Submissions for Popshot Magazine

The Poetry & Illustration magazine, Popshot, is now looking for submissions for its fourth issue.

The theme is ‘This Is Modern Living’.

We look for poems with originality, not carbon copies of poetry classics.

Poems with a linguistic focus on rhythm, repetition and pattern are preferred but this definitely doesn’t mean obscure free verse is overlooked.

Poems must be no longer than 25 lines, previously unpublished and written to the theme.

Please also include a paragraph or two about yourself and a short explanation of the poem – why you came to write it and what it means to you.

Submit poems by email to submit@popshotpopshot.com by the 31st July 2010 at the very latest.

Poetry at Picnic in the Park

Dear poets,

Charnwood Arts 30th annual Picnic in the Park will take place on Bank Holiday Monday, 31st May from Noon in Queen’s Park, Loughborough.

http://www.charnwoodarts.com/events/2010/05/31/picnic_in_the_park_2010

We will be organising a reading of poetry in a quiet area of the park away from the main musical acts. It will be quite informal, with the public coming and going as they like. If you would like to read, please drop an email to: damien@charnwood-arts.org.uk and we will send out more details. While we can’t offer a reading fee, there will be a picnic lunch provided. We will also be looking for one or two poets to do drop in sessions for young people during the course of the day (for which there will be a fee).

Please pass this message on to anyone you think would be interested.

Damien Walter

Literature Network Coordinator

ALT. FICTION BURSARIES FOR NORTHANTS RESIDENTS

Literature Northants is pleased to be able to offer three bursaries for the Alt.Fiction festival of alternative fiction in Derby on Saturday 12th June.

ABOUT THE BURSARIES
Literature Northants will offer bursaries to three successful applicants to cover the price of their ticket (worth £25) plus travel expenses up to the value of £50. See below for details of how to apply.

ABOUT ALT. FICTION
Alt.Fiction, Derby’s international festival for alternative fiction, has been running successfully since 2006 as a one-day event focusing on the genres of science-fiction, fantasy and horror and featuring some of the top authors in the field such as Ramsey Campbell, Iain M Banks, Mike Carey and Harry Harrison. The fourth Alt.Fiction will take place in QUAD; Derby’s state-of-the-art multi-media venue.

The day is made up of a number of different types of sessions, each of which offers something different to the next. These include:

• Readings from authors
• Q&A sessions in which there will be the opportunity to pose questions to panels of authors and publishers. There will also be discussion panels in which a panel debate a particular topic such as ‘What is Alt.Fiction?’
• Workshop sessions. Workshops present the opportunity to get new ideas for writing, or advice about writing and publishing, from established figures in the field.

This year BBC books – publishers of tie-in-novels from the ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Torchwood’ and ‘Being Human’ series – have already confirmed their attendance at Alt. Fiction 2010 along with Rob Shearman, Justin Richards, Mark Morris, Sarah Pinborough, Guy Adams to name but a few.

For full details see http://altfiction.co.uk/.

HOW TO APPLY
To apply, send your CV, three short examples of your work (links to online work preferable) and a covering letter explaining why you should be awarded the bursary to Kate Wilkinson, Literature Development Officer: kwilkinson@northamptonshire.gov.uk.

*** PLEASE NOTE: only applications made by email will be accepted. Applications not containing the required information outlined above will be disregarded. ***

DEADLINE
Your application should be emailed to kwilkinson@northamptonshire.gov.uk by 12 noon on Monday 3rd May 2010. Successful applicants will be notified by the end of the day on Monday 11th May. Unfortunately, we will not be able to notify unsuccessful applicants.

NAWE Conference Submissions

Proposals are invited for this essential UK event for writers working in all educational and community contexts.

You set the agenda

The NAWE Conference enables writers to share their various approaches to teaching writing at all levels and to address current issues. We are open to any suggestions in terms of presentation format but we are likely to give preference to workshop sessions or discussions where delegates can be most actively involved.

The Conference will run from Friday lunchtime through to Sunday midday. There will be special events on both evenings.

Proposals should consist of a brief (100 word) outline, exactly as you would wish the session to be described in the conference programme, together with any further detail (250 words max) and biographical information on all presenters (50 words each). The suggested length of a session is 75-90 minutes (though sessions may be shared). Please also specify exactly what technical equipment you require. All presenters need to register as delegates but will have a proportion (20%) of the conference fee waived.

Deadline for proposals: 31 May
Decisions on proposals: 30 June
Programme published: 31 July
Booking & payment deadline: 15 October

Please email proposals to: conference@nawe.co.uk

Muslim Writers Awards open for entries

For the fourth year running the Muslim Writers Awards is calling out for creative, interesting, and exciting submissions from writers across the country. All entrants must be Muslim and work should be submitted in the English Language. Submissions do not need to be centred on topics of Islam or Muslim identity, however this is equally welcome.

The screenplay category accepts short films (10-20 pages), feature-length scripts (over 60 pages), and TV episodes (30 pages).

Deadline: 14 May 2010

To find out more and apply, visit the Muslim Writers Awards website.

http://muslimwritersawards.org.uk/

Unthank Books

Unthank Books is a new independent publishing house. Based in London and Norwich, UNTHANK aims to publish the kind of books you used to read and enjoy, but struggle to find any more.

Without new work and new writers coming through, Unthank Books believes that the industry will stagnate. It seems logical to say this but the logic somehow seems to have escaped the larger houses. We don’t assume that an author’s first novel is his ‘magnum opus’ or his ‘bestseller’. We do think that promise can be shown in a first novel, hopefully can be seen and published by us and the author encouraged to write on toward his ‘meisterwerk’. If we decide after reading not to publish your novel we do offer reasoning and feedback as to why we felt this was not possible. If your query or submission remains unanswered then you are entirely safe to assume that it is because we are not interested – pressure of workload prevents us from replying simply to explain this.

FICTION

We are essentially interested in innovative and important literary fiction – something we feel we have not read enough of in recent years given the state of mainstream lists. We have read an awful lot of genre fiction between us, for both personal and professional purposes, and for this reason have decided we don’t want to publish it at the moment. This means that unless exceptional circumstances or quality apply, we are not publishing horror, westerns, science-fiction, crime and mysteries, police procedurals, fantasy, supernatural, spiritual fiction, chick/mum/lad-lit etc. We do clearly reserve the right to change our minds on this of course if we are bowled over by something which arguably falls into one of these categories. We are open to ‘thrillers’ of a literary bent, but not those which are technologically focused, adventure and action driven, or environmental/apocalypse commentaries.

With the help of the note above, please send suitable samples (cover letter, synopsis and 50 pages by hard copy, double-spaced, single-sided, consecutively page-numbered) with a SAE to: Unthank Submissions, PO BOX 3506, Norwich, NR7 7QP

www.unthankbooks.com

New Fairy Tales

We are currently seeking submissions for our fifth issue. We are looking for new fairy tales in short story format (max 3000 words), and in other formats such as poetry, flash fiction and comic strip.

Deadline:
20 Apr 2010

www.newfairytales.co.uk

We are currently seeking submissions for our fifth issue. We are looking for new fairy tales in short story format (max 3000 words), and in other formats such as poetry, flash fiction and comic strip.

We welcome works inspired by a love of traditional tales but we are not looking for retellings or reimaginings of existing tales. Show us what you think a new fairy tale can be.

For full submission guidelines please visit our website: www.newfairytales.co.uk/pages/submissions.html

All submissions should be sent to the editors
at newfairytales@googlemail.com

The deadline for submissions to our fifth issue is 20th April 2010.

Leicester Families project

Call for entries: Leicester Family Project

http://www.leicesterfamily.org

A new and exciting initiative is inviting people from Leicester to share stories and experiences of family life for an online book.

The Leicester Family project, part of the De Montfort University’s Amplified Leicester experiment will explore the realities of family life in Leicester and assess how families have changed through the decades.

The project is looking to record people’s experiences of family life in Leicester, celebrate what it was was like in the past, capture what it’s like today, as well as imagine what families will be like in the future. A selection of entries will be chosen to represent The Leicester Family for an online digital book which will be designed and produced by April 1st 2010.

Entries can be presented through any creative form, from song to poetry, drawings to photo, capturing one of the four themes, The family – defined, The family and Decisions, The Family and Leisure and The Family at Dinner Time. The project will be blogging inspirational ideas to make entries sparkle, until the end of February.

A roadshow is being organised on 13th March at the Etc suite Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre between 10.00-14.00. Contributors can work on their entries on the day or bring along material to be scanned in. The Amplified Leicester team will also be on hand to record one minute videos with families.

To find out more you can visit http://www.leicesterfamily.org or find the project on Myspace, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter @leicesterfamily, Ning.com and Youtube by typing in Leicester Family. Entries will need to be emailed to competition@leicesterfamily.org or added to the Flickr group by 21st March 2010. There are a selection of prizes for the best contributions, including National Book Tokens and a family portrait sitting with Maz courtesy of Maz Mashru Leicester.

Thank you

Farhana Shaikh
Project Co-ordinator

Find us online and in these social networks…

http://www.leicesterfamily.org

http://www.flickr.com/groups/leicesterfamily/

http://www.youtube.com/user/LeicesterFamily

http://leicesterfamily.ning.com/

http://www.myspace.com/leicesterfamily

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Leicester-Family-Project/314621010100

Short Fuse – call for submissions

Room for one more love story for the Short Fuse Valentines special:

TRUE ROMANCE

Deadline February 8th for a February 16th reading

Short Fuse is currently seeking short story submissions on the following themes:

BABEL

METROPOLIS

ON THE ROAD

TABOO

See website for guidelines and deadlines:

http://shortfusefiction.com

Blogger Alert!

Are you a blogger living in the East Midlands? Do you write about books, reading, literature, spoken or written word arts? Or are you a creative writer publicising your work through a blog? If so LiteratureNetwork.org would like to hear from you. From early 2010 the Literature Network will be publicising writer bloggers around the region. If you would like to be included send a link to your blog to the email address below:

damien@charnwood-arts.org.uk

Next Page »