OOTA Newsletter April 1, 2014
WRITING AT THE CENTRE LITERARY NEWS Legal Deposit in Western Australia
Western Australia’s published heritage will be safeguarded for use by future generations since the Legal Deposit Act 2012 went into effect on 1 January 2014. Regulations setting out how the Act will operate were passed by the State Parliament, making the law operational. Anyone who lives or works in Western Australia and publishes content for the public will be affected by the new law. They are required to deposit copies of their published work at the State Library of Western Australia. These publishers include government agencies, commercial organisations, self-publishers, community groups and private individuals. Public documents that should be deposited include printed material such as books, magazines, maps, pamphlets, sheet music as well as recordings, films and electronic data made available in a physical form such as a CD, DVD, USB or other storage device. Please find a copy of our brochure that outlines your responsibility under the new law here. Further details on how to deposit your publications can be found on the State Library website at www.slwa.wa.gov.au or by emailing legal.deposit@slwa.wa.gov.au or telephoning 9427 3348.
HELEN HAGEMANN’S PROSE CLASS This coming Friday 4th April @ 10.00am the prose class will possibly be in Room 3, if not Room 2. Class will read 6 short chapters from Larry Brown’s novel Father and Son. Writing exercises and discussion will revolve around the inclusion of an opening and end “hook” in chapter writing. And for the short story writer, how this is comparable in short fiction. This week we have included some of Brown’s great writing instead of the “Poem of the Week” which will return on 8th April.
Murray Jennings is Our Prose Bites Reader on Friday 4th April Murray Jennings retired from broadcasting and lecturing in 2005. He has published poems and stories over many years, won some awards and had a novel shortlisted for the 2012 TAG Hungerford Award. He will read from his 1971 Nullarbor Diary and possibly the world’s shortest Crime novel. Join the prose writers at midday for lunch and Murray’s reading at noon in the FAC Café. All welcome!
OPPORTUNITY - Griffith REVIEW 47: Looking West The Griffith Review is having a Western Australian themed issue. Deadline for proposals 1st May 2014. Details @ http://griffithreview.com/future-editions KSP - Events Bronwyn Lovell, Emerging Writer-in-Residence – 14 April-12 May. Bronwyn lives in Melbourne. Her poetry has been published in Australian Love Poems, Antipodes, Cordite Poetry Review and the Global Poetry Anthology. Bronwyn has won the Adrien Abbott Poetry Prize and been shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the Bridport Prize, and the Montreal International Poetry Prize. She works as the Publications Officer for Writers Victoria. Bronwyn will be giving one workshop (26 April), a reading (6 May with 3-course dinner), two free mentorships exclusively available to KSP-members, and will be critiquing at writing groups while progressing a significant work. From Rejection to Acceptance – Sat, 26 April, 1-4pm This workshop is for emerging poets who are ready to send their poems out into the world, but are having trouble finding places to welcome them. Poets will also receive advice about literary publications and competitions. $30 members, $45 non-members. Book on 08 9294 1872 / kspf@iinet.net.au PERTH POETRY CLUB 5 April Guest: Renee Pettitt-Schipp @ the Moon, 2pm, 323 William Street, Northbridge. CALENDAR APRIL 2014 2 – The Lake’s Apprentice by Annamaria Weldon 6 – Passion Ignition with Cath Drake @ FAWWA 11 – Peter Cowan 600 word short story award 12-13 Nurture: A Workshop for Playwrights 13 – The Writer’s Tales. Details: FAW website. 13 - Stringybark Stories Competition
30 – First Thousand Words competition. Details here. MAY 1– Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize JUNE 30 - Joe O’Sullivan & Joyce Parkes Writers Prizes details here. AUGUST 31 - Aesthetica Creative Writing Competition 2014 Details here.
Poets Night and Vegetarian Dinner The Sacredness of Place Join noted and awarded poets Amanda Joy, Rosie Barter, Hessom Razavi and Gary Colombo De Piazzi, accompanied by musician Janet Alexander on Tibetan Bowls, for an evening of great food and inspirational poetry that explores place and the sacredness of place as only poets can. Contribution: $35 per person. This is as a fund raising event for the Ashram. Please book by phoning the Ashram on 9298 8485 Sunday, 13th April 2014 – 5:30 – 9:00 pm Hovea Ashram of the Universal Great Brotherhood 805 Margaret Rd, Hovea PROSE OF THE WEEK An Excerpt from Father and Son by Larry Brown In his sleep, his father looked like some huge broken mannequin. Glen studied the gun in his hands and remembered when it used to hang above the kitchen door. It had been in canebrakes and the deep jungle woods of coons on steaming nights with spotted dogs leaping and howling and trying to climb the trees with their toenails, men standing in water amid cypress knees, men with flashlights in their hands searching in the vine-choked growth of leaves and poison ivy above for two red eyes. It had been in river bottoms on mornings when ice cracked underfoot and the sudden yammering of dogs came through the woods gaining decibels and the deer broke free from the cover and rocketed forty feet in a second. It had been held beneath beech trees on foggy mornings when the squirrels moved and shook the dew from the branches or paused in profile to hull a hickory nut with their rasping teeth, little showers of shredded matter pattering softly down through the leaves to scatter on the forest floor. Or mornings when nothing came and the cold was a vivid pain that held him shivering in its grip and the gun was an ache in his naked hands where he sat huddled with misery in some gloomy copse of hardwood timber. He cocked the hammer now and swung the barrel up to his father’s head and held the black and yawning muzzle of it an inch away. He tightened his fingers on the checkered pistol grip. The old man slept on, father and son. Some sense of foreboding told him to pull back and undo all of this before it was done. Yet he put his finger on the trigger, just touched it. He already knew what it would look like. ootawriters@gmail.com http://ootawriters.blogspot.com.au