Can you produce an entire novel in a mere 72 hours? Join hundreds of writers all over the world and find out for yourself! The 31st Annual International 3-Day Novel Contest, sponsored by a group of Canadian publishers, will take place over Labor Day weekend. The grand prize is publication and the second prize is $500 cash.

Join Jacqueline Sheehan, author of the best seller, Lost and Found, and Forbes Library’s Writer-in-Residence, Diana M. Gordon, for an informational session on Wednesday, May 21st at 7pm at Forbes Library. At this meeting the contest rules will be reviewed and helpful information to get you prepared for this writing marathon will be provided. And they will provide writing prompt or two to get you started!

Forbes Library will be giving special t-shirts, printed “Shh. I’m writing a novel and it has to be done by Monday,” to anyone who officially registers and pays the contest entrance fee. For those that actually submit a manuscript, Forbes will offer a small gift and a chance for a public reading at the library.

The 3-Day Novel Contest is an opportunity to put pencil to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and write the novel you have always dreamed about. Contest organizers advise,“Keep energized, stay hydrated, keep your goal in sight and let the momentum of the contest charge your creativity and break through your blocks.”

Sound interesting? Come to Forbes Library on Wednesday, May 21st at 7 PM to find out more.

WESTHAMPTON, MA. On May 17, 2008, the Friends of the Westhampton Memorial Library will host Flock to the Library, “America’s largest gathering of imaginatively decorated plastic pink flamingos.” The event, says organizer Laurie Sanders, is partly a fundraiser for Westhampton’s library campaign, but it’s also a way to “whimsically demonstrate that libraries play important roles in our communities – beyond lending books. They’re also places where art, culture and community-building come together,” she says.

Given the prospect of 600 fancifully-transformed pink flamingos in one place, including many submitted by professional artists, organizers expect the event to receive extensive media attention. What’s more, the day will also feature related activities: flamingo croquet, flamingo “egg” tosses, and a variety of pink foods. Just across the street from the flock of flamingos will be the Friends of the Westhampton Memorial Library’s annual “Books, Blossoms, and Backrubs” event, a well-known and well-attended plant and book sale, where professional chair massage is available for weary gardeners.

Flock to the Library co-chair Renée Schultz says the organization is hoping to distribute upwards of 500 flamingos before the event. “We want people to have enough time to be creative and inventive,” she said. She has already heard lots of ideas, including one person’s plan to attach model rockets to his flamingo and fire it into air. “When it comes to transforming America’s favorite lawn ornament, I guess the sky’s the limit,” said Schultz with a smile.

To pick up your flamingo before the event, contact the Westhampton Memorial Library at 527-5386, e-mail event co-organizer Renée Schultz at Reneeschultz@comcast.net, or visit www.librarywesthampton.org for more details. The cost for a flamingo for an individual is $20; for local businesses $100 (additional business donations welcomed); artists and libraries receive their flamingos for free.

Contacts:
Laurie Sanders 413-527-5903
Renée Schultz 413-527-1131
Thecia Hancewicz 413-527-6498

Seeking Submissions from U.S. Women Writers for 3 Proposed Books*

Guidelines are on: http://www.encirclepub.com/poetry/aurorean/announcements (bottom of page)

1. Women & Poetry: Tips on Writing, Publishing and Teaching from American Women Poets

Foreword by Robin Merrill, Maine Poets Society President 2006-2007. M.F.A. Stonecoast. With hundreds of poems published, some from her chapbook Laundry & Stories (Moon Pie Press) were featured on Garrison Keillor’s “Writers’ Almanac.” http://www.robinmerrill.com

Afterword by the editors of Iris Magazine, an award-winning publication of 27 years celebrating and empowering young women through provocative articles, essays, and fiction pieces that are uplifting, inclusive, and literate. http://womenscenter.virginia.edu/coreprograms/iris.html

Markets for women, why women write, time management, using life experience, women’s magazines, critique groups, networking, blogs, unique issues women must overcome, lesbian and bisexual writing, formal education, queries and proposals, conference participation, family scheduling, feminist writing, self-publishing, teaching tips, are just a few areas women poets are interested.

Practical, concise, how-to articles with bullets/headings have proven the most helpful. Please avoid writing about “me” and concentrate on what will most help the reader.

2. Milestones for American Women: Our Defining Passages

Foreword by Carolyn Lesser, Webster University, St. Louis, MO, nonfiction writing faculty; natural science children’s books published by Harcourt, Alfred A. Knopf; essayist, poet, photographer, keynote speaker, artist.

Afterword by Dr. Loriene Roy, 2007-2008 President of the American Library Association. Professor, University of Texas at Austin, founder of “If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything,” a national reading club for Native American children.

Please consider sharing the important milestones, life changing events, transitions in your life–material that would broadly fit the “Women’s Studies” genre that is highly readable, moving and relatable. There are the passages that occur to us (for example, losing a loved one, having to relocate) and then the passages we choose (such as getting a degree in mid-life, adopting a child). Please focus on those pivotal moments and why they were milestones for you.

This book celebrates our passages as women, from one moment into another, from one door to the next. Often it is after the navigation, that in reflection, we see that some of the most difficult are the ones we have learned the most and have had lasting effects as well on those around us.

Guidelines for Women and Poetry and/or Milestones for American Women:

Step 1: send your proposed topics before writing articles to avoid duplication; proposed topics must be accompanied by a 65-70 word bio with your present position, location, relevant publications, career highlights for the contributor page; please use POETS or MILESTONES as the subject line to smallwood@tm.net

Step 2:(if your topics are approved): deadline for submissions (by e-mail only) is June 30, 2008. Again, please use POETS or MILESTONES in the subject line; send to either Cynthia at brackett-vincent@encirclepub.com; or Carol at smallwood@tm.net in a Word document (.doc format only) using 12-point font.

Article specifics: word total for 1-2 articles based on your experience: 1,900 minimum; maximum 2,100. Two articles preferred. If submitting two articles, please break them up fairly evenly in word count.

No previously published or simultaneously submitted material. Contributors must be reside in the U.S. Books such as this can typically take up to a year to compile. Contributors receive a complimentary copy and contributor’s discount on additional copies.

Co-editor Cynthia Brackett-Vincent is publisher/editor of the esteemed Aurorean poetry journal; poetry instructor; award-winning poet; author of The 95 Poems chapbook (2005) and contributor to Educators as Writers: Publishing for Personal and Professional Development. In 2007, her poems received a citation, honorable mention and second place in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, New England Writers and Maine Poets Society competitions. View Cynthia at http://www.encirclepub.com/poetry/aurorean/editor

Co-editor, Carol Smallwood has written, co-authored, and edited 19 books such as Educators as Writers for Scarecrow, Libraries Unlimited. An award-winning writer, her work has appeared in English Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, Iris, and several others including anthologies; chapbook, Pudding House 2008; Educators as Writers, Peter Lang 2006;
and http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-3575-3

3. U.S. Women on Family: Writing, Publishing, and Teaching Tips

Foreword: Robbi Hess, Journalist, co-author, Complete Idiot’s Guide to 30,000 Baby Names (Penguin Books); Editor, Byline Magazine

Afterword: Suzanne Bunkers, Professor of English, Minnesota State University, editor of Diaries of Girls and Women: a Midwestern American Sampler (University of Wisconsin Press).

This is a book not just on writing but tips for women writing about family. Possible subject areas you might address include: markets; why women write about family; using life experience; critique groups; networking; blogs; unique issues women must overcome; formal education; queries and proposals; conference participation; family scheduling; self-publishing; teaching tips; family in creative nonfiction, poetry, short stories, novels.

Practical, concise, how-to articles with bullets/headings have proven the most helpful to readers. Please avoid writing about “me” and concentrate on what will help the reader.

Word total for 1-2 articles based on your experience:
1,900 minimum; maximum 2,100. Two articles preferred.
If submitting 2, please break them up fairly evenly in word count.

No previously published or simultaneously submitted material, please; no co-authored.

Deadline: June 30, 2008

Contributors receive a complimentary copy and contributor’s discount on additional copies. It is common for compilation of an anthology to take upwards of a year, but we will be in touch with updates on securing a publisher.

Editor Carol Smallwood has written, co-authored, and edited 19 books such as Educators as Writers for Peter Lang, Scarecrow, Libraries Unlimited. Her work has appeared in English Journal, Clackamas Literary Review, Michigan Feminist Studies, The Detroit News, several others including anthologies; On the Way to Wendy’s Pudding House 2008; a co-edited anthology is with an agent; and
http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-3575-3

Please send your topics first before writing (to avoid possible duplication) along with brief descriptions and 65-70 word bio with your present position, relevant publications, awards or honors. Use FAMILY for the subject line and submit to Carol at smallwood@tm.net

*In our experience, most publishers return rights to individual contributors variously after publication. However, because we are still seeking a publisher, we cannot speak to those rights specifically at this time. Contributors will be asked to sign a release form from the publisher and therefore will be have the opportunity to agree to the details of the contract or withdraw one’s work at that time.

Good luck and please let us know what happens.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 7pm

at the Forbes Library

(Calvin Coolidge Room)

in Northampton.

This event is free and open to the public.  

Lesléa Newman is the author of more than 50 books including the poetry collection STILL LIFE WITH BUDDY, the short story collection A LETTER TO HARVEY MILK, the middle-grade novel HACHIKO WAITS and the children’s books THE BOY WHO CRIED FABULOUS and HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES. Her poems have appeared in many publications including SEVENTEEN MAGAZINE, THE SUN, LILITH, CIMARRON REVIEW and THE BARK.

She has received many literary awards including Poetry Fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Highlights for Children Fiction Writing Award, the James Baldwin Award for Cultural Achievement, and three Pushcart Prize Nominations. Nine of her books have been Lambda Literary Award finalists. Recently, Leslea has been a semi-finalist for the 2007 Pablo Neruda Poetry Competition and a finalist in the 2007 Sow Ear’s Poetry Review Contest. Currently, she is on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.

For more information, call the Northampton Arts Council at 413-587-1269.

This month she mentions Patricia’s retreats and Pat Schneider’s book, Writing Alone and with Others.

Here’s the link: http://readwritepoem.org/2008/03/21/get-the-lead-out-its-noting-really-3/

It sounds like it would be a great spot to bookmark. Congratulations, Christine!

Additionally, his novel The Shelf Life of Secrets will be excerpted in Stress City:  A Big Book of Fiction by 50 DC Area Guys, ed. by Richard Peabody  (forthcoming May, 2008).

Her book is Sweet Surrender and you can buy it online at http://www.finishinglinepress.com

Please consider this award-winning small press as a place to send your poetry manuscripts.  They have a competition for first chapbooks, as well as general submission guidelines.

Who knows what might happen?

Refreshments will be served.
Bring a Friend!

Saturday, January 26, 4-6 pm
Writers in Progress
Arts & Industry Building, Studio #359
221 Pine Street,
Florence, MA 01062

About the readers:

Jacqueline Sheehan is the author of two novels, Truth, published in 2003 by Free Press, and the New York Times’ Bestselling Lost and Found, published in May, 2007 by Avon.  She is also the editor of Women Writing in Prison, and has served as fiction editor for Patchwork Journal.  She’s been teaching workshops at Writers in Progress since 2004.

David Lovelace, our newest faculty member, has recently sold his memoir, Scattershot, (after a major bidding war) to Dutton, who will release it in the fall of 2008. David’s writing has appeared previously in several journals, and his poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  He is the former owner of the Bookmill in Montague

Dori Ostermiller is the director and founder of Writers in Progress.  She’s the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s fellowship, a Tobias Wolff Fiction Award and a Walker Gibson award.  Her fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals, including The Bellingham Review, Calliope, Alligator Juniper, The Roanoke Review, Peregrine, and Chautauqua Literary Journal. She is working on her first novel.

Celia Jeffries’ work has appeared in several publications, including Writers Chronicle and the anthology Beyond the Yellow Wallpaper.  She has served as managing editor for Patchwork Journal, and is on the faculty of Lesley University.  

D M Gordon’s prizewinning short stories and poems have appeared in a wide variety of journals.  She was a 2004 finalist for an Artists Grant in poetry, and in 2006, for fiction. Most recently, the editor of descant chose her poem Free Radical as recipient of the Betsy Colquitt Award.  She received two nominations for The Pushcart Prize this spring, as well as The Trustees Award from Forbes.

For more information, contact them at dorio@writersinprogress.com or (413) 582-0101

http://www.writersinprogress.com

My dear family and most excellent writer-ly friends,

It’s been a long time since I wrote to you, and I apologize. But several of you have written lately, asking what’s happening now with my health and personal life, so I will use that as a “prompt” and just begin:

What’s happening now is: I am sitting in the county library in Jackson, Wyoming in a blizzard. Through the automatic door, along with snow, blows a small child with light hair and round, metal glasses. She is my granddaughter, Grace, age 3 ½. Her mother, my daughter Ponteir, and her sister, Zoe, age 8, walk through the lobby waving at me, and head off for the children’s section. It is quiet here, more than the usual library-quiet, due I suppose to the holidays, to the snow, to good fortune. Grace pauses at a card table spread with a puzzle, half completed, and fingers the pieces. It is a complicated puzzle, and in seconds she has destroyed all the work of some larger person, in favor of turning the pieces upside down and shuffling them like dominoes. Who is to say this is not exactly what was wanted?

2007 has for me been something like that, a complicated year of a life turned on its head. If you followed this blog last spring, you’ll know that a year that began somewhat normally with my leading writing & yoga retreats in Guatemala, Mexico and Texas, turned, in April, to a time of intense lung illness, surgery and a summer of recovery. Robin Glenn, Diana Gordon and other dear friends kept many of you informed of my condition through email and telephone, but I neglected to keep the information coming. I apologize for that. It was as though the lung surgery on June 1, not only excised an infection of the hilum, and a sizable node inside the lung for biopsy purposes, but also the part of myself that loves language–to write, to read. Even what I had been learning of the Spanish language seemed to have been expunged.

But there is much good news to share about my health: the lung disease was caused by the histoplasmosis fungus, probably contracted in Mexico, and apparently, due to overwork and far too many bouts of bronchitis, my general health and lung condition was too poor to ward it off,. (Note: unless your immune system is badly compromised already, please do not hesitate to travel to Mexico and other points south. This is a fungus most people are exposed to in warm climates, and never even know it!) And while there is considerable damage to my lung tissue throughout, I have tolerated well the anti-fungal drug, Itraconazole, and am virtually recovered. As a plus, sometime in the beginning of the disease, in Austin, during the retreats when I ran a high fever for 10 days, my chronic asthma disappeared. And, wonder of wonders, it is still gone! I do not recommend getting histoplasmosis as a cure for asthma, but am simply grateful for whatever has rid me of a quite debilitating condition.

I want to stop a moment here to say thank you to some very special people for the help, love and support through the year: to my sister, Lyn Whitcomb, her husband, Gaines, and my sister-friend, Nancy Banister, for taking care of me in Austin at the onset of my illness; to Charles MacInerney and Carol Booth for picking up more than their share of running our retreat and training in Texas when I more or less collapsed; to Robin Glenn for keeping our business on track; to Beth Goren for cooking for two Patchwork retreats and intensives in May, so we didn’t have to cancel; to Jacqueline Sheehan, Diana Gordon, Celia Jeffries and Pat Schneider for leading the May retreat so brilliantly, the last we’ll hold at Patchwork for a while; to Jacqueline, Celia and David Clemson for taking over the Wales retreat, to great acclaim; to my son, John, his wife Traci, and their children, Oliver, Georgia and Benjamin, and my sister, Susan Lewis, for many weeks of loving, in-home care; to my daughter, Ponteir, her husband, Jim, and their children, Zoe and Grace, for their never-failing support, and for understanding that Granny couldn’t fly to Wyoming for the important summer visit; to Diana Gordon and Robin Glenn, for keeping information flowing about my condition until I was on my feet; to Ann Jones, Cie Simurro, Jacqueline Sheehan, Celia Jeffries, Lisa Baskin, Marcia Burick, Becky Jones, Beth Goren, Debin Bruce and Bob Marstall for staying with me overnight when I couldn’t be alone. To the many friends and family members who provided food, flowers, funny gifts, and sent cards, I thank you. And most especially, I am grateful to my now husband, Don, (himself a cardiac/thoracic surgeon) for finding in an emergency the best thoracic surgeon in Massachusetts, for being there as a constant presence in all three hospitals, and for loving me back to health.

Meanwhile, as I recuperated from the surgery and had, sadly, to drop out of my retreats and trainings through the summer, I began planning my wedding and an addition to Patchwork cottage, to make room for my love and life-companion, Don Charles Wukasch. Rather, we began planning these things together, mostly by phone, as Don is still engaged in his business pursuits in Texas. (On Valentine’s Day, I had surprised even myself by accepting Don’s proposal of marriage. Some of you will remember that Don and I first met in the 4th grade in Austin, and learned to dance together in 5th grade. On Valentine’s Day, 1948 when we were 10, as we sat in the great live oak tree in my side yard, he gave me a little red satin heart filled with chocolates. Though we “lost” each other for many years, I guess neither of us ever got over that.) We married at Patchwork Farm on September 1, under a birch bower made by my son, John, and his family, and entwined with flowers by generous friends. Our families, close friends and towering red oak trees witnessed and blessed a perfect day.

This New Year’s Eve morning, wind pushing its way under our scarves as we walked through new snow, Don and I made a small journey to the top of a road, overlooking Jackson. We looked to the west, where a few mornings ago the full moon descended over Glory Bowl on its way to Idaho, and said our thanks.

Last year on this day, I stood just there, alone, coughing with each breath, looking to the future. I thought I knew what the year would bring: workshops and manuscript intensives, trainings and retreats in several countries, practice of Spanish, work with my poems and little stories, and time with family and friends here in Jackson Hole, in Texas and at Patchwork Farm. A year of what I love. Perhaps it was too full, but it was somehow like the puzzle at the library, completed around the edges, but with effort, there would be complicated, interesting connections to be made in the middle.

Then, like my granddaughter, Grace had done in the library, something turned the pieces upside down. I say now, after all the changes, the surprises, the pain and the gifts, this was grace, and exactly what was wanted to help me get my life in balance.

I miss terribly my close connection with so many of you, through our writing together. But it is good for now to have reduced my work in 2008 to a few national and international retreats and trainings, and I look forward to them with energy and joy.

Today, I send to you my love and blessings, and most fervent hopes for peace. I believe our artistic expression, our writing, our open voices help to heal us by bringing forth in a kind of embrace, what we most fear. And I believe that when we weave stories of our darkest sorrows and our secret joys, when we share those with other people, what we create in love will heal the world.

I hope to hear from you in 2008. Some of you will be with me in Guatemala, others in Texas, Massachusetts and Scotland (details, as always, on our website, www.writingretreats.org); some I’ll not see again. But your courage, your stories, your poems will continue to resonate in my heart. My thanks to you, always.

Patricia

P. S. Finally, I’ve begun working on my poems again. Here is one I wrote in an AWA training this fall. It’s still a bit rough, but it’s my gift to you in the new year.

Where Has All The Writing Gone?

I wonder who used to do all that writing,
images hollering. It wasn’t me. A parachute
that didn’t open, the ground rushing
persimmon orange, bloody seeds
of words. It wasn’t me. The cow manure
made me do it, a window to my child’s life,
the ranch, the Angus heifers. Where words
hook together, in clouds or live oak trees.

At the corner of the ranch house, the juniper
is turquoise. Berries feed goldfinch in small herds.
It is cellular, this stuff of words. It is jasmine,
Jerusalem, joyous as winter finch, luscious
as genitalia displayed. Bling and blither, beyond.

It wasn’t me who wrote these words.
They wandered, wooed, wove together
in the manner of the wise. I am not wise.
Sometimes, with luck, I am written.

Patricia Lee Lewis
2007

You are invited to …

STARBUCKS

READING AND BOOKSIGNING

January 13, 2008

2 PM

Chester Springs Shopping Center
237 Route 206 South
Chester, New Jersey

Julie Maloney uses poetic form to give her heart permission to speak. This slim book, written without censoring, unveils the many layers of a woman. Divided into two sections, the first section, titled “home,” takes the reader on a journey through cancer. Observations rally around the intimate. In the second section, Maloney weaves words into a human mosaic, never hesitating to go deeper. This is a book about love and loving as told from a strikingly honest point of view.

“Julie Maloney’s poems in her collection, Private Landscape, move with exquisite grace. This is a collection to remember, at once personal and universal.”

– Charlotte Mandel–poet,publisher, Saturday Press

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Julie Maloney is the director of WOMEN READING ALOUD - a not for profit organization dedicated to promoting writers in New Jersey and beyond.

Visit www.womenreadingaloud.org for further information.

She is also the creative designer and president of MANGO, a company that offers books, stationery and writing journals to cherish the written word and the image it inspires.

To order PRIVATE LANDSCAPE
visit www.mangopress.net