The Writers' Collective

Winnipeg Public Library, Arbeiter Ring Publishing and the Manitoba Editors’ Association are proud to present a panel discussion on Jila Ghomeshi’s
“Grammar Matters: The Social Significance of How We Use Language.”
Please join moderator Jenny Gates; Jila Ghomeshi; Morley Walker, journalist at the Winnipeg Free Press; and Bev Phillips, editor and member of Manitoba Editors’ Association for a lively discussion and debate about grammar and the politics of language.
Millennium Library
Carol Shields Auditorium
251 Donald Street
Thursday, April 14 – 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Doors open at 6:45 p.m.

Elementary, My Dear Writers
Demystifying the Publishing Process
From the first sentence to the proudly displayed finished book – what happens in between and how do you get there? For new and established writers, editors, and publishers
Saturday, May 14th, 2011
Keynote Speaker: Mary-Ann  Kirkby
author of I Am Hutterite
Panel Presentations:
Choosing the Process – Traditional and Self-Publishing
The  Beginning – Researching the Market, Writing, and Editing
The  Next Steps – Printing, Promoting, and Distributing
Earlybird prices:  March 7th to April 14th

For more information, go to the Manitoba Editor’s Association Website. Brought to you by the Manitoba Editors’ Association, in partnership with the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers, the Manitoba Writers’ Guild, the Society for Technical Communication (Manitoba), and the Editors’ Association of Canada (Prairie Provinces Branch).

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Story as a Function of Desire and Choice
A Fiction Workshop with Dave Margoshes

May 7th – 11:00 am to 6:00 pm
Location: Aqua Books (274 Garry Street, between Graham and Portage)
The workshop is limited to 12 people.
Bring a notebook and pen.

Cost: $75 plus GST. Contact [email protected] or 943-7555 to register.

A talk and hands-on workshop focusing on the role of desire in fiction. “Desire,” in this context, is not a code word for sexuality, but rather an indication of what the characters in a story, primarily the main character or characters, want: what do they want, what’s standing in the way, how will they go about getting it? When you’ve figured that out, your story’s half done.

Dave Margoshes is a Saskatoon-area poet and fiction writer whose stories and poems are widely published in literary magazines and anthologies throughout North America, including six times in the Best Canadian Stories volumes. In 2009, he was a finalist for the Journey Prize. His Bix’s Trumpet and Other Stories was named Book of the Year at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards. He published two new books of poetry in the last two years: The Horse Knows the Way (BuschekBooks, 2009) and Dimensions of an Orchard (Black Moss Press, 2010), which won the Anne Szumigalski Poetry Prize at the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Awards. He’s given numerous workshops and taught creative writing in a number of settings, for writers at varying levels of experience. He was writer in residence in Winnipeg in 1995-96.

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Aqua Books  /  Lansdowne Prize for Poetry Nominees Reading
Thursday, March 31st – 7:00 p.m.
Featuring: Jonathan Ball, Ariel Gordon & Lori Cayer
Cost: FREE!

Jonathan Ball, Ariel Gordon and Lori Cayer have been shortlisted for this year’s Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Prix Lansdowne de poésie.

Aqua Books  /  Speaking Crow Open Mic
Tuesday, April 5th – 7:00 p.m.
Featuring: Adam Kroeker
Cost: FREE

Aqua Books is pleased to be the permanent home of the venerable poetry series Speaking Crow.

The Crow starts at 7pm and is followed by two open-mic sets and short breaks in between. Come take up the mic and wax poetic about life, the universe and everything!

Adam Kroeker is a Winnipeg poet and creative M.A. graduate. His recent works include Tales from Old Colony (a collection of fake Mennonite folk stories), Killing the Pot (a poetry/pottery installation featured at Winnipeg’s Estudio Luna), and Deep Dipper (poems around an alliterative roller coaster in old Fort Rouge). His writing explores nostalgia, ruins, interactivity, and commonplace mysticism.

The CreComm Reading Series
Wednesday, April 6th – 7:00  pm
Featuring Jonathan Garfinkel with Daniella Ponticelli
Cost: FREE

Red River College’s Creative Communications (“CreComm”) program is the training ground for Manitoba’s professional communicators.
The CreComm Reading Series, curated by K.I. Press, brings writers of all genres to Winnipeg. Opening acts are current and former CreCommers with creative works-in-progress.
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Daniella Ponticelli is a first-year Creative Communications student at Red River College. Aside from  writing courses at university, most of her writing comes from late night inspirations and Sunday afternoon surprises. Visit her blog Cre.ature Feed, where she posts poetry, fiction, and quirky insights.

Jonathan Garfinkel is the author of a book of poetry, Glass Psalms, (Turnstone Press, 2005) and several plays, including Walking to Russia, The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret and House of Many Tongues. His memoir, Ambivalence: Crossing the Israel/Palestine Divide (Penguin Canada 2007), has been published in five countries, and his plays have been produced across Canada and Germany. He is the recipient of numerous residencies, including a year-long fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. He also won the KM Hunter Award for Emerging Artists in 2008. Jonathan currently divides his time between Toronto and Berlin.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

Aqua Books / Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction Nominee Readings
Thursday April 7th – 7:00 p.m.
Featuring: Dora Dueck, Patti Grayson, David Arnason, Joan Thomas & David Bergen
Cost: FREE!

Dora Dueck, Patti Grayson, David Arnason, Joan Thomas and David Bergen have been shortlisted for this year’s Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction.
The prize will be awarded at the Manitoba Book Awards on April 17, but in the meantime, Aqua Books is continuing its tradition of hosting nominee readings.
Bookstore owner Kelly Hughes will host.
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Dora Dueck is author of the novel Under the Still Standing Sun and co-editor of Northern Lights: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Writing in Canada. Her stories have been featured on CBC Radio, and in journals such as Room, Prairie Fire, Rhubarb, and Journal of Mennonite Studies. She lives in Winnipeg.

Autumn, One Spring is Patti Grayson’s first novel. Her short fiction collection, Core Samples, garnered nominations for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer and the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book. Patti has worked as a school librarian, advertising copywriter, puppeteer, and actor. She lives near Winnipeg, Manitoba.

David Bergen is the author of five novels and a collection of short stories. A Year of Lesser was a New York Times Notable Book and The Case of Lena S., a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. In 2005, he won the Giller Prize for The Time In Between . Bergen is the winner of the 2009 Writers’ Trust Notable Author Award.

National Poetry Month Reading
Tuesday, April 12, 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Featuring Charles Leblanc & Alison Calder
Where: Main floor, Millennium Library (251 Donald Street)
Cost: FREE!

Every spring, the League of Canadian Poets celebrates National Poetry Month, which is dedicated to reading, writing, speaking and promoting poetry.
In 2011, the League of Canadian Poets will also celebrate 25 years of the Public Lending Right in Canada, which attempts to both nurture poets and provide free access to their work. This spring, explore Poets + Libraries = PLR for National Poetry Month!

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Charles Leblanc is a St. Boniface translator, writer, actor and poet. He is a founding member of the Collectif post-néo-rieliste, and helps to create the Foyer des écrivains, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival’s francophone programming. He won Manitoba’s Prix littéraire Rue-Deschambault in 2005 for l’appétit du compteur. Last title: des briques pour un vitrail (collected works) (2008).

Alison Calder’s poetry collection, Wolf Tree (Coteau 2007), won two Manitoba Book Awards and was a finalist for both the Gerald Lampert Award and the Pat Lowther Award. Her collaboration with Jeanette Lynes led to the chapbook Ghost Works: Improvisations in Letters and Poems (Jackpine Press 2007). She’s taught creative writing in Germany and China, and been invited to read her work in France and the United States. Alison lives in Winnipeg, where she teaches Canadian literature and creative writing in the Department of English, Film, and Theatre at the University of Manitoba.

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The 2012 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest
Quattro Books will publish the two best novella manuscripts (15,000 to 42,000 words) submitted to us by July 1, 2011.
Send your manuscript, neatly typed, along with a $15 reader’s fee, to Quattro Books, CSI Annex, 720 Bathurst Street, Suite 200, Toronto, ON, M5S 2R4.
Please include an e-mail address. Applicants must be Canadian citizens. Submissions will not be returned. For more information, visit http://www.quattrobooks.ca

PEIWG (CAN/NAT) ANNOUNCING LAKE’S Special Issue on Indigenous Peoples, Health, and Place
Submissions of original unpublished fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, and visual arts related to Indigenous peoples’ health
as connected to place are now being solicited for LAKE’s Special Issue on Indigenous Peoples, Health, and Place.
A deep and abiding connection between genealogy and a specific place or territory is fundamental to many Indigenous peoples’ sense of self and community and, consequently, to identity and well-being. Conversely, disruption of place and deterritorialization adversely affect the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples. Creative practice and artistic expression are two means by which Indigenous people (historically and contemporarily) have expressed connections between identity and place and, associatively, maintained sociocultural and physical health through the generations.
LAKE: A Journal of Arts and Environment is pleased to announce a special issue on Indigenous Peoples, Health, and Place. The purpose of this issue is to explore, through creative expression, Indigenous peoples’ health as connected to place. Health in this context is understood in the broadest of ways – a holistic, dynamic, and multi-dimensional state of well-being at both individual and community levels. Specifically, we are seeking expressions in various media by Indigenous artists and writers from across Canada who are concerned with health and well-being through the generations, from birth to passing, as it is related to connection with place and the environment.
LAKE is a peer-reviewed publication with both a print and online presence. This special issue will be edited in partnership and by consensus between the University of British Columbia Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies Lake Journal editorial collective (Nancy Holmes, Sharon Thesen, Briar Craig, and Gary Pearson), and special-issue editors Margo Greenwood (an Indigenous Cree woman and Academic Leader of the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health) and Sarah de Leeuw (a writer, geographer, and faculty with the Northern Medical Program, the Faculty of Medicine at UBC). Selected work will appear either in the journal’s print or online format, or both, in Issue #7 in the fall of 2011.

Deadline for submission is May 15th, 2011. Please see submission guidelines on our website:
http://www.lakejournal.ca/submissions.html

Prairie Fire Press & McNally Robinson Booksellers
2011 Writing Contests
3 contests, $6,000 in cash prizes!

Bliss Carman Poetry Award
The poetry first prize is in part donated by the Banff Centre for the Arts, who will also award a jeweller-cast replica of poet Bliss Carman’s silver and turquoise ring to the first-prize winner. (1-3 poems per entry, maximum 150 lines per entry)
Judge: Sylvia Legris

Short Fiction
(one story per entry, maximum 10,000 words)
Judge: Marilyn Bowering

Creative Non-Fiction
(one article per entry, maximum 5,000 words)
Judge: Lawrence Scanlan

1st prize $1,250 2nd prize $500, 3rd prize $250 in all categories

Contest Rules

• Entry fee is $32 (per category). This entitles you or your designate to a one-year (4 issues) subscription to Prairie Fire. Make cheque or money order payable to Prairie Fire and enclose with your entry. You may also use all major credit cards.
• Deadline for all contest entries: Postmarked November 30, 2011.
• Do not identify yourself on your entry. Please enclose a cover letter with your name, address, telephone number and/or e-mail address, the title(s) of your piece(s), and word count (prose), or line count (poetry) along with your entry fee.
• No faxed or e-mailed submissions, please.
• Your entry must be typed on 8 1/2 x 11-inch white paper and the pages clipped, not stapled. Prose must be double-spaced.
• Entries will not be returned. If you want to be informed of results, include a stamped, self-addressed envelope, or check our website at http://www.prairiefire.ca.
• Each piece must be original, unpublished, not submitted elsewhere for publication or broadcast, nor entered simultaneously in any other contest or competition.
• You may enter as often as you like; only your first entry in each category will be eligible for a subscription.
• Winning pieces will be published in Prairie Fire magazine, with authors paid for publication.

Send entries to: Prairie Fire Press, 423-100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg, MB R3B 1H3.
For more information check out our website at http://www.prairiefire.ca call (204) 943-9066, or e-mail us at [email protected]

RHUBARB MAGAZINE CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR JEWISH, UKRAINIAN, MENNONITE
SPECIAL ISSUE

Rhubarb magazine is soliciting submissions from writers and artists who self-identify as being of Jewish, Ukrainian, or Mennonite cultural heritage for a special issue to be published in spring 2012. It’s been a century or more since our ancestors came to North America. We share much in our common history: emigration in the face of oppression, pride of community, marginalization within the mainstream. We also acknowledge tensions among our communities. This issue will explore how the writing and art we now make expresses both these commonalities and differences.
GUEST EDITORS:
Myrna Kostash – all non-fiction
Rhea Tregebov – all poetry
Rudy Wiebe – all fiction

There will be some cross-over and communication but the final decision will be made as indicated above.
DEADLINE DATE: December 1, 2011 PUBLICATION DATE March 2012
SUBMISSIONS: Only email submissions for this issue. Attachments accepted in
Word doc or docx, images Tiff or Jpeg. Email all submissions to
[email protected]

GENERAL GUIDELINES
Writing should be clear, stimulating and persuasive without being obviously didactic. Rhubarb publishes poetry of up to 30 lines, creative non-fiction and short fiction of up to 2,500 words and black and white art work including high contrast photographs that reproduce well in the magazine printing process. Some colour images may be used and we will need one for the cover of the issue.
Rhubarb also publishes humour, book reviews, commentary, issues analysis and articles related to the theme.
All submissions should include a short bio and the full name and address of the contributor.

Visual Arts News (Halifax, NS) Editor
Freelance contract position, $1700/per issue.
Applications must be received by April 1, 2011.

Visual Arts News is the only magazine dedicated to contemporary visual art in Nova Scotia, published three times a year in May, September and January. Every issue includes engaging exhibition reviews, artist profiles and in-depth features on issues facing arts professionals across the province. As one of the oldest cultural publications in Atlantic Canada, it is a well-trusted source of information for readers with a passion for its thriving visual arts scene. http://www.visualartsnews.ca
The Editor, in conjunction with the Editorial Committee is responsible for developing magazine content for features, reviews, profiles and artist pages. In conjunction with the Publisher, the Editor coordinates all aspects of publication development, and pre-press preparations including story selection, photography, and copy editing. The editor works closely with freelance writers, and is responsible for surveying and keeping abreast of significant development in the visual arts both locally and abroad.
The successful applicant will have an undergraduate degree in the arts, or equivalent experience, excellent writing, editing and speaking skills. Knowledge and interest in the visual arts in Nova Scotia, Atlantic Canada and beyond is a requirement.
As the lead individual in the production of the magazine, s/he should have strong leadership and organizational skills and able to work independently.  Knowledge of the design and related printing processes are an asset. The Magazine Editor reports to the Publisher.
Submissions should include covering letter and resume.

Please forward to submissions to: Search Committee,Visual Arts News, 1113 Marginal Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4P7 ormailto:[email protected]

How you can help 

As you can imagine, the email inbox was quite full when I started work last week.
If you emailed asking a question prior to my arrival, but haven’t yet received an answer, please email me again at:[email protected] and I’ll get you an answer right away.

Until next week,

- Karen