The Writer's Life

Share stories of being a writer and living the writer's life... or stories of being in the MFA program...

I'll start...

One of my favorite parts of writing and being a writer is when I get into the "zone" and the writing seems to just flow out of me. I had one day where I sat down to write and, after what seemed like only a half-hour or so, I became distracted by being extremely thirsty and hungry. When I finally gave into it, put the writing aside, and decided to head for the kitchen I realized that four hours had gone by since I'd started writing.

Another favorite writing phenomenon for me is when my characters and their lives literally speak to me. I can be doing the dishes and realize that a specific character is about to get a phone call and I have to go immediately to the computer and write that scene. The non-writers in my life used to think I was crazy. Now they're just used to it.

Writer's Digest Competition

Here is a competition coming up through Writer's Digest (Thanks for the leads Cindy)

78th Annual Writing Competition

We are now accepting entries in the 78th Annual Writing Competition. Don't miss your chance to win part of the more than $30,000 in cash and prizes. Compete and win in 10 categories. Deadline: 5/15/09

Full details and on-line entry in the contest are available at Writer's Digest Annual Competition


Check out their website for other contest information, resources, and more.

Atlantic Pacific Press Submissions

Christine Walen, the Editor of Atlantic Pacific Press, specifically contacted Bob Begiebing expressing her interest in receiving submissions from SNHU MFA students. Here's the info:

ATLANTIC PACIFIC PRESS is a new quarterly journal of fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, non-fiction, drama, veterans/military, romance, mystery, horror, westerns, family life, children’s stories, poetry, prose poetry, flash fiction, lyrics, cartoons, art and photography.

FICTION, SCI-FI, CREATIVE NON-FICTION, CHILDREN’S STORIES: 250-7000 words.

MANUSCRIPTS: Email for guidelines. abcworks@att.net Mail submissions via regular mail. Use 1.5 line spacing, and Arial regular 12 point font. Please include a SASE for return mail. No porn.

COVER LETTER: Include with your submission a 50 word count bio that may be printed on the contributor page. If your submission has been previously performed, or exhibited, in the case of art work, and photography, please acknowledge where and when.

TERMS: ATLANTIC PACIFIC PRESS pays a contributor copy, and $10 flat rate for unpublished material, if and when funds are available. No Internet, simultaneous, public domain, or shared common license submissions, or material where the copyright is held by another publisher.

Submit to: Christine Walen, Editor, 279 Gulf Rd. South Dartmouth, MA 02748 USA

ATLANTIC PACIFIC PRESS DRAMA PRIZE

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 30, 2009.

SCRIPT: 70-120 page unpublished (no Internet) stage play. Neatly type manuscript, in Ariel regular 12 point font, 1.5 line spacing, in published play format. Italicize stage directions. Capitalize character names on left side of page, followed by a period and two spaces, on same line with dialogue. Include a one page cover letter with a 50 word count bio that may be published along with your play.

TERMS: $2.50 non-refundable entry fee (make checks payable to ATLANTIC PACIFIC PRESS). Please include a SASE. Winning playwright will receive $25, a contributor copy, and have their play published in ATLANTIC PACIFIC PRESS. ATLANTIC PACIFIC PRESS buys First North American and First World Serial Rights for editorial use, print media, and magazine promotional use. Rights return to playwright upon publication.

Good News! The ATLANTIC PACIFIC PRESS Drama Prize will be judged by George William Hayden, a 1972 Pulitzer Prize Nominee in Verse Letters for his chapbook, “The Cancer of the French Candystoreman & 49 Other Poems.” Mr. Hayden has directed over 125 plays for The Original Gateway Players in Wareham, MA. He was born in New York City, has lived in Rhode Island and is now retired and living in Wareham, MA.

More web resources

The Association of Author's Representatives www.aaronline.org

National Writers Union www.nwu.org

Publishers' Weekly Magazine www.publishersweekly.com

Writer's Digest www.writersdigest.com/GeneralMenu/

Kim Ponders

Kim Ponders, grew up near Boston and graduated from Syracuse University, then worked as a reporter in northern California. In 1989, she attended Officer Training School and was commissioned into the Air Force as a second lieutenant. In 1991, she went to Saudi Arabia with Desert Storm and spent the next five years flying missions out of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, providing air supplies to the Kurds in northern Iraq and monitoring the Iraqi no-fly zone. These experiences formed the basis of her first novel, “The Art of Uncontrolled Flight” (HarperCollins, 2005), a BookSense pick that is being adapted into a screenplay. Ponders holds an M.S. in international relations and an M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Her second novel, “The Last Blue Mile” (HarperCollins, 2007), has been hailed by the Washington Post, Playgirl, Entertainment Weekly and Alma Magazine, among others.

Gretchen Legler

Gretchen Legler, an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Maine at Farmington, specializes in memoir writing, the personal essay and nonfiction essays about the natural world. Work from her first collection of essays, “All The Powerful Invisible Things: A Sportswoman’s Notebook,” has won two Pushcart Prizes and has been widely excerpted and anthologized.

Legler’s scholarly work on American women nature writers and ecocriticism has appeared in journals and anthologies including Studies in the Humanities, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, “Reading Under the Sign of Nature” and “Writing the Environment.” Her most recent book, from Milkweed Editions in the fall of 2005, is a collection of linked essays about Antarctica, where she spent six months in 1997 as a fellow with the National Science Foundation’s Artists and Writers Program. Her creative nonfiction about Antarctica has already appeared in such venues as Orion , The Women’s Review of Books, and The Georgia Review.

Katherine Towler

Katherine Towler is author of the novels Snow Island and Evening Ferry. Part of a planned trilogy, the novels are set on a fictional New England island and chronicle the lives of two generations in two island families and the impact of the wars of the twentieth century on the island community. Praised by the Boston Globe as "luminous and moving," Snow Island was chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers title, a Borders Original Voices title, and a Booksense selection. Evening Ferry, also a Booksense selection, was described as "gracefully written" by Publishers Weekly and as "a strong and deeply satisfying tale" by the author John Barth. Katherine has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. She was awarded the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy and served as the school's writer-in-residence. She has published poetry, short stories, and a series of interviews with prominent writers and poets in The Sun Magazine, The Worcester Review, The Tusculum Review, Mars Hill Review, and In Posse Review.

Katherine grew up in New York City at General Theological Seminary, where her father was on the faculty. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan and earned an M.A. in writing at Johns Hopkins and an M.A. in English literature at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. She has taught creative writing to students of all ages, including working with public school students through the artists-in-the-schools program in New Hampshire. Currently she teaches graduate students in the low residency MFA program in writing at Southern New Hampshire University and works as a freelance writer specializing in publications and promotional materials for schools and non-profits. She lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with her husband.

www.katherinetowler.com

Rick Carey

Richard Adams Carey is the author of four nonfiction books and numerous essays and articles that have appeared in Yankee, Country Journal, Boston Globe Magazine, New England Monthly, Alaska and Harvard Magazine, among other periodicals. His journalism has chiefly concerned matters of natural history, ecology, and environmental affairs. His book “Raven’s Children: An Alaskan Culture at Twilight” was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year in 1992 by the New York Public Library, and “Against the Tide: The Fate of the New England Fisherman” won the 2002 New Hampshire Writers’ Project Nonfiction Prize. His most recent book, widely and favorably reviewed, is “The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire” (2005), due out in paperback this spring.

Carey holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard College and a master’s degree in educational administration from Lesley College. After a varied career as cannery worker, commercial fisherman, farm hand, museum curatorial assistant, bookstore clerk, market researcher, actor, musician and teacher, he is currently director of Publications for the Holderness School in Plymouth, N.H., a freelance journalist and vice president of the New Hampshire Writers Project board of trustees.

Merle Drown

Merle Drown, a former high school English teacher, teaches fiction. He has written short stories, essays, plays, reviews, a screenplay, and two novels, “Plowing Up a Snake” and “The Suburbs of Heaven,” which Barnes and Noble selected for its Discover Great New Writers series. He co-edited with John Cawelti “Meteor in the Madhouse,” the posthumous novellas of Leon Forrest.

Drown has studied at Macalester College, the University of Washington and in the original low-residency M.F.A. program at Goddard College, where he studied under John Irving, Richard Rhodes and Richard Ford. He has taught creative writing at New England College and now teaches workshops for the New Hampshire Writers’ Project and businesses, and is an editor, actor and ghost writer. He has received fiction writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Hampshire Arts Council.

www.drown.com

Diane Les Becquets

Diane Les Becquets, M.F.A., was hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as a “writer to watch” after her debut novel, The Stones of Mourning Creek. Since then she has published two other novels: Love, Cajun Style and Season of Ice, the latter being the recipient a PEN American Fellowship. Les Becquets is the director of Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University and the assistant director of the university’s low-residency M.F.A. program in Fiction and Nonfiction. She has been a guest at the Arkansas Book Festival and the Telluride Council on the Arts, and has taught writing workshops at various venues across the country including the University of Mississippi, Auburn University, the New Hampshire Writer’s Project, the Department of Forestry, Ocean Park Writer’s Conference, and shelters for Katrina victims. Before teaching she worked as a journalist for twelve years. She is the proud mother of three sons and is an avid outdoorswoman, enjoying archery, archaeology, bicycling, and hiking in the woods with her Labrador, Lacey. She is currently working on a new novel, Backface, set in northwestern Colorado.

www.lesbecquets.com

Bob Begiebing

Robert J. Begiebing is the author of thirty articles and stories and six books, including an historical New England trilogy of novels spanning 1648-1850. His final novel in the trilogy Rebecca Wentworth’s Distraction (UPNE, 2003), won the Langum Prize for historical fiction in 2003. The first novel in the trilogy The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin (Algonquin, 1991, 1996) was chosen as a Main Selection for the Mystery and Literary Guild Book Clubs. His novels, including a third book in the trilogy The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton (UPNE 1999, 2001), have been widely and favorably reviewed in The New York Times, The Times of London, The Los Angeles Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Yankee Magazine, and Library Journal, among many other national and regional periodicals. His fiction writing has been supported by grants from the Lila-Wallace Foundation and the New Hampshire Council for the Arts. He served on the board of trustees for the New Hampshire Writers’ Project; currently he serves on the board of the Norman Mailer Society and on the editorial board of The Mailer Review. In 2007, Governor John Lynch appointed Begiebing to the New Hampshire Council on the Arts. He is Director of the Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction at Southern NH University, where he has won three awards for excellence in teaching.

www.begiebing.com

Links to Writing Resources

There are a number of good writing resources available on the web, for information, articles, submission leads, event schedules and much more. Here are just a few links that may be helpful:

NH Writer's Project www.nhwritersproject.org

Poet's & Writer's www.pw.org

AWP Writer's Chronicle elink.awpwriter.org
This is the on-line version of the journal and requires an account to access, which all MFA students should have

A Room of Her Own Foundation www.aroomofherownfoundation.org
For women writers

Francine Prose - Summer Visiting Writer

The visiting writer for the summer 2009 MFA residency is Francine Prose.

The author of the New York Times bestseller "Reading Like a Writer," as well as 14 books of fiction, including "A Changed Man," winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and "Blue Angel," a finalist for the National Book Award. A distinguished critic and essayist, she has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, and The Paris Review; she is a contributing editor at Harper's, and she writes regularly on art for the Wall Street Journal. Francine Prose lives in New York City. She was a participant in the 2005 World Voices Festival and is president of PEN American Center.

Submission Opportunities

Here are a few up-coming submission opportunities...

Playboy Fiction contest, which is open again to all college writers at every level. The deadline Feb 15, 2009. The guidelines are available at www.playboy.com/cfc
Peggy Newland Goetz, who graduated over the summer, got third place in this one last year, out of several thousand entries, and some recognition in the press. Prizes are: Third is $200, second is $500, and first is $3000 and publication in the mag. Finalists are considered for website publication or even mag publication if deemed special.

Fourth Genre Editors’ Prize
Deadline: February 15, 2009

Entry Fee: $15

Web site: www.msupress.msu.edu/journals/fg

E-mail address: genre4@msu.edu

A prize of $1,000 and publication in Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction is given annually for an essay. Jocelyn Bartkevicius will judge. All finalists will be considered for publication. Submit up to 6,000 words of creative nonfiction with a $15 entry fee between January 15 and February 15. Send an SASE, e-mail, or visit the Web site for complete guidelines.

Fourth Genre, Editors’ Prize, Department of English, 201 Morrill Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1036.

Florida Review Editors' Awards

Deadline: February 16, 2009

Entry Fee: $15

Web site: www.flreview.com

Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Florida Review will be given annually for a group of poems, a short story, and an essay. The editors will judge. Submit up to five poems or a short story or essay of up to 25 pages with a $15 entry fee, which includes a subscription to Florida Review, by February 16. Send an SASE, call, or visit the Web site for complete guidelines.

Florida Review, Editors’ Awards, Department of English, P.O. Box 161346, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816-1346. (407) 823-2038. Jocelyn Bartkevicius, Editor.

Glimmer Train Press

Very Short Fiction Award

Deadline: February 28, 2009

Entry Fee: $15

Web site: www.glimmertrain.org

A prize of $1,200 and publication in Glimmer Train Stories is given biannually for a short story. Submit a story of up to 3,000 words with a $15 entry fee by February 28. Visit the Web site for complete guidelines.

Glimmer Train Press, 1211 NW Glisan Street, Suite 207, Portland, OR 97209. (503) 221-0836. Susan Burmeister-Brown and Linda Swanson-Davies, Coeditors.

John Searles - Visiting Writer

John Searles is the author of two best-selling novels, Strange But True and Boy Still Missing, both published by HarperCollins. He is the Deputy Editor of Cosmopolitan, where he oversees all book coverage for the magazine. He appears regularly on NBC's Today Show to announce his favorite book selections. Both of John's novels have beenn optioned for film, and he has written the screenplay adaptation of Strange But True, which is currently in development with GreeneStreet Films. John received his Masters degree in creative writing from New York University. He lives in New York City.

John Searles' web-site