: Leaves of Healing: A Year in the Garden by Matt Miller, and Ambiguity and Belonging: Essays on Place, Education, and Poetry by Benjamin P. Myers. Next year, we will publish two additional titles in this series: Landscaping for Wildlife by John Gifford—environmental essays from central Oklahoma—and a collection of oral history interviews throughout the Arkansas River Valley.

By launching these first two books together, we have several things in mind. On a personal level, I’m (Casie) thrilled to share compelling and thought-provoking work by two people I admire immensely. We (as a press) also think that taken together, Ambiguity and Belonging and Leaves of Healing offer interesting perspectives on the place-driven attitudes common to many away from urban centers and committed to their local communities in tangible ways. In both cases, the goodness of being here resonates and inspires readers to consider how they can apply similar visions to their own home places, however that may look.

Today, we’re excited to reveal the cover of Leaves of Healing and launch pre-orders on our website. Here’s a little more information about the book and the author:

• Matt Miller’s debut essay collection, Leaves of Healing: A Year in the Garden, journeys through the garden year and the church year together to uncover how life in both realms can help us rediscover our bodies and our sense of time, thereby helping us reach toward the sense of wholeness we all seek. Following the cycles of physical and liturgical seasons from a residential permaculture garden in the Ozarks, each meditation combines reflections on labor in the soil with investigations of spiritual insights into the paradoxically timeless yet time-rooted realities of our eternal souls.

• Matt Miller is a native Nebraskan now living in Branson, Missouri, where he serves as Associate Professor of English at College of the Ozarks. He writes regularly for Front Porch Republic, Fare Forward, The New Territory, and other venues. This is his first book. Find him online at matt-miller.org.

• You can also connect with Matt Miller’s work on his Substack, A Habitation:

  

We’ll have more updates on Ambiguity and Belonging in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, anyone interested in writing about these books or talking with our authors can reach out here.

Thanks for sticking around.