RCLAS February 2016 E-Zine

RCLAS Board President: James Felton Vice-President: Janet Kvammen Secretary: Antonia Levi Treasurer: Nancy Pilling Director at Large: Aidan Chafe Director at Large: Dominic DiCarlo Director (Event Coordinator): Sonya Furst-Yuen Director at Large: Alan Girling Board Assistant Deborah L. Kelly (Membership Coordinator) Board Advisors RenĂŠe Saklikar Sylvia Taylor

RCLAS Write On! Contest 2016   

Submissions open now Deadline April 1, 2016 Winners will be announced April 15, 2016

Submission Rules: 

3 categories: o non-fiction, (1500 words max) o fiction (1500 words max,) o poetry (1 page single spaced max) o Submit entry as a Word Document ( Font Times New Roman, Size 12)

  

1st prize - $100, 2nd prize - $50, 3rd prize - $25 3 honourable mentions in each category.

Winners and honourable mentions will be published in RCLAS E-Zine, Wordplay at Work.  1st place winners read at LitFest New West. More to be announced soon.  Fees $10 per submission for members, $20 per submission for non-members.  Maximum three submissions per person, total combined in any of our categories.  Previously published work will be accepted as long as author retains copyright.  Cover letter to include Name, Address, Email, Phone, Category, Title, Payment info.  Submissions to judges are anonymous. Judges will be announced in Feb.  Current Board Members are not eligible to submit.

SUBMISSION and Payment OPTION 1: Pay via Paypal at www.rclas.com AND email entry and cover letter to secretary@rclas.com SUBMISSION and PAYMENT OPTION 2: Email Word Document entry to secretary@rclas.com (DO NOT mail submission) and mail your cheque or money order to: Royal City Literary Arts Society Box #308 – 720 6th Street New Westminster, BC V3L 3C5 For further information Email: secretary@rclas.com

FULL DETAILS & PAYMENT OPTIONS

2016 Write On! Contest Poetry Judge Alan Girling is a sometime poet and full time teacher who grew up in North Vancouver, lived in Tokyo for six years where he started a family, and now lives in the community of Burkeville, Richmond.

Once, he wrote primarily short fiction and memoir, but over time that evolved into poetry as more and more often he came to see the stories he wrote as essentially poems waiting to reveal themselves. Since then, he has tried his best to explore the language of poetry in all its forms and to share his discoveries where he can. His work, for instance, has been found in journals and anthologies, heard on the radio and at live readings, and even viewed in shop windows. These opportunities include Lichen Arts and Letters, Pagitica, Hobart, The MacGuffin, Smokelong Quarterly, FreeFall, Galleon, In My Bed, Body Breakdowns, Blue Skies, Black Heart, Canadian Stories, CBC Radio, World Poetry Café, Poetic Justice, Surrey Muse and the downtown streets of Hamilton, Ontario and New Westminster, B.C. His chapbook, To Talk Less, is also available to anyone who asks.

He was a 2003 Larry Turner Award for non-fiction finalist, and his play, ‘Whatever Happened to Tom Dudkowski’ was produced in 2007 for Vancouver's Walking Fish Festival.He is happy to have won two prizes for his poetry, the 2006 Vancouver Co-op Radio Community Dreams Contest and the 2015 Royal City Literary Arts Society Write On! Contest.

Currently, he sits on the board of the Royal City Literary Arts Society where he hopes to be able to recognize and promote the best work of others.

2016 Write On! Contest Fiction Judge Elizabeth Houlton Schofield writes about the mundane and the everyday, who doesn’t have a little drama in their life?

Liz’s stories have appeared in the Globe and Mail, and been published in Drunk Monkeys and in Hearing Voices, the Bareback Anthology, 2014. She won the Honorable Mention at The Surrey International Writer’s Festival, 2013, and 2014 and was published in the conference anthologies.

Photo Credit: Pharos 2014 Shortlisted for Literary Writes 2013 (Federation of BC Writers), and Room magazine’s Reader’s Choice Awards 2012, she won the RCLAS Write On! 2015 fiction contest, came second in the same category and won honourable mentions in creative non-fiction and fiction in 2014 and 2015. Her poem, He’s Not My Daddy, was one of those chosen for the poetry walk to mark the unveiling of the Wait For me, Daddy monument in New Westminster, BC, October 2014 Liz recently left Beautiful British Columbia after twenty years, following her heart back to Manchester, UK, finally sleeping in the same bed every night as her lifetime love. She travels back to BC regularly, it’s her ‘other’ home. She is currently working on the first of a three novel trilogy set in Port Moody, compiling two books of short stories, and planning her vegetable and herb garden.

Passionate about the story, Liz looks forward to reading and enjoying the entries in the RCLAS 2016 Write On! Contest. Tell the story, tell it well, move her to tears, laughter or joy or pain it doesn’t matter. Move her...

2016 Write On! Contest Non-Fiction Judge Christina Myers worked as a community journalist in the metro Vancouver region for more than a decade, covering a spectrum of beats. She is a past winner of provincial and national journalism awards, and has won or been shortlisted for a number of writing competitions in the last year in fiction and non-fiction, including shortlist for the 2015 Storyteller’s Award at the Surrey International Writers Conference in fiction. She is among the authors in a forthcoming book of collected non-fiction being published later this year and also contributed to the Emerge15 Anthology published last October. She was a member of The Writer's Studio at SFU in 2015, returned to the program this year as a mentor apprentice in non-fiction, and continues to freelance with local media from time to time. She holds a bachelor of arts in psychology (UBC), a bachelor of journalism (TRU) and a certificate in creative writing (SFU).

She lives with her husband and two children in a very old house in North Surrey that is too small for all of the vintage kitchenwares she can’t resist bringing home from dusty thrift shops. She has a fondness for rainbow knee socks, fascinators and geeky board games.

Find her tweeting (occasionally) on Twitter: @ChristinaMyersA.

RCLAS WRITER OF THE MONTH

Jaz Gill

Jaz Gill was born in India, and came to Canada when she was five. Growing up in Vancouver, Jaz has been a resident of the City of Surrey for many years. A devoted mother, she has raised three beautiful children, the joy of her life. Both a poet and a lyricist, Jaz wrote as a teenager, but it wasn’t until 2011 that she began writing again with a passion.

She has been a featured poet at Poetic Justice and a member of the Royal City Literary Arts Society and World Poetry Canada since 2013. She was a host for WPO radio in Vancouver in 2014 and 2015.

Jaz has been published in e-magazines and a contributor to anthologies including Royal City Poets (Silver Bow Publishing) and Muse for World Peace.

Her first book of poetry True Grace will be released in 2016.

This book will be in collaboration with artist Rita Koivunen.

Jaz is currently collaborating with various artists to have her lyrics recorded and released in 2016.

Jaz Gill would like her passion for the written word to promote healing, unity and peace.

#Love

#Purple

The Old Man’s Secret Shopping Club © Margo Prentice

There is a weird cult of old men who belong to secret groups of “retired grocery shopper guys.” They have meetings in malls. In warm weather they meet at designated bus stops where they sit on the benches. The topics on their meeting agendas involve coupons, the best deals and where the sales are. They compare prices and are very competitive, trying to outdo each other with the money they can save.

My husband has an envelope of coupons stuffed in his back pant pocket. He carries flyers with him and circles the items he is considering buying. If ham is on sale at more than one store, it is outlined in red in different flyers. The store that has the best price is where he goes to shop.

Like many retired older men, he has decided to take over the grocery shopping.

This is not an unusual or new phenomenon. A group of older men was sitting having coffee at the Mall. My husband told me he met these guys when he saw them looking at the food flyers at a big round table. He asked what they were doing. They told him and invited him to join them. He joined in and from that first meeting there was no looking back.

There is a secret ritual of coupon poker. I have only watched from a distance and heard a little. They bid like five card stud, only with coupons. “I’ll have two coupons,” and they pick from the pile. The coupons are slid carefully across the table to the bidder. Then the bidding begins. “I bid two Safeway orange juice specials.” “I’ll raise you three Thrifty store beef specials.” The best coupon poker player ends up with a table of coupons. He is allowed to trade them at a later time.

They have maps showing the best and fastest routes to the stores on their lists. It is extremely important that the “OMSSC” (Old Man’s Secret Shopping Club) gets to the store that has the best price as quickly as needed to get to a sale item while the supplies last. It is a slowed down type of feeding frenzy.

They have a telephone list and phone each other to notify members where and when to meet. The business of serious bargain hunting starts at these meetings;

they drink coffee, scan through flyers and discuss sales. My husband says they are getting t-shirts made with “OMSSC”on them.

I learned early in my marriage never to tell my husband that I like something.

Honesty hasn’t been the best policy for me. It all started when I mentioned how much I liked Peek Freans cookies, the ones with the jam in the centre. “Yum, I sure love these cookies, dear!”

His dedicated mission is to buy these treats when they are on sale. He will buy four boxes at a time. This has been going on for years and I can hardly stand them anymore. When I open my cupboard there is a whole row of Peek Freans on my top shelf. Storage had become a problem.

He tells me, “I will save enough money for a holiday each year.” He does save but not enough for a holiday, maybe a visit and a good dinner in Surrey.

It is just too much of a good thing. I do have a strategy though. Every week or so I donate boxes of Peek Freans cookies in the food bank bag. He hardly notices they are gone. Maybe I should be honest with him and tell him I don’t like them anymore. I just don’t want to upset the ‘apple cart’ of his dedicated sale shopping. I wouldn’t want him to lose face with his secret club buddies either.

I like having chocolate bars he buys on sale. I do like having a plentiful supply of delicious food items that I am not tired of.

My lack of honesty has added girth to my waist and a taste for the good things. I will just leave well enough alone and let my husband do the shopping. He’ll never have to worry; he can retain his membership in the “Old Man’s Secret Shopping Club.” It offers companionship and gives him something to do. He belongs to a group united in a purpose. And thank God I never have to push another grocery cart again.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- copyright Margo Prentice

#Haiku(like) #micropoetry

WORDPLAY AT WORK FEEDBACK & E-ZINE SUBMISSIONS

Janet Kvammen, RCLAS Vice-President/E-zine janetkvammen@rclas.com Antonia Levi secretary@rclas.com

Open Call for Submissions - RCLAS Members Only Poetry & Prose Open Call for Submissions including the following themes/features: March Themes: Spring, A Favourite Place, and Crows.

Deadline February 15, 2016 National Poetry Month April/May Themes: Poems written after your favourite poet, Rain, and Open Call (Poetry, Short Stories, Book excerpts & lyrics are all welcome for submission to future issues of Wordplay at work.) Deadline 15th of the month.

Submit Word documents to janetkvammen@rclas.com

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED! If you would like to participate in a single event, or make an even bigger contribution, please contact our event coordinator.

Director/Event Coordinator: Sonya Furst-Yuen sonya.yuen@rclas.com

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Thank you to our Sponsors

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City of New Westminster

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Arts Council of New Westminster

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New Westminster Public Library

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Judy Darcy, MLA



Renaissance Books



100 Braid Street Studios

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The Network Hub - New Westminster



The Heritage Grill

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Boston Pizza



Original’s Restaurante Mexicano

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

– Sylvia Plath “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” ― Stephen King “You can make anything by writing.” ― C.S. Lewis

See upcoming events at www.rclas.com www.poeticjusticenewwest.org

Februaryg 2016 Wordplay at work ISSN 2291- 4269 Facebook

Contact: janetkvammen@rclas.com RCLAS Vice-President/ E-zine Design