News
Grind Writers
This issue is dedicated to STEPHEN FRY with admiration & gratitude for his declamation on life and joy in language: “Stephen Fry Takes a Firm Stance on Grammar (He Doesn’t Go the Way You’d Think).” Somebody has needed to say this for a long long time.* Listen to Stephen’s delightful fulminations as only he can do it in this excellent dramatization of what he said — here.
August 2013
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Grind Writers 2013 meetings schedule
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BC writers – Autonomous Fan Region
10am til 12:30pm Grind Gallery Café
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BC Bookworld’s book promo idea whose time has come
4124 Main Street at King Edward Ave. In the back room
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A Man Who Loved Words
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Death to the Passive Voice! *
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3 days of writing immersion – coming sooner than you think
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Twisted Poets, Holy Wow Poets
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Writing Heals - Toldja
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Things to do – people to see – places to go
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Seeking critique of your work?
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The Ultimate Editing Checklist
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Top 10 Reasons for a Rejection Slip
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Submit. (you know you want to)
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PRISM - The Love & Sex Issue Desires Your Submission
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Thanks to Mr & Mrs Kim, the Grind owners, for allowing us meet in their Back Room for the last six years - and for their support of the arts in general – they provide gallery space to many local artists. Please buy something while you’re there to support the Grind
Sat
Aug 10
Sat Noon-6
Aug 24 At Trout Lake
Sun
Aug 25 Moved to Aug 24
Sat
Sept 7
Sun
Sept 22
Sat
Oct 5
Sun
Oct 20
Sat
Nov 2
Sun
Nov 17
Sat
Nov 30
Sun
Dec 15? – to be decided
“One thin dime, one tenth of a dollah“ for every typo or blooper you find. Enjoy yourself.
Zombie Sentence Alerts
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Writing retreats & conferences in BC & beyond
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Free-write picture prompt: C’mon, just do it!
Looks like a good local writers’ meetup For more info, go to MeetUp.com and search “Vancouver Writers’ Social Group” Their next meeting is Friday August 9th – 6:30 pm At Wick's Café, 1300 West 73rd Ave., Vancouver and the subject is: Procrastination: let's talk about how we overcome it. (Well, one good way is to go to a writers’ social group)
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autonomous Cascadia: The Life and Breath of the World
bC BOOKS
Trevor Carolan and Frank Stewart, eds. This is the big environmental Lit. collection I’ve been working on for the past two years, co-editing it with Frank Stewart for Manoa Journal, University of Hawaii Press. Artwork is by Emily Carr from her early journals that we received permission to reprint from the Provincial Museum and Archives.
BC Bookworld’s
book promo idea whose time has come. If you need pubicity for your self-pubbed or ebook, see pg. 10
Trevor Carolan
Stretching in a great arc from Southeast Alaska to Cape Mendocino in California, the region known as Cascadia is home to breathtaking cultural and biological diversity.
Contributors: Gary Snyder, Robert Bringhurst, Susan Musgrave, Maxine Hong Kingston, Wade Davis, Lee Maracle, Louis Owens, Theresa Kishkan, Tom Jay, Barry Lopez, Hugh Brody, Emily Carr, Eden Robinson, John Schreiber, Jan Zwicky, Robert Sieniuc, Eve Joseph, Charles Lillard, Richard Van Camp, Judith Roche, Bob Rice, Chief Dan George, Red Pine, Mike O’Connor, Richard Wagamese, Chief William K’HHalserten Sepass.
In this collection, Native and non-Native writers, artists, and activists present the complexity and richness of the region and the need to perpetuate them. Through ancient songs of the First Nations people, essays about the old-growth forests and the life cycles of salmon; poems, oratory, and memoirs — the multiplicity of Cascadia comes to life. To purchase, please visit: manoajournal.hawaii.edu
BC’s Ascent Aspirations magazine is looking for submissions We accept submissions year round and decide on placement of accepted submissions for future issues. We read submissions once a week for all the submissions submitted for that week. Accepting poetry for April 2014 and beyond. (We will be publishing 9 poets per issue.) Accepting short fiction for April 2014 and beyond. (We will be publishing 4 short stories per issue.)
Accepting visual art for February 2014 and beyond. (We will be publishing 2 to 3 exhibits per issue.) Accepting spoken word videos already uploaded to YouTube for September 2013 and beyond. (We will be publishing 2 spoken word artists per issue.) Accepting essays for October 2013 and beyond. (We will be publishing 2 essays per issue.) Accepting book reviews for November 2013 and beyond. (We will be publishing 1 to 2 reviews per issue.)
3Submissions readme here.
A Man Who Loved Words ( and knows how to say so in a cover letter )
Death to the Passive Voice! To root the beast out of your work, you need to know where it lurks….
“When copywriter Robert Pirosh landed in Hollywood in 1934, eager to become a screenwriter, he wrote and sent the following letter to all the directors, producers, and studio executives he could think of. The approach worked, and after securing three interviews he took a job as a junior writer with MGM.
See if you have the ammunition to eradicate this evil scourge. Take the P.V. quiz here.
Learn to identify the beast.
Click on the pic below to read more about the passive voice.
Pirosh went on to write for the Marx Brothers and in 1949 won an Academy Award for his Battleground script.
He started off: I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde.
Just Write Vancouver
Read the rest of his letter here.
And they just get down to it – writing. Period. Check out the various venues, days & times here.
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Britannia Branch Library 1661 Napier Street, Vancouver nd 2 Wednesday of the month 6:30 – 8:30 pm Bring your favourite passages, points of interest, and share your reading experiences. Drop-ins are welcome.
THE HOLY
Schedule and books: Aug 14 - A History of Reading by
Alberto Manguel Sept 11 - My Antonia by Willa
POETS We hold a show at the Act Theatre on the 1st Tuesday of every month at 7pm. Theatrical, Musical, Poetic People share their skills, talents and treasures. We meet at the Lobby and the Bar Concession is open. If you're a poet and you know it - come and show it! is our motto. Everyone is welcomed.
3 DAYS OF WRITING IMMERSION! Oct. 25 – 27, 2013 The workshops schedule is posted.
Presenters & what the workshop topics here.
Sat. Aug 24th, 2013 At Trout Lake.
The Act Theatre 11944 Haney Place Maple Ridge, B.C. www.meetup.com/h oly-wow-poets/ www.facebook.com/ theholywowpoets
Toldja
Cather Oct 9 - Clouded Leopard by Wade
Davis Nov 13th - Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoevsky Dec 11 - Beyond Belief: My Secret
Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape by Jenna Miscavige Hill Jan 8, 2014 - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind Feb 12 – Books We Love - Book Recommendation Night March 12 - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Presented by Pandora’s Collective Hosts: Mary Duffy and Sita Carboni / More info here.
TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON nd
Twisted Poets runs the 2 Wednesday and the 4th Thursday of the month. More information at www.pandorascollective.com
”How Writing Heals Wounds — of Both the Mind and Body” -- article
“The study is the latest delving into the mind-body connection to suggest that expressing emotions about a traumatic experience in a coherent way may be important to not just mental but physical health as well. It showed that the calming effect of writing can cut physical wound healing time nearly in half.” Read the whole article here. 5
UBC's Optional-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing
Seeking critique of your work? Try Port Moody's critique group on for size
is now accepting applications for the 2014 academic year.
“Every summer the Port Moody Writers' Group continues to operate for a few that can't bear to stop attending. However, this is also a time when spaces become available as some long-standing members take vacations.
Applications are due by Sept. 16, 2013. Interesting to note that author Annabel Lyon (The Golden Mean; The Sweet Girl) is the Graduate Chair of this program.
If you have a desire to try us out or want to experience a critique group for the first time, the summer is an excellent time to do so. You only have to try it for one month of 4 morning sessions costing $41. It's a bargain and guaranteed to improve your craft and understanding of writing.
More info – here.
Your manuscript is finished. You’re ready to roll………
The group is multi-genre — fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Emerging and experienced writers are welcomed and always supported. The groups have been part of the City of Port Moody recreation department for about 40 years and this summer are facilitated by Julie H. Ferguson (www.beaconlit.com), a published nonfiction author, freelance travel writer and photographer.”
Passive Voice alert
But where to send it? Who publishes children’s books? science fiction or fantasy, or YA or nonfiction in Canada? Here’s a handy website you can search by genre.
Pamela Vaughan’s
http://publishers.ca/index.php/member ship/search-members thanks to John Harris
Yes, more writing prompts.
““Ultimate Editing Checklist ” for content providers – here.
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LITERARY MAGAZINES L
LISTINGS FOR EVERY TYPE OF LITERARY MAGAZINE
Submit.
The Humour Issue wants you Literary Review of Canada (LRC)
you kno w yo u want to
st
Submissions beginning May 1 for publication July/Aug–Dec Poetry is Dead magazine 2013 Call for Submissions: The Humour Issue For 2013, each issue will feature poems that share a common Deadline: “before December 1, 2013” form or theme. For more information, check out our full “That’s funny.” here. submissions guidelines
Contests and calls for submissions Contests
Has anyone ever said that to you? Maybe you told a hilarious story, or maybe you slipped on spilled beer and laid a pratfall on the barroom floor.
Call for submissions Roundup of poetry contests here.
Maybe you wrote a funny line inside a birthday card. Maybe you even wrote an entire poem and it was a knee-slapper. Maybe literature is meant to entertain us. Maybe poetry can be funny. What a crazy concept!
Aesthetica Creative Writing Competition
That’s funny could also mean, that’s strange, or weird or interesting.
Deadline: August 31, 2013
And sometimes it means that it wasn’t funny, because if someone honestly finds something you’ve said or done to be funny, they’ll show it by laughing, not saying in a deadpan voice, “That’s funny.” Like that old writing adage: show, don’t tell.
The Aesthetica Creative Writing prize offers
existing and aspiring writers the chance to showcase their work to a wider, international audience.
We’re interested in funny. We’re interested in weird and strange. We’re
We’re really keen to see more writers from Canada involved in the competition and are looking for work across a wide range of themes, styles and subjects.
interested. We’re calling out to the Louis CKs and Sarah Silvermans of poetry. Send us poems with humour because we’re seeking submissions for the Humour issue of Poetry Is Dead. Mock current events, lay waste to public figures, take on television shows. Relay your adolescent humiliations, or more recent ones. Found poems from bathroom stalls, sobad-it’s-good body art, jokey sestinas, experimental knock-knock jokes and punch line fuelled prose poems. Be absurd, be clever, but write us poems and essays and make them funny. There’s no laugh track in poetry.
We celebrate and champion creative writing, nurturing talent and bringing work to international attention. 2 categories: Poetry and Short Fiction.
Prizes: £500 prize money – Poetry winner £500 prize money – Short Fiction winner Publication in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual Complimentary copy of the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual A selection of books from our competition partners
Send your poems (maximum of 5 per submission) along with a cover letter and bio to dina@poetryisdead.ca before December 1st, 2013.
Submissions previously published elsewhere are accepted. Entry is £10 and allows for the entry of 2 works into any one category. For more info and to enter go here.
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guidelines: www.1966journal.org. Submit …
continued
Calls for submissions listed by deadline date Call for submissions No deadline as at Jan 2013. Two-Countries: Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents seeks poems, essays and flash memoir. For details, please go to this link.
Ongoing calls Ongoing call Geist Emerging Writer-of-the-Month Emerging writers are invited to submit short written works online. Read FAQ. Ongoing call Dead Beats The Beats are dead; long live Dead Beats - focused on bringing you the highest quality literature from talented unpublished writers. We are happy to receive submissions from everyone, regardless of experience, of poems, short stories (max. 2000 words), experimental pieces and reviews, the best of which we will publish on the site. If you would like to submit some of your work please send it in the body of an email to: deadbeats@live.co.uk. We aim to reply to all emails, though this may take some time given the number of submissions we receive. http://www.deadbeats.eu/submission Ongoing call Are you over 60? - Wit and Wisdom of the Sages Have insightful stories you’d like to share with your grand-children? Great Depression/ WW2/ Vietnam era? Seeking narratives up to 3,500 words. Send manuscripts, or for guidelines email jnjscher@yahoo.com. 1966 - An online journal of creative nonfiction, seeks pieces of literary nonfiction with a research component—anything from immersion memoir to nature writing to reportage to travel writing to—? For submission
Ongoing call Anderbo.com -- “Best New Online Literary Journal” -- publishes writers in fiction, “fact” (creative nonfiction), and poetry. We’re always looking for new voices. We’ll also consider nonfiction features, short memoirs, novellas, published-book excerpts, photography, essays, and photo essays. Now in our 9th year! For submission information and guidelines, visit www.anderbo.com. Changes in Life A monthly online newsletter is seeking personal essays from women of all ages. New writers are encouraged to submit their work. For details and submission guidelines, see www.changesinlife.com. The Holler Box Rolling submissions year-round. All submissions are completely free. You may submit in multiple genres. If so, send a separate submission per genre. If your submission does not get accepted you may continue to submit, we encourage it. Please wait at least 30 days before submitting something new. Read the guidelines: https://thehollerbox.submittable.com/su bmit. Submissions that do not follow the guidelines may not be considered. The Evening Street Review The ESR is centered on the belief that all men and women are created equal. Reads poetry/prose submissions yearround. Replies in 3 months or less. Sometimes includes comments. Send 4–6 poems or 1–2 prose pieces. 7652 Sawmill Rd., #352, Dublin, OH 43016 or editor@eveningstreetpress.com. For contests and guidelines visit: www.eveningstreetpress.com. Ongoing call “Got a poem?” Submit any subject, any style, any length, any number, any time by e-mail or by mail with SASE. Previously published poems and simultaneous submissions are welcome. The Great American Poetry Show, P.O. Box 69506, West Hollywood, CA 90069. Email: info@tgaps.net. Website: www.tgaps.net (Caveat emptor – check it out).
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Thanks to Bonnie Nish’s Pandora’s Collective e-news for many items. You can subscribe to her newsletter by emailing her: blnish_pandoras@yahoo.ca
Readme (especially# No.7) from WRITERS WRITE
PRISM Submit …
The Love & Sex Issue
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Ongoing calls cont’d
Subterranean Blue Poetry Subterranean Blue Poetry is an Internet Poetry and Art Publishing Café. We thrive on new original words and New Age art. All poets and their poetry are welcome and we are especially looking for homegrown poets from the Canadian first nations/American Indian Community; Quebec; small town Canada; international poets and anyone who was ever considered “the other.” New Age art offerings are for the masthead of each issue. Read all info here. Ongoing call The Quotable This online magazine wants writerreaders to submit stories based on their monthly prompts. Info here. Regime magazine - Short stories, poetry & performance writing. Not only do they want your work but they offer that you can tack $20 on your submission and they’ll send you back a detailed one-page critique. Note: do your due diligence. Read it all carefully. Full submission info here. Calling all poets! Coastal Spectator A new arts-based review and commentary site operating independently out of the U. Vic. We want to publish, on our home site, one new poem each week for a year, so if you have a new piece of work -- that is a haiku or up to 25 lines long -- do submit. We can pay $25 for each poem published, and once its week on the site is over, it will be placed in a poetry archive onsite. We see it as a new way to introduce new or pending books of Canadian poetry. By "new" we mean book published in 2012. If you've just signed a poetry deal,
Desires
then this is a good way to let the world know. Read all about it here.
YOUR SUBMISSION
Multimedia journal: 5OVER4 5 OVER 4. New multimedia journal seeks cross-genre work made by jazzy, creative people who embrace the unknown. Poetry videos, multi-media sculpture, hand-stitched book art, JPEGs collaged with audio, sound poems via video chat, interactive projects. Live and online events. Web: 5over4.blogspot.com. Email Monique Avakian: monava9@gmaom
Dear Writers, We are now accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, and translation for our Love & Sex theme issue. By love we mean: romantic love unrequited love love of a pet love of a friend with benefits love of a geographic place love of an imagined place love of a possession
familial love love of a friend unromantic love lost love love of a memory love of an idea love
of just about anything you can dream up
There are also many different kinds of sex. We’ll let you enumerate those in your own mind, but suffice to say, we welcome a variety of interpretations. We are not looking for pornography which, for our purposes, is defined as graphic depictions of sexuality devoid of literary merit. Keep it hot ‘n spicy, but keep it close to the human condition: vivid characterization, conflict resolution, provocative narration, etc.
Here*’s to constant evolution
Theme issue submissions will be accepted from July 2 to November 10, 2013. If you are submitting for the theme issue, please make of a note of it in your cover letter. Theme issue submissions may also be considered for publication in future, non-theme issues.
The 10 best words the internet has given English
Before you submit, go here, and read all about it. Editors will also be posting info on what they are looking for in submissions.
“From hashtags to LOLs to Cupertinos and Scunthorpe problems, Tom Chatfield picks the most interesting neologisms drawn from the digital world” -- here.
3rd Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest Deadline August 31, 2013. Read the guidelines 9
Writing retreats & conferences in BC & beyond
An idea whose time…
UNITE WITH FRIENDS FOR JOINT PUBLICITY IN BC BOOKWORLD
Rural Writers in Residence September 26–29 Outside Smithers, BC Registration has begun for the 2013 Rural Writers in Residence. Considering the success of last year’s event, we expect this year’s to fill up quickly, so be sure to register before the July 1st early registration deadline. Registration fee includes all meals, workshops, and events. Prices as follows (please note discounted rates for Federation of BC Writers members): Early registration (ending July 1): $325 Full registration (after July 1): $375 FBCW members’ rate: $275 early registration; $350 full registration. This year again the Banner Mountain Lodge will be our venue! Our presenters this year are Eden Robinson, Laura Robinson and Daniela Elza. For more information about these three writers, please see Retreat Details page. To register or get more info: Registration page
Here's a new idea: Rather than wait (and hope) for their publishers to promote their books, writers on Mayne Island took the initiative this spring and banded together to place a shared ad in BC BookWorld. Ditto for 5 authors who live on Gabriola Island. It only cost them $100 per author. BCBW handled the artwork for the ad. This cooperative approach is one good way to combat incessant e-book hype, bookstore closures and that awful feeling that one's book gets "disappeared" within a few months of publication.
Write on the Sound
If you have a quartet or quintet of authors who
October 4 – 6, 2013 Edmonds, WA Planning is underway for the 28th Annual Write on the Sound. Mark your calendars and start preparing for your fall getaway to Edmonds, WA.
might want to replicate the Gabriola "cooperative template" with us, simply email BookWorld for further details: bookworld@telus.net Meanwhile, individual authors are still welcome
For those of you looking to get a head start on your contest entry, the 2013 WOTS Literary Contest is FLIGHT. We hope your imagination takes off with this year's theme.
to take a Quickies ad, solo. Again, just ask for details. We make up your ad. -- Alan & David BC BookWorld
Download the contest rules and entry form here and start drafting your entry now! You must be registered for the conference to enter.
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This is a CHARACTER PROMPT from the Pagan Writers’ Community on Facebook. They ask you: “Who is she? Where is she from? What is her back-story (in under 500 words)? What will happen next (in under 500 words)? What are her hopes, fears, likes and dislikes?”
Free-writes:
1 easy rule
Write what comes to mind when you look at the photo: what does it evoke for you? Don’t think. Just start writing, and see where it goes. Write for 15 minutes by a timer. Don’t stop, don’t correct. Keep writing -- you can edit later. Bring your output to the next Grind Writers.
The Grind Writers News ©2013
Margo Lamont
e: margolamont@gmail.com b: http://wildsynapticleaps.blogspot.com/ previous issues: http://issuu.com/grindwriters/docs 11