PRISM's Short Fiction and Poetry Contest

We were just sent this info on the deadline for PRISM international's Short Fiction and Poetry Contests by a Muser.

The Short Fiction Contest deadline is January 29, 2011. A $2000 grand prize is awarded for the best original, unpublished story and the winner also receives publication payment in the Fiction and Poetry Contest Issue. Three runner-up prizes of $200 are also conferred. Works of translation are eligible. 

The Poetry Contest also has a deadline of January 29, 2011. A $1000 grand prize is awarded for the best original, unpublished poem and the winner also receives publication payment in the Fiction and Poetry Contest Issue. $300 and $200 are awarded to the runners-up. One entry may include up to three, single-spaced poems, and works of translation are eligible. 

Contest entries must be sent to PRISM through snail mail, accompanied by an entry form and cheque or receipt of credit card payment. For entry forms and the option to pay fees by credit card, visit Prism's contest page.

Entries can be sent to:

Prism International, [Contest Category]
Creative Writing Program
The University of British Columbia
BUCH E462-1866 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
CANADA

Book Swap

Another retreat started yesterday and here are the great books people donated to our living library after crepes this morning:

Tracy Marchini from New York who is here working on her YA novel donated Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan as it reflects the genre she's working in.

Tracy also donated Gare Thompson's Who Was Eleanor Roosevelt? about her "home town" and the Roosevelt estate.











The Londoner Tanya Byrne was up next with her "desert island books," the first being the "first book I read for school that I really loved": To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The novel expressed "racial tension" for the first time for Tanya as a child, as opposed to the "Pride and Prejudice genre of novels I read before it." She especially loves "the strong male role model of Atticus."

Tanya's other selection was Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five, quoting the first line as one of the best she's every came across.

Next up was Dennis Lewis who lives and teaches in Qatar and is here working on his first collection of poetry. Dennis donated The Triggering Town by the Montana poet Richard Hugo which he called "an honest and very helpful book on writing."

Dennis' other book was W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants, a book he said that repeats many of things from Sebald's other works, "all of his books being a combination of different forms and all of them dealing with memory and loss."








New Zealander Jenny Simpson, who is here working on short stories, gave the library Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones as her first contribution. She describes Jones as a very different writer from other writers in New Zealand as he writes about things set elsewhere.

Jenny's other book was the poet Bill Manhire's most recent work of stories and poems, Lifted. For the 25th anniversary of the Erebus air disaster, Manhire composed the poem "Erebus Voices", which Sir Edmund Hillary read at the commemorative service at Scott Base, Antarctica.

Writer Natalie Mera Ford spoke after Jenny about her book An American Story, a collection of Barack Obama's speeches, reflecting where she's originally from, the US.

Natalie's second choice was The Other Side of the Bridge by the Canadian writer Mary Lawson. Natalie chose Lawson's book because she is working on a novel herself away from her home country.

Last to speak was another London writer, Martha Close, who is here working on a novel much like the first book she donated, Grahame Greene's The Quiet American which she has "kept on her desk while writing my novel based in Cambodia" because of its' "meeting of East and West" but mainly because it is so beautifully written.

Martha's other book was How Not to Write a Novel by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. She cited specifically page 28's title: Why Your Job is Harder than God."

Thanks again to everyone who donated books!

Open Studio - Kellyann Monaghan

They both left a few days ago for London and New York, but here's video of Kellyann Monaghan's cool art from the open studio she had here:



And here's Sarai Michelle Walker reading from her novel in progress "Dietland" which she was working on while she was at La Muse:



We'll also upload Rhea Tregebov reading her poems when we get a chance!

May Book Swap

First off was John Hunter who brought Anne Enright's Booker Prize wining novel The Gathering because it is set in Dublin in the New Ireland of the "economic miracle." John also donated Margaret Atwood's book of essays Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing. John was here to work on what he said people are now calling "life writing." His biography is about Samuel Smiles.

Next was John's wife Janet who donated I Never Knew That About Ireland by Christopher Winn, a book full of interesting asides on historical characters and places in Ireland. She also brought along Ken Hom's cookbook Ken Hom's Vegetarian Cookery.

Liza Filby who was here on the retreat before this one came next. She reintroduced Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim and Wynton Marsalis' road trip memoir Jazz in the bittersweet blues of life.

The Irish poet Tadhg Ó Dúshláine donated another of his great books of poetry Mallacht Famaire which he finished last year as well as a copy of some new work tentatively titled "Home and Away" or "Is Abhaile Againn."

Anne Mini, an American author, who has a great blog for writers that you should check out, who was also here last retreat, reintroduced Philip K. Dick's, Valis and F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise.

Lori Neville, a Canadian writer and artist who lives in California, donated The Virginia Woolf Writers' Workshop: Seven Lessons to Inspire Great Writing. Lori also donated Gary Snyder and Tom Killion's book The High Sierra of California. Killion did the illustrations from woodcuts, in what Lori called "a feast for the eyes" and Snyder wrote the poems and journals. The poet works where Lori works at University of California, Davis.

The South African artist Deborah Clarke, who lives in France, brought a photo memoir of her father JFC Clarke's book A Glimpse Into Marabastad which documents a township in South Africa back in the early 70s.