Thank you for visiting Dream of Things!
Dream of Things is a book publisher and online retailer. We are dedicated to producing high-quality books of creative nonfiction (see “Guidelines for Anthologies” for definition of creative nonfiction). Our primary focus is on producing anthologies of stories built around a central topic or theme (Wise Men and Other Stories is an example), and motivational and inspirational gift books (The Note is an example).
Payment
Dream of Things pays a 15% royalty on hardback books, a 10% royalty on trade paperback books, and a 20-40% royalty on electronic books (depending on the sales channel). For anthologies, Dream of Things purchases one-time rights. Royalties are paid quarterly. Each author’s share of the royalties is prorated based on word count. (Example: If you contribute a 2,000-word story to a 40,000-word book, you will receive 5% of the royalties for that book.) Authors also receive five free copies upon publication, and a 50% discount on additional copies. For motivational and inspirational gift books, payment terms and rights are negotiable.How to Submit
E-mail submissions to editor@dreamofthings.com. Put the name of your story in the “subject” line of your e-mail, and include your story in the body of the e-mail or as an attachment to the e-mail. Be sure to include the following information in your e-mail:
1. The topic of the book for which you are submitting the story (see current topics on our Workshop page).
2. Your contact information – including your name, e-mail address, telephone number and mailing address.
3. The word count of your story.
4. If your story has been published before, tell us when and where it was published.Guidelines for Anthologies
We seek creative nonfiction for anthologies on various topics. See our Workshop page for a list of current topics.“Creative nonfiction” means true stories told in a creative and compelling manner. The story you submit should be inspiring, heartwarming, humorous or thought-provoking. Most of all, the story you submit should be a story. Tell us the story of a meaningful or humorous experience, or the story of an interesting or colorful person. It’s not enough to simply share your insights and observations; tell us the story of how you learned those lessons. Similarly, it’s not enough to simply write about an interesting person; tell us the story that shows that person at his or her best.
Your story can be anywhere from 500 to 5,000 words long. We accept previously published material as long as you have retained rights to the work. We also accept multiple and simultaneous submissions. You will receive initial notice of Dream of Thing’s interest in 4-6 weeks, and final notice 6-8 weeks prior to publication.
Guidelines for Motivational and Inspirational Gift Books
All submissions for anthologies are automatically considered for use in our motivational and inspirational gift books. These books are built around particularly strong stories that have the potential to serve as the cornerstone for an entire book. The Note and Paper Airplane are examples of books about appreciation and creativity, respectively, built around strong stories. If you have an idea for a gift book built around one of your stories, please send us a query letter explaining your idea.
Cosmos Mariner Award $500
Now is the time to enter our Cosmos Mariner Award Poetry Contest!: $500 to the winner. Judge: David Kirby. 3-5 unpublished poems (10 pages max.), postmarked May 15. SASE and a $10 check payable to PSGA. Include contact information on cover sheet only. Indicate simultaneous submissions. Manuscripts will not returned. Send to Poetry Society of Georgia P.O. Box 15625 Savannah, GA 31416. There will be no electronic submissions. The winning poem will be published in our yearbook, an annual mailed out to all members, and posted on this blog site. Announcement date of winner to come.
Sharpeville Now
March 21, 2010 · Leave a Comment
Today, March 21, is Human Rights Day in South Africa. It should be called Sharpeville Day instead. 50 years ago today white police attacked and killed 69 black protesters (they also wounded or injured several others) who were peacefully protesting the pass laws which restricted the free movement of black South Africans. But what is life like for the residents of the township today?
Apart from formal political freedom, apparently not much has changed:
“Sharpeville Still Bleeding” [Mail & Guardian]
“Sharpeville, Legacy of a Massacre” [Al Jazeera English]
“Sharpeville 50 years on: ‘At some stage all hell will break loose‘” [The Guardian]
And here are some visuals of service delivery protests in the township in February this year:
=================================
- Countries:
- South Africa
- Topics:
- History, Racism, Politics
- Languages:
- English
On 21 March 1960 the South African police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters who were part of political campaign organized by the Pan African Congress (PAC) against pass laws. It is estimated that 69 people were killed on that day in the township of Sharpeville. This horrific event is commonly known as Sharpeville Massacre .
Sharpeville massacre was the turning point in the history of political resistance to Apartheid in South Africa. Since 1994, 21 March is Human Rights Day in South Africa. March 21 is also the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in memory of the massacre.
Every March 21st, Rethabile posts a poem to remember Sharpeville massacre. His Sharpeville poem for this year is posted on Black Looks:
the day king walked
from selma to montgomery,
the tops of trees shook
as in a forest, and shivered
for this man who had crossed a line
of centuries in the south, but
even more south, we worried for our lot,
resolved as we were to break you,
but you to put us with our ancestors.
of course there have never been questions:
why shoot them in the back? why shoot them?
why shoot? why? but our name got its shrine
where the children now gather,
for sixty-nine of us lay on the street
on that day in march sixty. as others
filled hospitals and covered cell-floors
with clenched bodies, dachau
was completed, stowe published her book,
alcatraz was shut down for good, and
we moved from non-whites
to non-carriers of passbooks.
© Rethabile Masilo
He also posts a poem by South African political activist and poetDennis Brutus. It is titled, “A Poem About Sharpeville”:
What is important
about Sharpeville
is not that seventy died:
nor even that they were shot in the back
retreating, unarmed, defenseless
and certainly not
the heavy caliber slug
that tore through a mother’s back
and ripped through the child in her arms
killing it
Remember Sharpeville
bullet-in-the-back day
Because it epitomized oppression
and the nature of society
more clearly than anything else;
it was the classic event
Nowhere is racial dominance
more clearly defined
nowhere the will to oppress
more clearly demonstrated
what the world whispers
apartheid with snarling guns
the blood lust after
South Africa spills in the dust
Remember Sharpeville
Remember bullet-in-the-back day
And remember the unquenchable will for freedom
Remember the dead
and be glad.
© Dennis Brutus
Travel Blog Portfolio wishes all South Africans a safe and peaceful Human Rights day and ask them to learn more about Sharpeville Day.
How could such atrocities happen and no one is punished?, asks Sokari Ekine:
It’s been a long time coming, but change is gonna come, sang Sam Cooke about America. He could have been singing about South Africa, or the world, even. For what is baffling is how Sharpeville 1960, Soweto 1976, King’s and X’s murders, the Civil Rights movement, Mandela’s 27 years in jail, not to mention the thousands tortured and killed in South Africa, and tortured and lynched in America, what is baffling is how these have not entered the minds of all and instructed them on the evils of discrimination and segregation in all its forms. That is truly baffling to me.
It is also amazingly stunning that all these things happened and almost no one got punished for it, no international hunt for the wrong-doers, no motivation to see them “brought to justice,” as George Bush the son would say about so many who had committed so less. Today is a day to remember and to know why it should be remembered
Alpha Christian discusses the link between Good Friday, Human Rights Day and Sharpeville Day:
In a recent column in the Beeld, Nico Botha, deals with this anomaly where the Good Friday falls on the same date as the Human Rights Day, or, even better, the commemoration of Sharpeville Day. For many the debate was whether we will loose a public holiday as workers.
Where are we to find the key to link Good Friday to the significance of today, Human Rights day, Sharpeville day ?
I believe the little dialogue between Jesus and Pilate helps us to start to understand this link.
Michael Trapido remembers this day in his post on Thought Leader titled Sharpeville Redux and a Bit More:
On that fateful day a group of between 5 000 and 7 000 people converged on the local police station in the township of Sharpeville, offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying their pass books.
As the large crowd gathered the atmosphere was peaceful and festive with less than 20 police officers in the station at the start of the protest. Police and military tried using low-flying jet fighters in an attempt disperse the crowd without success.
As a result the police set up Saracen armoured vehicles in a line facing the protesters and, at 13:15, incredibly, opened fire on the crowd.
He continues:
The official casualties were 69 people killed, including 8 women and 10 children, with more than 180 injured.
To date the worst case of police insanity in the history of this country.
As a result there followed a spontaneous uprising among black South Africans with demonstrations, protest marches, strikes, and riots taking place throughout the country.
This led to the government declaring a state of emergency on March 30 1960, which saw more than 18 000 people detained.
Texas In Africa notes that Sharpeville was the first major turning point in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and that the massacre led to the militarisation of the anti-apartheid movement:
The rest of the world started to question the regime's racist policies much more openly; South Africa left the commonwealth a year later.
It also provoked the militarization of the anti-apartheid movement. The ANC's militant wing, MK (Umkhonto wa Sizwe) and Poqo, the military wing of the PAC, both formed soon after the massacre. The next thirty years were marked with horrific acts of violence before - to almost everyone's surprise - the evil of apartheid ended peacefully.
Five years later to the day, American civil rights protesters led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began marching from Selma to Montgomery. The attempt by 600 marchers to do the same thing three weeks earlier culminated in Bloody Sunday, an attack by local and state law enforcement officials. With a protective order from a federal judge, five times as many marchers turned out for the March 21 walk. A few months later, LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, which effectively ended the last vestiges of legal discrimination in the south.
My students (whom, you will remember, are almost all black men) sometimes debate the question: “Are you a Malcolm or a Martin?” What they mean by this is, “Is social change best achieved through peaceful means (as MLK carried out his work) or violent means (as Malcolm X advocated)?”
I cannot even begin to claim to be qualified to answer this question. If we look at political history, it's clear that MLK's nonviolent methods worked to restore voting rights and some degree of social equality for American minorities, and they worked relatively quickly. MK and Poqo's violent methods certainly also had an effect on the apartheid regime, although the struggle was very long and ultimately did not end because of violence but rather because of economic turmoil and Mandela's willingness to negotiate a peaceful settlement with de Klerk. But nothing approaching true equality of economic opportunity has happened for the vast majority of blacks in either country.
Abioye discusses the international dimension of Sharpeville Day:
In 1966 the General Assembly of the UN proclaimed March 21, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The UN called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination. The Canadian government and various institutions in Canada including Carleton University and the University of Toronto, colluded with the white supremacist apartheid government of South Africa by refusing to
divest and continuing to trade with the government and South African companies.
South Africa Good News has posted a statement from Nelson Mandela Foundation:
March 21, 2010, marks 50 years since 69 unarmed protestors were killed by South African police outside a police station in Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg.
Nelson Mandela burning his pass on March 28, 1960, in protest to the atrocities at SharpevilleWhen commemorating Human Rights day, during his presidency, Nelson Mandela said: “21 March is South African Human Rights Day. It is a day which, more than many others, captures the essence of the struggle of the South African people and the soul of our non-racial democracy. March 21 is the day on which we remember and sing praises to those who perished in the name of democracy and human dignity. It is also a day on which we reflect and assess the progress we are making in enshrining basic human rights and values.”
Photographer Greg Marinovich has Sharpeville Massacre photos on his blog.
The Sharpeville Massacre led to new ways of political organisation and resistance. The African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan African Congress (PAC) were banned after the Sharpeville Massacre.
Monako Dibetle notes in his column in the Mail & Guardian thatSharpeville is still bleeding. Recently, the residents of Sharpevillerioted over poor social services .
This post is also available in:
Español: Haití: Dos meses después Today marks two months since the January 12 earthquake devastated Haiti - and even in the midst of other natural disasters, bloggers still seem to be struggling to come to grips with what this tragedy actually means for the people of a nation that is often referred to as “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.”
The day to day reality of post-quake life in Port-au-Prince and environs is markedly different from the glory days of Haiti's proud past, which HaitiAnalysis.com ably chronicles in this post by Mara Chinelli of CampusTimes.org:
In the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake the words of slave general Toussaint L’Ouverture come to mind: “In overthrowing me, you have cut down in San Domingo only the trunk of the tree of black liberty. It will spring up again by the roots for they are numerous and deep.” Perhaps a politically charged maxim does not seem appropriate in the face of a natural disaster. Yet this revolutionary saying has echoed throughout Haiti’s struggles for stability and democracy. When we look at the current events in Haiti, we must consider the historical actors that built its vulnerable infrastructure.
The post goes on to examine the chain of events that took place from the time that Haiti “proclaimed itself the first black republic in 1804″ until “the 20th century, [when] U.S. intervention determined Haiti’s fate” and suggests that:
Now more than ever the United States must acknowledge history and rethink its approach to Haiti…
The Obama administration should also take greater steps beyond a temporary protected status for Haitian immigrants. Displacement and homelessness will surely increase Haitian migration. The international community must ensure that aid for reconstruction resists foreign interests and reaches the Haitian people. This will not cure political ailments, but it will begin a reorganization of power.
This call for Temporary Protected Status is not new. Twitter user texascane81 even posted that “We have been advocating for TPS for Haiti since September 2008.” When the decision by the United States finally came, as part of its response to support the earthquake recovery effort, it was accompanied by a carefully worded caveat from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. According to CAF Blog:
While she declined to specify the consequences for those caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally, she said, ‘At this moment of tragedy in Haiti, it is tempting for people suffering in the aftermath of the earthquake to seek refuge elsewhere, but attempting to leave Haiti now will only bring more hardship to the Haitian people and nation.'
While the United States was sending a message of cautious humanitarianism, the Bahamian government was apparently opening its arms. Bahamian bloggers had a lot to say about their government's “decision to grant temporary status to Haitian detainees.” Womanish Words comments:
I support my government's decision…and wonder at the inhumanity of those who are on the radio and in the papers criticizing this gesture.
I call on the government to stop apprehension exercises as well, in the name of the 50,000 people who died in the quake. I call on the government to also establish an amnesty period for all undocumented Haitians in the Bahamas to come forward so that they too can receive temporary status. And now that I think of it, why is it ‘temporary' status? Let them stay, let us have mercy, let love and mercy prevail.
Haitian-Bahamian Solidarity notes that:
The history of our country and of Haiti are intertwined and deeply connected. Although we don’t recognize the connections often enough, or think of them with much positivity all too often (Haitians are often labelled as ‘illegals' even when they are perfectly legal immigrants and residents), this tragedy has made far more Bahamians than ever before deeply aware of the long, long relationship of exchange, mutuality and kinship between our two countries. But we have a long way to go.
Jamaican blogger Long Bench also saw it fit to post a response to “Danville Walker’s letter to the editor published on Feb. 1 in the Gleaner”:
Frankly, I am rather disappointed that Danville Walker has chosen to jump on the bandwagon and frame the arrival of Haitian refugees as, first and foremost, a public health threat…
More generally, what is it about the way we insist on thinking about Haitians that allows us to intentionally cast them as dirty, diseased and backward, a status, according to Mr. Walker, that is only enhanced by their ‘lack of familiarity with the English Language.' Such arguments are truly self-serving, and say much more about us, than it does about the people who are being demonized and mischaracterised in these pejorative ways.
At the end of the day, this is primarily an immigration issue. Haitian refugees are not criminals, and should not be treated by citizens or represented in the media as such. They should be subjected to the same procedures that others currently undergo when they come to Jamaica to live or to stay for long periods of time. Nothing less than fairness and respect for their dignity should be accorded to any persons who come to our country, for whatever reason.
The HaitiAnalysis post, however, understands that “currently Haiti’s main priority is immediate aid distribution”, adding:
Despite the fact that ships with aid arrived promptly after the earthquake, U.S. security regulations prevented its immediate distribution.
Major aid organizations abide by the U.S. State Department’s security restrictions on designated ‘Red Zones.' As a result, the United Nations and the United States have increased militarization of aid distribution.
These 'security measures' have prevented efficient aid distribution and much needed rapport with local communities.
This has been a common complaint from bloggers on the ground in Haiti - this tweet confirmed the existence of “MINUSTAH's red, yellow, and green zone security map of Port-Au-Prince, as of today…”
“Red, yellow, and green zone security map of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti”, image by mediahacker, used under a Creative Commons license. Visit mediahacker's flickr photostream.As part of the map's caption on his flickr page, Mediahacker states:
MINUSTAH spokesperson gave me this map, which they provide to NGOs. Green (covering Petionville only) indicates residential areas with no history of insecurity, he said. And yet, rumors abound that two aid workers were just kidnapped in the green zone.
The spokesperson said MINUSTAH recommends aid groups are accompanied by a security detail wherever they go and that the majority of them do request assistance from UN or Haitian forces. He said MINUSTAH is meeting 100% of the requests made for security accompaniment.
Bloggers confirm talk of a kidnapping, but their accounts of effective allocation of resources are markedly different. RAMHaiti was quite vocal about it on Twitter. His first update asked:
Does anyone know where ACTED is or how to contact them? They're supposed to be in charge of Carrefour Feuilles..
Later, he tweeted again:
ACTED: resp. for Leogane and Carrefour feuilles relief..Missing In Action:can't reach them on phone
…and was re-tweeted here:
RT @Tass101: @RAMhaiti Trust me, ACTED is missing in ACTION in Leogane because the people there don't see anything concrete being done.
melindayiti also weighs in:
Still reeling over the false reports by major agencies about the situation in #Haiti… 80% food saturation? No f-ing way.
And in the midst of it all looms Haiti's uncertain political situation, about which RAMHaiti sardonically says:
PR machine says Preval wants 2 remain #HAITI President till all RECON$TRUCTION CONTRACT$ r handed out. Both CLINTON$ OK with that. @DinoJag
Transparency and good governance continue to be among bloggers' ongoing concerns:
RT @domzz: RT @nadprecious: #Haiti umm what happened to the $324mill that was donated in April 09 to help rebuild? @RAMhaiti @carelpedre
HaitiAnalysis, though, has faith in the tenacity of the Haitian people to overcome:
Haitians are capable of extricating their nation from the most common phrase used to describe it: ‘the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.' Able-bodied Haitian men have organized to look for people under the rubble, and protect tent communities erected in Port-au-Prince. Homeless mothers care for their children and look after others orphaned by the earthquake.
In the face of incredible loss of life and infrastructure, Haitians are cooperating with each other. With this in mind, the international community needs to rethink its relationship with Haiti
The thumbnail image used in this post, “Haiti EQ:Collapsed Ministry of Justice”, is by AIDG, used under a Creative Commons license. Visit AIDG's flickr photostream.
.
An Interview with Ronaldo V. Wilson
Ronaldo V. Wilson is the author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, from University of Pittsburgh Press, and Poems of the Black Object from Futurepoem Books. He has held fellowships at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Vermont Studio Center, Cave Canem, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Yaddo Corporation, and has had four poems nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He teaches creative writing and African American Poetics at Mount Holyoke College. In December 2009, he was interviewed over e-mail about Poems of the Black Object. They discuss, among other things, Notorious B.I.G., New York City in the early '90s, how he earned his early nickname of “Got Rocks,” and why Tony Hoagland’s dirty potato = Ronaldo’s bloody white daddy.
Hey Ronaldo. I’m not really sure how to say this, so I’ll start like this: From what I remember of you, and I just saw you a couple of months ago, here’s how I would describe you:
· Nice
· Normal
· Of the world
· Easy-breezy
· Cool
· Socially savvy
· Sexy
· Smooth
· AttractiveI’m not sure if you’ve noticed this yourself, but your book Poems of the Black Object is really not any of those things. To be generous in my restraint: It’s so terribly disturbing that while I was reading it, I kept turning my head to the side like someone was flicking hot water in my eyes. And so absurd that at points, I just burst out laughing, and then wondered: Who’s more deranged -- you for thinking it, or me for liking it? For our readers, let’s just put out a small warning, shall we?
Disclaimer: It is quite possible when reading this book you may stumble across a walrus representing black suffrage. Also, if you turn around too quickly, you may find yourself in a crack hotel with an old white guy from Stamford in his underwear, the ass completely blood-soaked, saying, “Well, that’s okay, you can still work the front.” Maybe that’s not an exact quote but you get the point.
Let me start by saying thank you for the nice compliments, both the litany of adjectives you use to describe encountering me, and your vivid reactions to the poems. Experiencing off-the-chain-craziness, hot water in the eyes and laughter after reading my poetry is certainly high praise! So while I do aspire to many of the words you use in your list, the writing of poetry offers a space to explore the world in a variety of ways that might attenuate this social self.
Remember, after I read a little, I wrote you a quick e-mail, saying something like “I don't even know how you had the guts to write this stuff.” And you wrote back, “As Biggie said, ‘It was all a dream.’”
The Notorious B.I.G. reference is from the song “Juicy,” which I love, and seems to often pop up in my head at one point or another. This song, in a sense, is about dream as aspiration, and in another sense, dream as reflection, but its allure for me, is in its occasion, the way the artist returns to and claims his destiny as a hip hop artist through extenuated recollection and celebration of his beginnings. There’s a key scene in the film Notorious, based on Biggie Smalls’ life, where the artist holes himself up in the studio with the infamous Mtume “Juicy” remix track, after at first, resisting it when Puff Daddy urges him to set aside his usual tastes. Too R&B, too soft, Big thinks, but after some cajoling by Puff, he falls for and into the seductive sample, and in time, flows with lyrics that eventually reach the world.
When I said to you, “It was all a dream,” I was tapping into how the writing captures my own getting into my own unconscious, my own flow, reaching back into an almost dreamlike, extended period in my life when I was bringing together all of my experiences living in New York, trying to record everything that seemed interesting, complicated, and strange. As you know, as a poetry student at NYU, we had great teachers like Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnell, Cornelius Eady and even had fantastic weekend guest visits by (I still can’t believe it) Stanley Kunitz, and Gwendolyn Brooks! And while Big had Word Up, I had Poets & Writers!
But simply being in New York in the early '90s was exciting, as so many things were in their final throes of glory during the Giuliani Era: sex clubs like J’s The Hangout, The Manhole, The Wall Street Sauna, the wildness of the street walkers of the Meat Packing District, Slam Poetry at the Nuyorican, Nell’s, Club Kids, the Limelight, Boy Bar, then there was the sex cruising routes at Penn Station, Port Authority, Grand Central (See Samuel Delaney’s Times Square Red Times Square Blue), various hotel lobbies, Bryant Park, The New York Public Library, restrooms, elevators, all coalescing into a dizzying arena that informed my work as a poet, then bled into my scholarly work (whether as intense distraction or peaked inspiration) as a doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Come to think of it, I think when you wrote that, “As Biggie said, ‘It was all a dream.’” you were talking about your last book, Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man. But I really want you to tell me this book, Poems of the Black Object, is all just a dream, too. Can you tell me that? And can you hold me, mommy?
Mommy-me thinks that maybe your interest in the dreamscapes are a good place to really jump right in at another angle, as I think more about where the boundaries (street/bed; library/hotel; urinal/phone booth; book/hand; dream/journal) are present, drawn, or even break between my autobiographical self and the various speakers in the poetry. Simply put, the various narrators in both books, at times, emerge in dreams, or at least in the realm of the dream as poetic landscape.
The tension in many of the poems, I think, comes from living between two distinct places in New York. While I kept an apartment in New York, first in Manhattan, before moving to Brooklyn, I also maintained a relationship with my partner of now 18 years. We share a house on Long Island. After my various adventures in the city, during the week, I would get on the L.I.R.R. come home, collapse, study, dream, eat, get fed, spoiled, and generate more material. Often, my work is framed around and within the grounds of this house. In fact, Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man came out of emerging from our bed (often fresh from dreams) into the work, walking down the stairs from the bedroom, into the small office, sleepy at the desk, and right to the laptop. I wanted to write something that felt natural, easy, something that did not have the forced compression of the poem or the drive of the literary essay, but drew upon both of these forces with equal vigor. I wanted to get unconscious with the work, to be as free as possible with the sentence, and then the paragraph, but I also wanted to be hyper sensitive to sound, picture, image, open to various shapes that I would discover. I would wake up, become this Brown Boy, and start to capture what he saw, heard, felt, without the press of any expectation, but to be super attentive. Writing from dreams, or more accurately, the liminal space between dream and wake space, I think, was key to my working process.
Maybe this technique had to do with my time at the Fine Arts Work Center, where I was preparing for the first set of my PhD oral examinations, working on an article on Ellen Gallagher’s paintings, all the while, writing poems. To manage the load, I found that I slept a lot and wrote just out of naps, reading, preparing, working to find a place where I would feel the most open, even vulnerable, like a baby waking up fresh to the world, still groggy but hungry to communicate.
When I moved to South Hadley, to finish my dissertation and to start teaching full time, I started to record a series of dreams over about a two-year period. I finished a long poem called, “Dream In a Fair,” that made its way into Poems of the Black Object which is made up of an amalgam of those dreams, and once again, it spirals between waking and dream states, something I am still interested in exploring as a mode through which to map out a kind of patterned consciousness from what is ostensibly almost purely, unconscious, was it all a dream? -- The poem asks and asks.
Your process is really close to mine actually -- and to a lot of poets, I would assume. I’ve always called it “squinting my mind” -- in other words, narrowing the mind to filter out “sense” -- thereby allowing only the most essential, unprocessed images/sounds/images sneak through the crack in their natural state. And your explanation about coming down in the morning, tired, and wanting to break away from the compression/form of the poem and the purposeful movement of the essay helps to explain the hybrid nature of both books. Which I was going to ask about but now don’t have to.
Well, I’d agree -- perhaps the very patterns that we choose to write in beg a kind of constant move towards opening the unconscious gap you speak of, flow, in Big’s case, or in mine, meditation, what I attempt to achieve in my daily yoga classes, the line, sound, the extended pattern that happens when one returns consciously to that squint by maintaining the compression that happens behind the eyes. I try to describe the need to attend to this moment in the poem “In-An-Imprint,” “…An arc of light. A burst that brights above a sidewalk you walk. Your own language against that flash…” is the way that I attempt to capture the features of that sensory experience, and to translate it into the poem. However, I hate to make it sound like poetry, for me, is so completely grounded in the unconscious and the effortless, because the very act of writing poetry, for me, is not only constantly negotiating how to tap into that unconscious space, but how to communicate very precise ideas, often arguments so often, in my work, about race, sexuality, and desire.
“Juicy” is your story, kind of, right? At NYU you were eating “sardines for dinner” and now you’re all “lunches, brunches, interviews by the pool.” Well, not the pool. But still, interviews. And I mentioned our upcoming interview to Daniel Nester, our former classmate, and he was like, “Yeah, Ronaldo: He’s a total rock star now. “ I think you should publish your next book under Notorious R.V.W.
I can’t resist comment, because I had a pretty split life as a poetry graduate student. During the week in Manhattan and later Brooklyn and the Bronx, I was a real graduate student, living on loans, working various jobs, studying, writing, but on the weekends, I struggled less, maybe hardly at all, spread out in Long Island, where I worked out, went on winery tours, shopped, and often dined on Arctic Char, Foie Gras, Rack of Lamb, various Ragouts, Molten Chocolate Cake, etc., etc with my partner. I am not sure why I have always gravitated towards opulence. My father was in the Navy for many years, then retired and worked for the government, until the military base where he worked closed, and my mother who trained as a journalist in the Philippines later became a certified nurses assistant in the US, which she still does today, so we were never rich. But, in any case, one of my mother’s favorite lines for me was “You think your rich!” Growing up, one of our treats was having dinner on the ship when we were stationed near one, or occasionally, at the NCO club on the base. I remember one dining experience when my siblings ordered the typical children-friendly burgers and fries, while I, at 6 or 7, ordered a filet mignon. I was teased the whole time, and the distance was marked between us, when my salad came first, then my soup and they sat with nothing. It was the first, and only time I can recall that I ate alone in front of my family. Of course, it didn’t help when I tried to share, they refused, and called me “Got Rocks,” but in any case, I learned then that I loved everything about the “fanciness” of that meal and somehow can still feel the resonant tension of that day.
And in terms of interviews -- I don’t like pools much -- I prefer the ocean! In fact, my days as a PhD student were even more decadent. At one point, thanks to my partner, who also loves the water, I had to re-take sections of my first comp exams because I swore up and down during that very important summer when I should have been huddled in the library, I would study successfully on the beach, in between touring Provincetown, Martha’s Vineyard, and the Hamptons, all the while dusting sand off my books and baking in the sun failing to master during that time much of anything I could prove about periodicity, scansion, meter -- those were the days!
The Days. I love thinking about The Days, any of them really. Funny story: My friend David was over the other day, and he was all kicked back, feet up on our ottoman, and he started digging around in this basket of books I keep by my reading chair, and he just looked so… relaxed… so I figured I’d mix things up, so I was like, “Oooh, no wait, you should read THIS!” and I opened up to the short vignette, “Blood,” in “The Black Objects Memory” (aka “bloody underwear poem”) and was like, “Okay, I’ll be right back!” and left the room. A few minutes later, I came bouncing back and found him, eyes all milked over, mouth half open.
Me: “So, what’dya think?! GOOD, right?”
David [total monotone]: “I... feel... traumatized.”
So that’s GOOD, right? Poems that have feelings and make people feel feelings?
I do understand, it’s hard not to be traumatized as one encounters such human vulnerability, the grey old man in that poem bleeding, first as private spectacle in the hotel room, then on the subway platform, all the while still all alone in the city -- add to this that the old man is marked (in the poem) as white, wealthy, horny, closeted, married, and otherwise, by outward appearances, seemingly stable. All the while, this black object, the poetic I, as idea, recorder, reporter reads and recounts the old white man’s vulnerability, and gives it -- in detail -- back to the viewer in his own measured, prosaic voice. I love poetry for allowing the tools with which one can capture, create and perform such an experience for the reader that tests the shifting limits of trauma by mapping out the power arrangements in such an encounter between human beings.
Of course, one can “read” the poem in any way one wishes, by simply feeling traumatized, which as the author, I’d certainly call a success. But another thing I am attempting to point out in the poem is to unveil assumptions of race, class, and gender that manifest within the titanic structure of the kind of man (type/trope/design/flesh) that the speaker of the poem experiences. One would be surprised at the utter sexy debacle that exists within those highly structured suits and ties, and even certain heavy knit sweaters, the sheer force of stitch-form that contains, suspends age, fat, bulk, lump. After the jacket -- after the belt -- after the crisp shirt, the body bulges all over the place.
Utter sexy debacle. I just wanted to retype that to see how it felt. So, let me frame off my next question by mentioning a podcast I listened to with Kate Daniels interviewing Tony Hoagland. Daniels basically notes that when Hoagland was reading his “Rap Music” poem, she could feel the audience become more and more tense as the poem progressed. Here’s a little bit of the poem:
I don't know what's going on inside that portable torture chamber,
but I have a bad suspicion
there's a lot of dead white people in there
...
and what I'm not supposed to say
is that black for me is a country
more foreign than China or Vagina
more alarming than going down Niagara on Viagra
And it makes me feel stupid when I get close
like a little white dog on the edge of the big dark woodsShe brings up that Hoagland’s gotten heat for the way he’s so directly, even aggressively, addressed race, and Hoagland responds. Here's an excerpt of the interview:
Hoagland: Black American poets have written powerfully, eloquently [and] explored American race; white poets largely haven't. Why? Because it's impossible to talk about [race] without showing your own unacknowledged racism. It's like pulling a potato out of the dirt. [...] You hold it up, and the potato is covered with dirt, and a person could say, "Eew! Look at your potato. It's all DIRTY with racism." But I sort of feel like, "Hey, I pulled up this big potato!"
Daniels: AND? [audience laughs] Go on... I pulled up this big potato... AND? [audience laughs again]
Hoagland: [stumbles around a little]. And… here, catch! [pause] But it's OUR potato! [audience laughs] I haven't found it possible to [approach the subject of race] in a clean way. It's so rare that truth rides into the room on the horse of niceness. It often comes in on the horse of meanness or aggressiveness because there's a membrane to break. It's in me, and it's in the representative humans around me. It makes poetry exciting, to write to see if you can go out to the periphery, not just the cultural periphery, but whatever the perimeter of what you know and don't know is. [...] There's so much that has never been talked about, and it's poets' jobs to do that.
So, Ronaldo, I'm just doing my job here. Pulling up my big dirty potato for all to see: I was little apprehensive, thinking about reading your books. Here’s why. The first book has "Brown" in the title. The second book has "Black" in the title. I tried to tell myself, “Don’t be stupid; you’re white, so what?” But my irrational mind kept returning to the thought: “The books are basically labeled by color, and here I am, not brown or black, so can this be for me? Is it supposed to be? And, if I’m truthful, am I going to feel like the white, clueless dork, hopelessly outside out touch with African-American humor/emotion/sensibility.” Let's not even get into the fact that you're a gay man and I'm a straight woman. It was such a relief to read the first page and think, “Whew, thank god I’m human. I know this.” Maybe some parts I knew less than others, but, in general, I felt tuned in and affected. Did you think about the titles of your books, and how they might rest in the minds of your readers or potential readers?
In part, both of the titles come out of a literary and cultural tradition of African American letters. Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man gestures toward Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, in particular, and of course, to a certain extent Washington’s Up From Slavery: an Autobiography, and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, texts I’d studied in college and graduate school in various courses in English and African American Studies. I don’t mean to lump these works together, but I like the way the works reveal an extenuated life, and a tension within that life oscillating inside the inhumanity of slavery and the conceptual possibility of what freedom means through the careful articulation of one’s story. As I was starting Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, I was also becoming acquainted with the work of the artist Kara Walker, and her pleasure-danger trove of some of these themes, and her hyper-sexualized and disturbing attention to the antebellum period in her visual art and writing. In part, I think her long luxurious titles attracted me to coming up with a long book title of my own. Of course, whether slave narrative or artwork, these texts for me operate in the American imaginary, and in some ways, whether consciously or not, I was interested in tapping into that stream through my poetry. The drafts I wrote felt like a long story, and for a long time I imagined the book more a novel than a cycle of poems, but felt that the writing could be compressed into a book of poems as the years passed. Eventually, I wanted the title to really work at unveiling that compression and threat of extension that I worked through in each piece.
This tension, perhaps, directs the reader’s confrontation with what is implicit in the title. That is, the very question of how my dear reader might like to witness or be reminded of his or her subjective relationship to whiteness is as important as his or her relationship to browness, or manness, or boyness, which is constantly vexed and titillating, maybe a tough pill to swallow, but I try to make it go down easy (or rough) with my own careful work, in sentence after sentence in my own contemporary ________ narrative.
Poems of the Black Object came out of a longer more fractured process. The title emerged more like a splinter that traveled underneath the skin for a long time. I lost track of how many permutations passed before I settled on it, but it came from writing, then abandoning at least five totally different manuscripts with various titles over maybe twelve years. I was writing poems along side my dissertation, “Black Bodies Black Fields: 20th Century and Contemporary Poetics of the Black Body in African American Poetry and Visual Culture,” which explores the intersections between contemporary black poets and visual artists. Central to my research was looking at the writing of the Black revolutionary and psychiatrist from Martinique, Frantz Fanon. In Black Skin White Masks, Fanon illuminates the difficult task of re-composing the black self through its history of oppression. He speaks of being “sealed” into a “crushing objecthood.” Setting forth his own conceptual frame, he demands an explanation from “the other [that] fixed [him] there,” only to report that, “Nothing happened. I burst apart. Now the fragments have been put together by another self.” What are the poetics of the black body suggested in the realization of one’s self as the excised, exploded and then the re-configured? More particularly, what are the ways that one imagines a revised self that detaches into pieces whose embodied fragments mark the process of its own new becoming? These are the questions that drive my critical project, and to a large extent, help to frame my intent throughout the second book of poems, one I hope is captured in the title, a way of distancing myself from and engaging with the Black Object, a way of giving over to the idea of black subjectivity as something intrinsic and at a constant remove from the speaker of the text. As I constructed the book manuscript, I imaged it divided into art installation spaces, where I could show in sections what these configurations might look like, how they might be tested and evolve in the conceptual space of the poem.
Poems of the Black Object opens up into a different kind of categorization of race, and blackness in particular, than does Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, but I feel like I needed to write one to feed the other, and I wanted them to build towards one another, so at least I could demonstrate, in my own hand, what I was absorbing from working through the tough questions in the dissertation. I loved the idea of letting the Black Object direct how this absorption might manifest and eventually speak to the reader, inviting her or him or [IT] into the work (maybe even through rejection/objection to the title).
I like the idea of being invited in and being invited to do whatever with the given materials. It’s like being invited to a party, for which the host has spent 10 years preparing, and you arrive and there’s all this weird stuff out, and the host is nowhere to be found. What do we do with these electric fins and this tub of blue petroleum jelly? Ideas, people? So, do you agree with Hoagland? Is it your job as a poet to drive at the things people don’t want to talk about, e.g., race, sexuality? Or in a more general way, to go out to the perimeter of the unknown and kick up some dust? It’s always so weird when anybody uses any sentence with “a poet’s job is...” in it.
Maybe one way to begin an answer to whether or not I agree with Hoagland -- of course, if pressed immediately I’d say yes -- is to return to your friend David’s feeling of being traumatized after his encounter with the short vignette, “Blood,” in “The Black Objects Memory.”
Where Hoagland offers the dirty potato, I offer the bloody white daddy! We own both of them as perhaps connected points of our contemporary poetic American imaginary. In this way, I’d say I share a certain sensibility with Hoagland. For me, however, it is important to note that as I was writing the series of poems in the Black Object cycle, I was invested in reading and writing about the violated black body in my critical prose, exploring works by Cornelius Eady (“What I’m Made Of”) or Lucille Clifton (“jasper texas 1998”) or Gwendolyn Brooks ( “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother burns bacon” and “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till”). I was also reading closely the art work and writings of Adrian Piper’s Mythic Being Series, Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks, and looking at the artwork of Ellen Gallagher (“Preserve”) and another artist visual artist William Pope.L (“Hole Theory”) that mined/mines blackness as complicated, spatial fields of representation that helped me to see how the black body, subject and figure might be articulated through abstraction as a kind of answer to this violation, and answer that can’t quite ever be fully synthesized.
What’s exciting about Hoagland’s stance, for me, is his willingness to engage in both the problem of representation, and the dearth of expressivity in what he sees as a larger problem for white American poets. I hate to speak for all or any kind of poet, black, white, brown or kettle, but what I can say is that many of the African American poets and artists I admire are able to articulate an almost objective relationship to race, one that allows them to present the black body as a conceptual field, a vast and complicated object, that contends with this violence. Yet no matter how traumatizing or uncomfortable, as Hoagland might argue -- and I would add, no matter how pleasurable -- the found pieces help to frame our much needed and puzzled perceptions.
Pleasure is my favorite frame. Thank you for adding that. So I did an interview with Kathleen Rooney a couple months ago, and in the interview she quoted Forster: “The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.” I keep thinking about that quote now. Who’s your “perfect spectator” for these particular books?
I don’t really write with a particular figure, or perfect spectator in mind, but I do find my work is in direct conversation with other writers. I work with two other poets Dawn Lundy Martin and Duriel E. Harris, co-founders of the Black Took Collective, a group we founded while fellows at the Cave Canem retreat in 1999. The collective, perhaps, comes closest to standing in as a perfect spectator, as we are always trying to figure out what questions to ask one another to help us decipher our relationship to our work. We often perform together, pressing ourselves to think or not think about unconscious structures that trap us into being marked as poets, black bodies, queer writers, and people who are interested in exploring and exploding the very category of representations that make and bind us. We do this by experimenting with the range of our voices by writing with one another in private, across email, sometimes, in chat rooms. And when we practice in person, we role play, exercise and exorcise through writing, cooking, hanging out, reading, dancing, mixing, making films, taking pictures, discussing poets and poetry, and documenting, documenting, documenting.
We recently gave a performance at the &Now Conference of Innovative Writing & the Literary Arts at the SUNY Buffalo Poetics program, where we screened our “practice” sessions as we performed some of our play/work in front of screened video footage of our working process. We also projected “live writing” via laptop on two screens while one or both of us read, our voices sometimes remixed and manipulated in connection to the video and writing. In our “assaults” as we call them, we are often preoccupied with some central questions -- what is a black poet, a black poem? What is a black conceptual space, and how can multiple forms and approaches to thinking about race, sexuality and representation activate in the face of violation, silence, terror, and the press of stereotype? How do we speak, and perform what cannot or is the most difficult to utter -- something that Dawn often reminds us of in our explorations.
The richest material comes from how we engage and interact with one another and the audience, making more complicated our own works. At one of our first performances at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, we phoned one another up on cell phones during our respective readings. Duriel pulled members of the audience up to the stage to dance with us. The poet, our special guest, Bakar Wilson passed out “Coon Journals,” asking them to respond to the reading as we performed. I broke to music by Tricky after reading the “Breaking Black” poems. These activities coupled with how we approach and write about the practice of poetry help us to complicate our own relationship to our art. By engaging and interacting with the audience and one another, and documenting this process, we aim to push the idea of a “poetry reading” to an audience, incorporating them into the range of our work, often times reaching or helping to create the kind of spectators with whom we wish to engage.
That performance sounds nuts. I’m sorry I’m in Chicago and missed it. Maybe I should have cell phoned in? I would have loved to have had my own “Coon Journal.” Not so sure about the public dancing part though. As my friend Jim Henry says and I agree: I’m so uptight, I can’t even dance with myself, alone, in my apartment. But maybe I would have made an exception, if only to help you shape me into the kind of spectator with whom you might wish to engage.
Well, you’ve always been that kind of spectator, Liz. Funny, back in New York, we did not even have cell phones, not even e-mail I think -- we communicated almost purely through poetry. Thanks for the opportunity to continue our conversation in this most interesting way.
Elizabeth Hildreth lives in Chicago and works as a writer and instructional designer. She and Ronaldo Wilson, as mentioned above, met at NYU as spring chickens. They sat across from each other in Cornelius Eady and Sharon Olds’ workshops, and went on a trip to Vermont during which they celebrated some poets’ birthdays and sang the song, “Go ____, it’s your birfday. Go, ____, it’s your birfday.” No dancing occurred.
via bookslut.com
A symbol of the slave trade joins US and Cuba
The Associated Press
FILE - In this June 21, 2007, file photo, a crew member works on the Amistad prior to its departure in New Haven, Conn. In March 2010, the stately black scooner will sail through a narrow channel into Havana's protected harbor, its two masts bearing the rarest of sights _ the U.S. Stars and Stripes, with the Cuban flag fluttering nearby. It's a replica of the Cuban slave ship that sailed from Havana in 1839 with a cargo of African captives only to become an icon of the abolitionist movement. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)
FILE - In this Dec. 9, 2007, file photo, the Freedom Schooner Amistad, a near-replica of the ship that sparked a 19th century slave revolt, flies Sierra Leonean and American flags as it sails into port in central Freetown, Sierra Leone, the original West African homeland of many of the Amistad captives. In March 2010, the stately black scooner will sailthrough a narrow channel into Havana's protected harbor, its two masts bearing the rarest of sights _ the U.S. Stars and Stripes, with the Cuban flag fluttering nearby. It's a replica of the Cuban slave ship that sailed from Havana in 1839 with a cargo of African captives only to become an icon of the abolitionist movement. (AP Photo/Nazia Parvez, File)WASHINGTON — It will be the rarest of sights: a black-hulled, two-masted replica of a slave-carrying schooner slipping into Havana's harbor flying two flags — those of the United States and Cuba.
That's how it is for the Amistad, a symbol of both a dark 19th century past and modern public diplomacy.
The Amistad is the 10-year-old official tall ship of the state of Connecticut and a replica of the Cuban coastal trader that sailed from Havana in 1839 with a cargo of African captives, only to become an emblem of the abolitionist movement.
As a U.S.-flagged ship, the Amistad's 10-day, two-city tour of Cuba provides a counterpoint to new and lingering tensions between Washington and Havana and stands out as a high-profile exception to the 48-year-old U.S. embargo of the Caribbean island.
For the Amistad, Cuba also represents a final link as it retraces the old Atlantic slave trade triangle, making port calls that are not only reminders of the stain of slavery but also celebrations of the shared cultural legacies of an otherwise sorry past.
When it drops anchor in Havana's harbor on March 25, the Amistad will not only observe its 10th anniversary, it will commemorate the day in 1807 when the British Parliament first outlawed the slave trade.
The powerful image of a vessel displaying home and host flags docking in Cuba is not lost on Gregory Belanger, the CEO and president of Amistad America Inc., the nonprofit organization that owns and operates the ship.
"We're completely aware of all of the issues currently surrounding the U.S. and Cuba," he said. "But we approach this from the point of view that we have this unique history that both societies are connected by. It gives us an opportunity to transcend contemporary issues."
It's not lost on Rep. William Delahunt, either. The Massachusetts Democrat has long worked to ease U.S.-Cuba relations and he reached out to the State Department to make officials aware of the Amistad's proposal.
U.S.-flagged ships have docked in Havana before, but none as prominently as the Amistad. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has periodically approved Cuba stops for semester-at-sea educational programs for American students, and the Commerce Department has authorized U.S. shiploads of exports under agriculture and medical exemptions provided in the Trade Sanctions Reform Act of 2000.
"Obviously we have serious differences, disagreements," Delahunt said. "But in this particular case the two governments, while not working together, clearly were aware of the profound significance of this particular commemoration."
The Amistad's visit comes as international tension over Cuba's human rights has heightened since the Feb. 23 death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo after a long hunger strike in jail. Another dissident, Guillermo Farinas, has refused to eat or drink since shortly after Zapata Tamayo's death. He is not imprisoned, though, and is allowing himself to be fed intravenously. Both men are of African descent.
"I would hope — it isn't going to happen — that the ship would go into Havana harbor with a flag at half staff representing what happened on the history of that ship and what is currently happening in Cuba in terms of the violations of human rights," said Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
The original Amistad's story, the subject of a 1997 Steven Spielberg movie, began afterit set sail from Havana in 1839. Its African captives rebelled, taking over the ship and sending it on a zigzag course up the U.S. coast until it was finally seized off the coast of Long Island. The captured Africans became an international cause for abolitionists; their fate was finally decided in 1841 when John Quincy Adams argued their case before the Supreme Court, which granted them their freedom.
Miguel Barnet, a leading Cuban ethnographer and writer who has studied the African diaspora, said it is only appropriate that the new Amistad would call on the place of the original ship's birth. Indeed, he said in an interview from Cuba on Wednesday, it is the horror of the slave trade that left behind a rich common bond — not just between the United States and Cuba, but with the rest of the Caribbean — that is rooted in Africa.
"That's why this is an homage to these men and women who left something precious for our culture," he said.
The new Amistad has crossed the Atlantic and wended its way through the Caribbean since 2007. It has worked with the United Nations and UNESCO's Slave Route Project. Using high technology hidden in its wooden frame and rigging, the ship's crew of sailors and students has simulcasted to schools and even to the U.N. General Assembly.
It will do so again — with Cuban students — from Havana.
"It's about enlivening the history," said Steve Schwadron, Delahunt's former chief of staff and a consultant on the Amistad project, "and not just as a stale book."
(This version CORRECTS that U.S. embargo on Cuba is 48 years old, not 47.)
via ajc.com
Video: Seu Jorge - “Tive Razao” + "É isso aí"
Seu Jorge is a Brazilian singer/songwriter and actor. Virtually unknown in Europe, but a legend in Brazil.
One of his best performances are on the DVD Seu Jorge ao vivo (2005), were he performed with Ana Carolina, who is also a famous Brazilian singer.
Ziegler production wrote about him:
His name is Seu Jorge - or Mister Jorge - the Brazilian singer, songwriter and actor who grew up in the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro. He is passionate and charismatic, quirky and romantic, deep and philosophical. And despite all the stardom and privileges he has now, he has managed to maintain his humble demeanor and a very, very charming personality. There is no wonder why Vogue Brazil once dubbed him “the coolest man on the planet.”“Tive Razao” (I was right). He wrote this song after he separated from his first wife.
"É isso aí" - Ana Carolina e Seu Jorge (From the album Ana & Jorge: Ao Vivo)
Website: www.seujorge.com
‘No Longer Black and White’
March 19, 2010 · Leave a Comment
“We Want What’s Ours,” a documentary film in progress on the complications of land reform in South Africa in Soweto–in this case competing claims between groups of black South Africans–by Chicago law professor Bernadette Atuahene and Sifuna Okwethu.
Via Laura Flanders’ GRIDtv.
Creative Non-Fiction Prize
The Malahat Review, Canada’s premier literary magazine, invites entries from Canadian, American, and overseas authors for its Creative Non-Fiction Prize. One award of $1,000 CAD is given.
2010 Deadline
The deadline for the 2010 Creative Non-Fiction Prize is August 1, 2010 (postmark date).
Guidelines
- The entry must be between 2,000 and 3,000 words. Please indicate word count on the first page. Please double space your work.
- No restrictions as to subject matter or approach apply. For example, the entry may be personal essay, memoir, cultural criticism, nature writing, or literary journalism.
- Entry fee required:
- $35 CAD for Canadian entries;
- $40 US for American entries;
- $45 US for entries from Mexico and outside North America.
- Entrants receive a one-year subscription to The Malahat Review for themselves or a friend.
- Entries previously published, accepted, or submitted for publication elsewhere are not eligible.
- Entrants’ anonymity is preserved throughout the judging. Contact information (including an email address) should not appear on the submission, but along with the title on an enclosed separate page.
- No submissions will be accepted by email.
- The winner and finalists will be notified via email.
- Entrants will not be notified about the judges' decisions even if an SASE is enclosed for this purpose.
- The winner and finalists will be announced on the Malahat web site, with the publication of the winning entry in The Malahat Review’s Winter 2010 issue, and in Malahat lite, the magazine’s quarterly e-newsletter, in October 2010.
- No entries will be returned, even if accompanied by an SASE.
- Send entries and enquiries to:
The Malahat Review
University of Victoria
P.O. Box 1700
Stn CSC
Victoria, B.C. V8W 2Y2
Canada
Email: malahat@uvic.ca
Telephone: 250-721-8524
Fax: 250-472-5051Entrants wishing to pay by credit card may download and complete our Credit Card Payment Form then enclose it with their entries.
via malahatreview.ca