The Hottest Flash Fiction Contest

http://mwgcontests.org/

$100 1st Prize

Deadline -  September 15, 2008

Entry fee: $10

Word Limit 1,000 words.

First Place: $100.

Second Place Winner: $50.

Third Place $25.

Honorable mentions are awarded at the discretion of the Judge.

Online entry form for this contest is

http://mwgcontests.org/EntryForm.html

What is Flash Fiction? It’s fun. It’s challenging. For writers, it is an exercise in rewriting and editing. It is a short short story.

All flash fiction includes the classic story elements: protagonist, conflict, obstacles or complications, and resolution. The brevity of this genre often forces some of the story elements to be implied or unwritten in the storyline.

This 6-word flash by Ernest Hemingway is an example of extreme flash fiction:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

The Northwest SPokenword LAB along with the Richard Hugo House, Poets & Writers and the Washington Poets Association, is proud to announce a poetry workshop with Sam Hamill, the first he has ever conducted in Seattle, at 12 noon on Sunday, October 5, 2008, at Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th St., Seattle.

Registration for the workshop is $125, non-refundable, non-transferable and can be done on-line at: http://splab.org/Sam_Workshop.html For more information or questions, please call 253.735.6328.  Hamill would like up to 5 pages of work to preview from each participant, so please send no more than 5 pages of poetry when registering. The deadline is September 10th.

This workshop will focus on the lyric mode and the personal voice in poetry, “engaged poetry,” and will include an opportunity to address any and all concerns related to the writing, reading, and publication of poetry as well as some traditional workshop critiquing. This is a rare opportunity to spend an afternoon with a poet-editor-translator whose knowledge of and generosity toward other poets is renowned.

HIGHLY Recommended but not required reading: Denise Levertov’s essays, “On the Function of the Line” and “Line-breaks, Stanza-spaces, and the Inner Voice” and “Technique and Tune-up” all from her New & Selected Essays (New Directions). The second essay is only a couple pages.

Also Recommended: The Art of Writing by Lu Chi (SH translation)

INSTANT POSTCARD

Dear Friends,
“We hope this particular flock of poems succeeds in portraying birds in so many guises (or disguises) that one is forced to look more closely—as if through binoculars—to where these poets guide us.”  Wish you were here . . .
Yours, Judith Kitchen

The perfect gift for all the readers and/or birders in your life!

An anthology of poems                                                    A dissimulation of birds
Betty Adcock, Kim Addonizio, Sandra Alcosser, Pamela Alexander, Linda Allardt, Christianne Balk, Rick Barot, Bruce Bennett, Boyd Benson, Wendell Berry, Linda Bierds, David Biespiel, Wendy Bishop, Ralph Black, Bruce Bond, Philip Booth, Marianne Boruch, David Bottoms, John Brehm, Geoff Brock, Van K. Brock, Fleda Brown, Rick Campbell, Hayden Carruth, Robert Cording, Stephen Corey, Deborah Cummins, Robert Dana, Philip Deaver, Madeline DeFrees, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Wayne Dodd, Stephen Dunn, John Engels, David Allan Evans, Amy Fleury, Richard Foerster, Chris Forhan, Erica Funkhouser, Tess Gallagher, Brendan Galvin, George Garrett, Frank Gaspar, Dan Gerber, Nancy Geyer, Kevin Goodan, Sally Green, Samuel Green, Jonathan Greene, Eamon Grennan, Pamela Gross, John Haines, Barbara Hamby, Michael S. Harper, Jeffrey Harrison, Jim Harrison, Lola Haskins, Robert Hedin, William Heyen, Jane Hirshfield, Jonathan Holden, David Huddle, Holly Hughes, Harry Humes, M.J. Iuppa, Gray Jacobik, Eve Joseph, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Robert Kinsley, Patricia Kirkpatrick, William Kloefkorn, C.L. Knight, Ted Kooser, Stephen Kuusisto, Steve Lautermilch, Donna Long, Denise Low, Peter Makuck, Jeff Daniel Marion, Dionisio Martinez, Dan Masterson, Jo McDougall, James McKean, Molly McQuade, W.S. Merwin, Lawrence Millman, Judson Mitcham, Janice Townley Moore, Jim Moore, Robert Morgan, Leonard Nathan, Duane Niatum, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ed Ochester, Carole Oles, William Olsen, Eric Pankey, Linda Pastan, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Jim Peterson, Carl Phillips, Stanley Plumly, John Poch, Joshua Poteat, Lawrence Raab, Keith Ratzlaff, James Richardson, Pattiann Rogers, Stan Sanvel Rubin, Marjorie Saiser, Peter Schmitt, Grace Schulman, Gary Short, Peggy Shumaker, Charles Simic, Nancy Simpson, R.T. Smith, William Jay Smith, Barry Spacks, Matthew J. Spireng, A.E. Stallings, Timothy Steele, Joseph Stroud, Julie Suk, Daniel Tobin, Natasha Trethewey, David Wagoner, Kathleen Wakefield, Ronald Wallace, Donovan L. Welch, William Wenthe, Tarn Wilson, Charles Wright, Robert Wrigley, Paul Zimmer, Lisa Zimmerman.

Publication date: January 2009
Price: $22.00
Early orders—25% discount ($16.50 each).  Pre-order by December 1, 2008 for shipment before Christmas.  Shipping fee: $4.00, plus $1.00 for each additional copy. Use Paypal option at http://www.anhinga.org/ordering.html or simply email your request to info@ahninga.org and you’ll receive an invoice.  Or send orders to:
Anhinga Press, P. O. Box 10595, Tallahassee, FL 32302.

The National Association for Memoir Writers has put together a day of fabulous talks assessable for you by telephone. Sheila Bender is one of the speakers.

Visit the website for information: http://namwtelesummit.com/

An interesting review of a book linking patterns in poetry to mathematical patterns:  http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/?pa=reviews&sa=viewBook&bookId=69106

Guidelines at http://www.tiny-lights.com/essay-contest/ Deadline February 16, 2009

Fabulous publication! Tiny Lights invites entries that feature a distinctive voice, discernable conflict and an eventual shift in the narrator’s perspective. We are looking for writers who weave the struggle to understand into the fabric of their essays. We can only consider unpublished work, or previously published material for which the author holds rights. Rights revert to author after publication in Tiny Lights.

• • First Place: $400
  • Second Place: $300
  • Third Place: $200
  • Two Honorable Mention Prizes: $100.

  Three FLASH prize of $100 also offered. Awards will be determined by a panel of judges. Final authority rests with the Editor-in-Chief, Susan Bono.

• Winners will be posted at www.tiny-lights.com by April 10th, 2009

Wrangling with Writing

Plan now to attend the friendliest, largest writing conference in the Southwest: Wrangling with Writing, Sept. 27 & 28. Choose from 40 workshops on writing and the business of writing. Pitch your manuscript to dozens of agents, editors, and publishers. Enjoy entertaining, inspiring keynote presentations. Make personal connections that can last a lifetime—and boost your writing career. At no other writing conference can you receive so much, including five meals, for such a reasonable fee. See the online brochure at www.ssa-az.org/conference.htm or email wporter202@aol.com or barbara@barbarastahura.com to receive a brochure in the mail.

Hello Fellow Writer,

I just learned that Garrison Keillor will be reading two of my poems
from DEEP LIGHT on THE WRITER’S ALMANAC next week, so thought you might
want to tune in. He’s read others in earlier years, and I always enjoy
hearing his interpretation. Anyway, here they are;

August 26 Teaching A Nephew to Type
August 31 Watching My Parents Sleeping Beside An Open Window Near the Sea

If you can’t tune in to your local NPR station, you can listen to the
podcasts at

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

And if you don’t know when your local station airs the program, you can
find out at

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/stations/list.php

Warm wishes, Rebecca

Here’s what I am reading this end of summer. What are you reading? Let us know how what you are reading, in these books or in others, has benefited your writing.

Forever Lily: An Unexpected Mother’s Journey to Adoption in China by Beth Nonte Russell.
From Publisher’s WeeklyP: “…spiritual-minded readers might embrace the concept of linking reincarnation, adoption and fate.” The book does compellingly link narrative with recounted vivid dreams and journal entries.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, a novel about  “the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations.”

Safekeeping: Some True Stories from Life by Abigail Thomas,  an intimate memoir about marriage, motherhood, love and mistakes and reflections on the illness and death of an ex-husband.

Sold by Patricia McCormick, is the story in poetic vignettes of a thirteen-year-old girl who is tricked by her stepfather and sold into prostitution and the friendships she forms with the other girls, which help her survive and ultimately escape.

Here is the link: http://wow-womenonwriting.com/23-FE2-SheilaBender.html

It’s a comprehensive interview with photos–Kurt took some of them in our back yard. SB