Burnaway is excited to announce Open Book, our first editorial book club. Held in-person and virtually, Open Book is a literary program for curious readers who are interested in engaging with stories touching on both art and our coverage region of the South and Caribbean. At a time marked by AI-generated content and declining reading habits, Open Book serves as a space for critical thinking, thoughtful discussion, and gathering. Through this program, we hope to continue fostering a community of engaged readers across our coverage region and beyond.
Open Book is a hybrid program in which Burnaway’s editorial staff will select and announce a new book each season. Featured books may be fiction, non-fiction, essay collections and other forms of published writing and will touch on art and our coverage region of the South and Caribbean. In-person events will be held in different locations across our coverage region in accordance with editor-at-large locations (Atlanta, the Caribbean, the Carolinas, and New Orleans), and virtual events will be held on Zoom within the same week.
Burnaway will kick off Open Book with Hothouse Bloom by Austyn Wohlers, selected by Burnaway’s Editor and Artistic Director Courtney McClellan. Courtney will lead a virtual book club on Tuesday, September 15 from 7-8PM EST and an in-person book club in Atlanta at Larakin on Wednesday, September 23 from 6-8PM EST. Register for the virtual book club here and the in-person book club here.
Hothouse Bloom was published in hardback in 2024 by Spartanburg, South Carolina-based publisher Hub City Press and published in paperback in 2026. From Hub City Press, Hothouse Bloom “follows a young woman who renounces her painting career and all her human relationships to become one with her late grandfather’s apple orchard. She succeeds, for a time, but her idyll is interrupted by an old friend’s arrival and the hard demands of turning a profit. As the outside world invades in the form of pickers, contractors, neighbors, and pomologists, what had begun as a renunciation becomes a new obsession, consuming her much the way an apple might oxidize and rot. Painterly, strange, and razor-sharp, Hothouse Bloom announces Austyn Wohlers as a singular new talent in American fiction.”
Hothouse Bloom can be purchased at A Capella Books in Atlanta or online through Hub City Press.
