Sherry Chandler » Publishing
Blogalicious offers a handy-dandy list of print magazines that accept e-mail submissions.
As Diane points out, postage is going up, so these magazines are doing us a considerable courtesy.
Thanks, Diane.
This post was written by sherry
Well, your Senate just made the Bush unitary presidency stronger by passing a FISA bill that gives the executive branch the right to decide who they should spy on, without judicial review, and gives the telecommunications industry retroactive immunity from legal action for giving up your information.
You might call your Congress person and suggest that s/he support the RESTORE act. Otherwise, unfettered spying for six years.
Meanwhile Antonin Scalia continues his charm offensive, saying torture is just all right with him and you can’t call it “cruel and unusual” unless it’s punishment for a crime. Waterboarding equals a smack in the face? Guess we have a hint how the Supremes might decide on the question of admitting evidence obtained by torture.
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, when everything is pink and rosey. Except in the coal-bearing Appalachians. Still time to consider joining the I Love Mountains Day Rally. Wendell Berry will be there. And it looks like the weather is gonna cooperate. Forecast calls for 45 and sunny.
Friday, February 15, is the postmark deadline for entries to The Heartland Review’s Joy Bale Boone poetry prize. Kathleen Driskell judges.
AND February 29th, Leap Day, is deadline for the Green River Writers suite of contests. (Link is to PDF file.)
This post was written by sherry
Poet Diane Lockward reports from the AWP meeting in New York City where she has been minding the shared table for Wind Publications and Steel Toe Books, both Kentucky enterprises
I have now attended my first AWP Conference. My spouse drove me in Wednesday afternoon and deposited me at the Hilton Hotel where I would spend an absurd amount of money for a rather small room, nice but smallish. That night I had a BLT for dinner—$17.50! Then I discovered that the hotel charges $15 per day for use of their wireless. That was another first. That’s usually an amenity that comes with the room rate. But I had my new laptop with me and was determined to put it to use.
The next day I reported for duty at the book table my publisher, Wind Publications, was sharing with Steel Toe Books. Tom Hunley, the Steel Toe publisher as well as a Wind poet, had the table already set up. Our location was a nice corner spot, but on the second floor of the Bookfair. As that area required one to go up an escalator and there was no sign indicating the second level, there was much less traffic in that area. I sold a decent number of books, but I heard a lot of grousing about diminished sales this year in spite of the dramatic increase in the number of registrants. My guess is that with the exorbitant hotel costs people were less inclined to shell out for books.
Diane also attended the launch of the Wom-Po anthology Letters to the World, published by Red Hen Press:
My favorite event was the Wompo panel Friday morning. This was a celebration of the just-released Wompo anthology, Letters to the World, which contains over 200 poems by members of the Wompo listserv. It was an amazing and time-consuming and international endeavor. The result is a gorgeous anthology.
Several local poets have poems in this anthology, including me, Joanie DiMartino, Ann Lederer, and Margaret Ricketts. More about it later.
Addendum: Meredith Sue Willis also has an AWP experience to report:
I suppose, especially in New York, so many people go! 7,000 participants, and they had to close registration– at once a wonderful feeling, all those people who care about books and writing– that what we do is serious, and at the same time the horror, the horror: they all want to be writers? And who will be reading what they write? Young people from the programs, fragrant with ambition, old people with twisted mouths, self-involved, not having achieved all they wanted, ready to talk about themselves, not others. Double and tripling of exhilaration and dismay.
This post was written by sherry
MotesBooks of Louisville will accept manuscripts and artwork for an anthology to be published in the summer of 2008. All pieces in the book will focus on Mountaintop Removal (MTR) coal mining. Submission period closes March 1, 2008. To accommodate elementary, middle school, high school and college writers, contributors can be any age up to 24 years. Home-schoolers and non-students meeting the age requirement are also encouraged to submit.
Working title: WE ALL LIVE DOWNSTREAM
Working subtitle: Young Americans Reflect On Mountaintop Removal
Edited by writer, editor, songwriter & MTR activist Jason Howard.
With a foreword by novelist, dramatist, songwriter & MTR activist Silas House.
Literary submissions on the theme may be poems, short stories, song lyrics, short scripts, essays, articles, letters, or creative nonfiction of any length up to 4,000 words. The pieces may approach the MTR theme from any angle – human, environmental, political, cultural, economic, health, water, air, energy, tourism, jobs, coal conversion, etc. Works submitted do not necessarily have to limit their focus to the results of MTR in Appalachia. All points of view are welcomed.
Visual submissions may include sketches, drawings and other original artworks rendered in black-and-white and submitted in the form of a high resolution .tiff file. They should address MTR-related themes. High resolution color images may be submitted for consideration as cover art, as well.
Award: After publication, a panel of adult writers and activists will select the work of a single contributor to be awarded a Youth Activism+Art prize of $100.
Payment: If accepted for publication, every contributor will receive one (1) complimentary copy upon publication as payment, shipped to address provided in submission materials. Contributors will also receive an ongoing contributor’s discount for purchase of additional copies.
The book will be manufactured in softcover, perfectbound format. Basic retail marketing outlets will include Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and the publisher’s websites: www.MotesBooks.com (site of MotesBooks literary imprint) and www.EvaMedia.com (site that primarily serves schools). Wholesales will be available to retailers. Special marketing strategies and events will also be utilized, including at least one reading by selected contributors (at the invitation of the publisher).
Questions? Visit www.MotesBooks.com or email MTR@MotesBooks.com using “MTR ANTHOLOGY” as the subject line.
Writers and artists retain copyright on individual pieces.
Do not send previously published or simultaneously submitted material.
Submission guarantees that the work is original and is created by the student whose name is affixed to it.
Include author bio and contact information (including school affiliation, grade level, age, phone, snail mail, e-mail address, and teacher sponsor, if applicable) with each submission. Teachers may make submissions on behalf of students if individual cover letters signed by each student contributor are included.
Send WRITING in hard copy only (no email attachments) to: MotesBooks MTR Anthology, PO Box 6034, Louisville KY 40206. Use Arial 12 pt. font. Do not send originals; submissions will not be returned. If you want confirmation of receipt, include SASP (self-addressed stamped postcard). NOTE: If accepted, submissions will subsequently be requested in the form of a text or Word file. DO NOT INITIALLY SUBMIT MANUSCRIPTS BY EMAIL — HARD COPY ONLY!
VISUAL ART should be submitted in digital form only via email or CD. Submission should include name, age, and all contact info, brief artist statement, and bio. Artwork received by email attachment will elicit a return email confirming inbox arrival. For artwork submissions, use “MTR ANTHOLOGY” as the subject line; send .tiff file by e-mail to MTR@MotesBooks.com, or mail disc to: MotesBooks MTR Anthology, PO Box 6034, Louisville KY 40206. No hard copy is required for visual art submissions. Discs or other submission materials will not be returned. SUBMIT HIGH RESOLUTION (300 dpi) TIFF FILES ONLY; NO JPG FILES WILL BE CONSIDERED. If image files are too large to email, contact us for FTP upload instructions.
Both writers and visual artists must include a 30-40 word bio to appear in Contributor’s Notes section of the anthology in the event that work is accepted. Bios may include previous publishing credits, name of school and current level in school (if still a student), background on the piece submitted, or other information as desired.
Submission guarantees that contributors agree that selected submissions may be posted on MotesBooks and/or EvaMedia websites and used in promotional & marketing materials.
Submission deadline is March 1, 2008 May 1, 2008. Book publication is targeted for July 2008.
This post was written by sherry
Here is the opening paragraph of poet Ann Neelon’s editor’s introduction to the Winter 2008 issue of New Madrid — Mexico in the Heartland:
On August 12, 2007, Covarrubia Manuel Montes, 34, of Santiago Ixcuintla, Nayarit, Mexico, was killed on a tractor while working tobacco in Calloway County, Kentucky. Although I did not know him, I found myself saddened upon reading his obituary in The Murray Ledger and Times. I wondered if I had passed him in a straw hat in Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon and failed to say hello. His dead body struck me as the elephant in the room of the immigration debate. It made all the talk about getting tough on immigration into a moot point. Here was a human being who, on some level, had sacrificed himself for us. I remembered what the Nobel-Prize-winning Mexican writer Octavio Paz had said so famously in The Labyrinth of Solitude: “It seems to me that North Americans consider the world something that can be perfected, and that we consider it to be something that can be redeemed.”
As one who has worked those tobacco fields in hilly country, one who has known many fine men who have been lost on and under tractors, I feel a sense of kinship with Mr. Montes. Not so much that he has sacrificed himself for us as that he has suffered and died as one of us.
Mexico in the Heartland has a series of black and white photos of Mexican’s working in tobacco fields and in most instances, they look not much different from my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. The photos could fit right into James Baker Hall’s Tobacco Harvest.
Hall and Wendell Berry have sung the elegy. Mr. Montes is like a soldier who has died after the generals signed the treaty.
Danielle Nethery’s photograph of a Mexican farm worker from New Madrid, Winter 2008.
My family cutting tobacco in the early 1940s. Pictured are my maternal aunt, my mother, my sister, my maternal grandmother, my father standing, my paternal grandfather kneeling with my older brother, our neighbor, my paternal aunt on the horse, my maternal grandfather, my younger brother, and my paternal grandmother.
This post was written by sherry
The Green River Writers Writing Contest is now open for submissions.
This year’s contest offers 17 categories in fiction and poetry, along with six categories for Young Writers (grades 3-12).
Entry fees are $8 each entry for the three grand prize categories, $4 each entry for all other categories. Young Writers enter free.
Unless otherwise state, categories are judged by the sponsors.
Post-mark deadline February 29 (Leap Day).
This post was written by sherry
Postmark deadline for Heartland Review’s 2008 Joy Bale Boone Prize is February 1 15 , so get those poems in the mail!
Judge for 2008 is Kathleen Driskell, Associate Professor and Associate Program Director of the brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University. Her full-length collection of poetry, Laughing Sickness, was published by Fleur-de-Lis Press in 1999 and is in its second printing.
Fee: $5.00 for one poem, $3.00 for each additional poem. Make checks payable to The Heartland Review.
Poems should not be longer than 30 lines.
Send a cover sheet with name, address, and a short bio. DO NOT put identifying material on the poems.
Send SASE for results.
Mail entries to:
2008 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize
c/o Mick Kennedy
Elizabethtown Community and Technical College
600 College Street Road
Elizabethtown, KY 42701
This post was written by sherry
It’s time again for the Carnegie Center’s annual Legacies Writing Contest for Writers Over 55.
Awards will be offered for the best entries submitted: Poems, stories, essays, or memoirs drawn from the author’s personal history.
The cash prize is $100 for first place and $50 for second.
Winners and finalists will participate in the annual Legacies Reading at the Carnegie Center on Tuesday, March 4 at 6:30 pm, when the Legacies Medallion, donated in memory of Carole Pettit, will be presented.
Entries will be judged by a qualified panel.
Writers over 55 should submit manuscripts up to 1500 words (about five typed, double-spaced pages, which may include up to five poems).
There is a $10 reading fee per five-page entry, payable to the Carnegie Center.
Entries should include a cover page complete with author’s name, address, email address, phone number, and date of birth. Names should NOT appear on the entry itself.
Deadline for submissions is SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9. Entries most be postmarked or received by that date.
Send submissions to:
LEGACIES
The Carnegie Center
251 West Second Street
Lexington, KY 40507
This post was written by sherry
David Payne, “Writing on Writing,” in the March 2008 issue of The Oxford American, a column entitled “Carrying America’s Shadow:”
While it’s true that a half-century ago a galaxy of celebrated Southern writers—Capote, Welty, Faulkner, Williams, Harper Lee, and others—enjoyed cachet in the North; and though once a generation or so along comes a Gone With the Wind or a Cold Mountain, the fate of a writer like Lee Smith remains more typical. Author of the masterly Fair and Tender Ladies, Smith has a large, devoted audience in the Southeast, yet after a dozen novels, her reputation and readership continue to plummet north of Washington, D.C.
Smith’s latest book sets the pattern: Upon its publication in 2006, On Agate Hill, a novel situated in and around Hillsborough, North Carolina, shot to No. 1 on the Southern Independent Bookseller Alliance (SIBA) bestseller list and remained there for weeks. During that time, it never appeared on any of the seven other regional lists around the country. By contrast, Anna Quindlen’s concurrently published Rise and Shine, with a Bronx setting, appeared throughout its run in high positions on all eight lists, including SIBA. Both trajectories are typical for established writers from their respective regions: that is, Southern writers are “regional”; Norther writers are “national.” And what’s true of Smith and Quindlen today was also true of Faulkner and Hemingway in their primes.
Why?
Is human experience in the South a specialized and limited affair, relevant only to other Southerners, while life in the Bronx is “universal” and relevant to all, including Southerners? And, if not, what accounts for the confinement of Southern writers to the region?
There may be some conflict of interest in Mr. Payne’s picking Lee Smith as the exemplary novelist for his column. Smith’s husband, Hal Crowther, is also a contributing columnist to The Oxford American. However, I thoroughly agree that Smith is one of the best novelists writing in the United States today and if you haven’t read Fair and Tender Ladies then you’ve missed out.
It also may be true that Smith, along with Ron Rash (another neglected writer mentioned in this column), is operating under the double whammy of being not just Southern, but Southern Appalachian. We all know what exotic inbred creatures dwell in the southern mountains.
Possibly also, compared to a Southern novelist like Cormac McCarthy, Smith suffers from writing of women’s issues—the home and hearth. You’ll find no shoot-outs in Smith’s world.
Besides, as Payne points out, in order to achieve his popularity, McCarthy had to leave the South and begin writing Westerns. Maybe Texas is the one Southern state everybody in the country can identify with?
To return to the Southeast in The Road, McCarthy had to create an area so burnt-out as to make Sherman’s scorched-earth March to the Sea look like a weenie-roast.
Still, it’s an interesting question: why is the Bronx considered more normative for the United States than Hillsborough?
This post was written by sherry
Finishing Line Press has announced their tenth annual New Women’s Voices chapbook competition. Deadline is February 15. Click here for guidelines.
The Heartland Review has announced its third annual short-short fiction contest. Deadline is January 1. Click here for guidelines.
This post was written by sherry
