As the harvest season settles in on the East Coast, Atticus is enjoying a fall of its own, basking in the ever-growing glow of our feverishly planted and published Spring and Summer releases, and gearing up for our 2012 bumper crop of delicious indie lit. From deep-probing interviews and essays to book festivals and statehouse readings, our authors continue to sow their literary seeds everywhere they go. Since this metaphor has already been taken too far, just see for yourself:

ERIC D. GOODMAN

“[E]xtremely well done and rather delightful to experience…Each story would have worked on its own, but together, linked by the thin thread of the train, they amount to something bigger than the sum of the parts. Goodman accomplished this masterfully in Tracks.” That’s just part of the stellar review of Eric D. Goodman’s novel-in-stories Tracks, the whole of which can be found at Erin Reads. The book was also recently dubbed a “fascinating and recommended read” by The Midwest Book Review. Eric’s interview about Tracks can now be enjoyed over at Potomac Review, and he’s snuck in some tidbits about his recently completed second novel, Womb, as well. And in a world where everyone and their mother has a blog, it’s refreshing to see Eric’s honest and to-the-point reflection and advice on the why, how, when and where of it, at Writer’s Weekly.

JOHN MINICHILLO

Page 213, by Matt Kish

These illustrations by Matt Kish, inspired by passages from John Minichillo’s The Snow Whale, are some the coolest art we’ve seen in a while. Oh, and we weren’t kidding about the statehouse. John Minichillo read from his “well-received comic novel” (Nashville Scene) in the Old Supreme Court Room, Nashville, as part of The Southern Festival of Books.

STEVE HIMMER

A glowing review of Steve Himmer’s The Bee-Loud Glade has been published by JMWW. Linda Simoni-Wastila describes the novel as “[g]orgeously written” and writes that “Anyone who takes time to settle in with this small treasure will come away with a sense of sadness for the busy-ness with which we stuff our modern lives, as well as yearning for a quieter, slower world, one to spend pondering a mushroom or a cloud, one to disappear and, for at least some time, be forgotten.”

Which, incidentally, seems to be the fate of the divorcee dad in Himmer’s story “Burnt Words,” who lets a telephone company build a tower in his backyard (published at The Good Men Project). Steve’s also making waves with an essay on Tomas Tranströmer at The Millions, an interview with Books, Personally and an appearance at the Boston Book Festival.

ALEX KUDERA

Alex Kudera (Fight for Your Long Day) continues to fight the good fight on behalf of adjuncts everywhere, in this interview at Inside Clemson. And at We Who Are About to Die, Alex has the following advice for those working at both parenthood and the writing life: “Before you have a kid, try to get rich or a tenure-track teaching job with a reduced course load. Or maybe you could marry a breadwinner who also likes quiet time.”

MATT MULLINS

Our Halloween treats have come early, in the form of advance reading copies of Matt Mullins’ forthcoming story collection Three Ways of the Saw (February 2012). Check out the stunning cover our designer Jamie Keenan dreamed up:

Design by Jamie Keenan

Also worth a view: the video Matt’s crafted in celebration and support of Banned Books Week, featuring Matt reading from Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War with his mouth taped shut. Pretty impressive stuff.

JM TOHLINE

In the first debate in our new online forum, Six Degrees Left, JM Tohline joined forces with Matt Mullins and other voices in the writing community to dissect the value and purpose of the increasingly popular MFA programs and the controversy behind the Poets and Writers rankings. The group continued the discussion in Round 2, zeroing in on the charges of elitism in the literary world and the direction of contemporary fiction.

TOMMY ZURHELLEN

Tommy Zurhellen’s answered all sorts of queries in his interview with Eleutherophobia, from the existence of wave-making waterbeds to what to expect from his upcoming sequel (spoiler alert: as far as we can tell, it’s a no on the waterbeds). Nazareth was also featured for a write-up in the High Plains Reader and the Ashland Current.

You can also catch Tommy in person at Dutchess Community College (Poughkeepsie, NY) on October 31st . Trust us—a reading from Nazareth and a discussion of the forthcoming sequel, Apostle Islands (August 2012), sure as hell beats answering the door for trick-or-treaters all night.

Pumpkin Image from Stagetecture