PUB: Mid-American Review

The 2011 Fineline Competition for Prose Poems, Short Shorts and Anything in Between

Guidelines
Judge: Peter Conners
Director of BOA Editions and author of Of Whiskey and Winter and Emily Ate the Wind.
First Prize: $1,000 and publication in MAR Volume XXXII, Number 1.
Ten finalists: Notation and possible publication

Postmark deadline: June 1, 2011. Contest is for previously unpublished work only—if the work has appeared in print or online, in any form or part, or under any title, it is ineligible and will be disqualified. There is a 500-word limit for each poem or short. A $10 entry fee (check or money order, made out to Mid-American Review) is required for each set of three prose poems/short short stories. Entry fees are non-refundable. All participants will receive Mid-American Review v. XXXI, no. 1, where the winners will be published. Submissions will not be returned; send SASE for early results. Manuscripts need not be left anonymous. Contest is open to all writers, except those associated with the judge or Mid-American Review, past or present. Our judge's decision is final.

Note: All pieces submitted in verse form—i.e., poetry with line breaks--will be automatically disqualified, as will previously published work or pieces over 500 words.

Send all entries with check or money order to:
Mid-American Review
Department of English
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403

2010 Fineline Competition Results
Mid-American Review would like to congratulate Helen Klein Ross, winner of the 2010 Fineline Competition for Prose Poems, Short Shorts, and Everything In Between.

Judge Alan Michael Parker has chosen Ross' "Parrotfish" as this year's top award recipient. Ross is a resident of New York City and was the winner of the 2001 Finelines Competition as well. She is the contest's first repeat winner. Congratulations, Helen!

Along with "Parrotfish," Ross also will see another entry, "Seahorse Husband," printed in MAR as an Editors' Choice. Other authors who were chosen as finalists and will have their work printed as Editors' Choices include:

Eric Darby
Gerry LaFemina
Michael Meyerhofer
Amy Newman
Yael Schonfeld
Diane Seuss
Eliot Khalil Wilson

 

 

 

 

 

 

PUB: Quiddity : Journal

Contests

Book Trailer Contest for Writers and Small or Independent Presses

Two prizes of $500 as well as broadcast, Web, and print promotion by Quiddity will be awarded—one prize each in the categories Manuscripts (for writers) and Books (for small and independent presses). Runners-up and/or honorable mentions may also be selected. This contest closes 10 December 2011 (postmark deadline).

Click here for guidelines.

The video below is a sample manuscript trailer by Quiddity's 2010-2011 Writer-in-Residence, A.D. Carson. Congratulations to A.D. — Cold is now a multi-media novel forthcoming from Mayhaven Publishing.

 

Links to two of many resources for building book trailers:

  • For those who like to use iMovie, click here.
  • For a general "how-to" that includes Windows Movie, click here.

Teresa A. White Literary Award:
"Buck-a-Word" Contest

Guidelines | Enter/Submit

Reading for the Teresa A. White Award takes place in odd-numbered years. The 2011 contest closes 31 October 2011. Hearty congratulations to the 2009 award winner, Roy William Scranton, for “Never Closer,” featured in print edition 3.1 and on radio broadcast (episode 2 - 9)!

Teresa A. White Literary Award: “Buck-a-Word” Contest

Quiddity is pleased to announce the Teresa A. White Literary Award, affectionately referred to as the “buck-a-word” contest.

First Prize: 500 USD and publication in Quiddity as well as public-radio broadcast (offered via NPR member and PRI affiliate, Illinois Public Radio hub-station WUIS) Honorable mentions may also be offered publication and broadcast.

Contest begins May 1, 2011, and ends October 31, 2011 (online/Submishmash and postmark deadline). • Submit one work of prose totaling no more than 500 words (title included) as well as $12. Submit

online using Submishmash or by mail (checks payable to Quiddity).

• Work should be previously unpublished; simultaneous submissions with immediate notification are okay, but the contest awards only for FNASR, so works accepted elsewhere will be withdrawn from consideration, and please note: the entry fee will not be returned.

• All entries must be typed and must include a cover letter with author's name and contact information (address, telephone, and email address) as well as the title and word count of the work submitted. The author’s name or any identifying information should not appear on the manuscript itself.

• Judging is blind. Quiddity’s editorial board will judge. • Entries that do not meet the guidelines will not be considered, and entry fees are not refundable.

• All entries that meet the guidelines will be considered for publication. • Mailed submissions should include both an email address and, for reply, a self-addressed, business-size

(#10), stamped envelope (SASE).

• Winners will be announced by December 15, 2011.

• Submit online at http://quiddity.submishmash.com/Submit or mail entries to 2011 Teresa A. White Literary Award Quiddity 1500 North Fifth Street

Springfield, Illinois 62702 USA

BEST WISHES!

Quiddity ● 1500 North Fifth Street ● Springfield, IL 62702 ● USA ● quiddity.ben.edu

 

OP-ED: BLACKS AND BUDDHISM/ BUDDHISM AND BLACKS > E-CHANNEL

The E-Channel presents the words and wisdom of the writer Charles Johnson. It's Charles Johnson LIVE ! It was created by E. Ethelbert Miller (that's what the E stands for) in January 2011. It's a one year project in which Miller will interview Johnson about his books, beliefs, and various matters of the heart and mind. The E-Channel presents Johnson's own voice. Every word is his. They are responses to questions asked each week by Miller.

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BLACKS AND BUDDHISM /

BUDDHISM AND BLACKS


 

By Charles Johnson

When some Americans are in the presence of a person who is black and Buddhist, you can see the cognitive dissonance---the confusion--right there in their eyes as they struggle to process this information that so rudely unsettles their cultural and racial presuppositions. 

 

 

Over forty years I've seen people react to this phenomenon with emotions that range from fear to anger, as if they had somehow been personally betrayed, insulted or threatened; and I've seen others who know something about Buddhism delight in this revelation, as if to say, And why not? But just as James Weldon Johnson stated in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man that, "I believe it is a fact that the colored people in this country know and understand the white people better than the white people understand them," so too, I have to say that the vast majority of Americans are very poorly informed about the theory and practice of Buddhism.

 

 

 

Over 2600 years, many branches or traditions of Buddhism have sprung from the bodhi tree. One of these that is especially attractive to black American Buddhists is Soka Gakkai (Nichiren), which claims to have approximately 15,000 black practitioners, among them Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson, Tina Turner, and the jazz great Herbie Hancock. My sister-in-law in Chicago is a practitioner of this school that also attracts a large number of Hispanics. Unlike other Buddhist traditions, Soka Gakkai is proactive and proselytizes, seeking out members in urban areas with large black populations (practitioners urge their friends to join)---this is very different from the image most convert American Buddhists have of Japanese Zen traditions where, for example, stories are told of a spiritual seeker made to sit for a full day or two outside a zendo before he is finally admitted, and then only at first as a visitor. (In other words, you need to show that you really need and want this.)

 

 

 

Soka Gakkai members chant chapters from the Lotus Sutra, and if you have ever been lucky enough to be in a room where they are chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in unison you will experience anew the elemental power of sound as their collective voices move like a strong, cleansing wind or an ocean wave through every cell and fibre of your body. Although I tilt toward the Theravada tradition, and took a lay person's formal vows in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition founded by Dogen, I have a deep appreciation for the way Herbie Hancock described his practice in a 2007 interview for Beliefnet:

 

 

 

 "The idea of cause and affect, which Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is about, made sense to me," he said. "I'm a guy that's always been attracted to science---and cause and effect is what science is about...The cool thing is that jazz is really a wonderful example of the great characteristics of Buddhism and the great characteristics of the human spirit. Because in jazz we share, we listen to each other, we respect each other, we are creating in the moment. At our best we're non-judgmental. If we let judgment get in the way of improvising, it always screws us up. So we take whatever happens and try to make it work...At the same time---and just think about this---within the life of a human being is the universe. So, we all have the universe inside at our core."
HERBIE HANCOCK

 

 

Those words don't sound as if they are coming from a person who sees himself as a "victim," do they? Such a conceptualization poisons the mind and the human spirit. Mr. Hancock, like all Buddhists, is not mired in a past that cannot be recovered or a future that will never come, but instead works to anchor himself "in the moment." And he is not ensnared in what black Buddhist teacher Lama Rangdrol describes as the debilitation, bitter, polarized and cliched "mentality of an angry black man." Added to that, Hancock's comparison of his egoless listening and non-judgmental approach as a jazz musician to the Dharma reminds us that Buddhist practice has much in common with the process we associate with creating art, which demands an openness to all things. (Buddhism, some commentators have pointed out, is a form of artistic practice with your life itself being the material you are shaping.)

 

 

What unites black Buddhists, regardless of the tradition they belong to, is the desire to be free. Truly free. The practice of Buddhism is the practice of life itself. Last week I had the great pleasure of reading, then endorsing a book entitled Tell Me Something about Buddhism: Questions and Answers for the Curious Beginner, by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, a black Soto Zen Priest. 
ZENJU EARTHLYN MANUEL

 

Her book, which includes a foreword by Thich Nhat Hahn, will be published in October by Hampton Roads. In the future when anyone asks me questions about black people and Buddhism, I plan to simply tell them to buy Zenju's beautiful book. She is acutely aware of how we can be enslaved by the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. By the concepts and words that obscure our experience of reality. Just reading her clear, beautiful and inspiring answers to questions about Buddhist practice quiets and calms the mind as quickly as the wood striking wood sound of a han calling us to awakening. (In Japanese Soto Zen a han is a mallet and piece of wood that are struck to summon practitioners to the zendo). Each page is rich in wisdom, as when one of her teachers points out that, "All emotions are from the past."

 

 

Meditate for just a moment on that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VIDEO: Courage, candour and inspiration > Art Threat

Courage, candour and inspiration

A review of The Interrupters

by Ezra Winton on May 7, 2011 · Comments

Three words are used in the closing credits of Steve James’s new masterpiece documentary where the filmmakers thank their characters—those who gave incredible, intimate access to their lives and work—for their “courage, candour and inspiration.” These are indeed fitting words for some of the bravest, most committed and selfless heroes ever to be shown on the screen. The film is The Interrupters and the heroes are the interrupters themselves – the courageous individuals in Chicago who interrupt cycles of violence in mostly black and latino youth circles. This documentary is nothing short of perfection: It is an inspired political work that bridges the difficult terrain of ethics and aesthetics with a poetic visual sensibility and charged respect for the subjects that never loses site of the story.

Steve James (best known for directing the Academy Award-winning Hoop Dreams) told me that the name “The Interrupters” was chosen because it sounds like it could be a movie about superheroes. As it turns out, the film is indeed about superheroes, only these superheroes do not have special powers or wear capes. They do however fight crime, intervening in cyclical socio-political tensions and problems as they percolate, before they escalate to crimes of violence. They are comprised of ex-offenders and their work with CeaseFire, a non-profit making the most from scarce resources, is dangerous, stressful, and impossibly challenging. This film champions their unsung efforts and ultimately reveals the life-changing (indeed society-changing) effect an individual can have at the most dire and volatile time of someone else’s life.

James told the audience after the Hot Docs screening that the filmmakers think a little differently than the standard “how can a person change” sentiment. After spending a year with the interrupters and the youth they work with, the filmmakers see the transformative effect of mediation and intervention as framed more by “how can we help someone go back to who they really are?” The Interrupters shows, with gorgeous, confident cinematography, impeccable editing and a superb soundtrack, just how that process works.

From the beginning we are catapulted into perilous spaces as violence erupts between various youth who fight because of personal disagreement, competing neighbourhoods or as retaliation for previous murders and assaults. We are witnesses to how quickly the violence can escalate and indeed the now-famous video of sixteen year-old Derrion Albert being murdered in a group fight was captured in one of the Chicago neigbhourhoods where the interrupters make their interventions.

In one scene in the documentary youth pick up stones and knives and face off until an interrupter, the incredibly inspirational, powerful and articulate Ameena Matthews (whose father is notorious gang leader Jeff Fort), inserts herself, whisking away a young male who is bleeding and whose adrenaline dial is set on high. Moments later she is with him at someone’s home, removed from the fight, and laughing about how he looked like a cartoon character when he was hit in the face by the rock. “If we can get them to laugh about it, that’s a positive step” she says. The Interrupters is a film that guides us gracefully and uncompromisingly along a path of positive steps. They are the largely unknown steps toward treating violence as a behaviour problem connected to larger socio-political issues that leave under-priviliged and marginalized youths feeling alienated, cynical, and indeed violent.

The Interrupters is a gripping observational documentary that produces the most intimate spaces with vulnerable and volatile subjects but never feels intrusive or sensational. The filmmakers bring us close to the subjects without ever being intrusive, and while the bold and steady camera work results in stunning cinematography, the violence and drama is not aesthecized nor sensationalized. It is a master work of social cinema that captures the urgency of the interrupters’ work as well as the dignity and courage of both those intervening in the violence and those embroiled in it.

This was the best film that I had the pleasure to see at Hot Docs, and it will hopefully find its rightful position in the documentary canon as one of the most committed, inspired and important works in the history of the genre. Steve James, working with Alex Kotlowitz, has made a film that is lightyears away from mere documentation of a social problem – it is an urgent and relevant socio-political portrait of gifted and dedicated people changing society and in the process changing the way one views the problem of inner city violence in America.

While there should be monuments erected in America that commemorate the impassioned and exhausting work of the interrupters, The Interrupters documentary should be in every library, on every television and in every theatre in the country. In short, it is a documentary that is pure honest, courageous and inspirational storytelling.

 

PHOTOGRAPHY: Finding Chris Hondros’ “Checkpoint Girl” > BagNews

May 7, 2011

Finding Chris Hondros’

“Checkpoint Girl”


The NYT has found Samar Hassan. She’s the girl from slain Getty photographer Chris Hondos’ checkpoint photo, the image many consider the iconic image of the Iraq war. In this photo, Samar reportedly sees Chris’ photo of her for the first time, seven years later.

One question I have is: is this not just a little heavy-handed?

Strictly comparing the photos, however, that there are roses dotting the left-hand corner of the current photo matching the incredibly powerful rose-printed dress and all the blood splotches from the image seven years ago is just stunning. Putting on my shrink hat, it makes me think (and I’ve witnessed instances of this before) that perhaps Samar has retained a strong emotional, if unconscious link to what she was wearing the day her parents were murdered, so much so that she keeps roses around her house.  Her red dress and red nail polish (like little splatters) — also part of the parallel between the two photos — could be more coincidence, but could be part of  the emotional connection, too.

And then, who knows how far to take a such a thesis when you’re looking at a photograph, so great are the dangers of “reading in” … but take a look at the pattern in the couch, and the curtain, too!

Chris Hondros In Iraq

Here’s the link to the NYT story about finding Samar.

Here is the recent interview piece NYT reporter Ed Wong wrote for BagNews about the original photo-story in honor of Chris with a larger series of photos Hondros took at the checkpoint in Tal Afar that night.

(updated 10:12 am PST)

(photos: Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times; PHOTOGRAPH by CHRIS HONDROS / GETTY IMAGES caption 1: Samar Hassan, with a relative, had never seen the photo of her, below, taken after her parents were killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq.)

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Follow us: BagNewsNotes. BAG Twitter. BAG Facebook.

__________________________

Face That Screamed War’s Pain Looks Back, 6 Hard Years Later

Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times
Samar Hassan, with a relative, had never seen the photo of her, below, taken after her parents were killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
By 
Published: May 7, 2011


MOSUL, Iraq — Until the past week, Samar Hassan had never glimpsed the photograph of her that millions had seen, never knew it had become one of the most famous images of the Iraq war.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Samar Hassan screamed after her parents were killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2005. 

Ayman Oghanna for The New York Times

Samar Hassan helps out around the house she shares with siblings and other relatives in Mosul, Iraq, but no longer attends school. Even in a traumatized country, her story is an unusual one.

Readers' Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

“My brother was sick, and we were taking him to the hospital and on the way back, this happened,” Samar said. “We just heard bullets.

“My mother and father were killed, just like that.”

The image of Samar, then 5 years old, screaming and splattered in blood after American soldiers opened fire on her family’s car in the northern town of Tal Afar in January 2005, illuminated the horror of civilian casualties and has been one of the few images from this conflict to rise to the pantheon of classic war photography. The picture has gained renewed attention as part of a large body of work by Chris Hondros, the Getty Images photographer recently killed on the front lines in Misurata, Libya.

The photograph of Samar is frozen in history, but her life moved on, across a trajectory that is emblematic of what so many Iraqis have endured. In a country whose health care system has almost no ability to treat the psychological aspects of trauma, thousands of Iraqis are left alone with their torment.

Now a striking 12-year-old, Samar lives on the outskirts of Mosul in a two-story house with four other families, mostly relatives.

The household is a cramped bustle of activity as women cook and clean and children scramble about. Samar’s older sister, Intisar, and her husband, an unemployed former police officer, care for her. Two of his sons are policemen, and their salaries support the extended family.

The pains of war have been visited on thousands of Iraqis, but even here Samar’s story stands apart. Three years after her parents were killed, her brother Rakan died when an insurgent attack badly damaged the house where she lives now. Rakan had been seriously wounded in the shooting that killed their parents, and he was sent to Boston for treatment after Mr. Hondros’s photos were published. An American aid worker, Marla Ruzicka, who helped arrange for Rakan’s treatment, was herself later killed in a car bomb in Baghdad.

Intisar’s husband, Nathir Bashir Ali, suspects his house was bombed by insurgents as retribution for sending Rakan to the United States. “When Rakan came back from America, everyone thought I was a spy,” he said.

Samar left school last year because she was too shy and not doing well, Mr. Ali said, although Samar said she would like to return and hoped to be a doctor when she grew up. She leaves the house only on infrequent family excursions and has two friends who visit to play with dolls and chat. She spends her days cleaning, listening to music on her purple MP3 player and watching episodes of her favorite television show, the Turkish soap opera “Forbidden Love,” about lovers named Mohanad and Samar.

“I am Samar,” she said, wearing a long red dress and sitting on the couch next to Mr. Ali. Two of her siblings, also in the car when their parents were killed, sat nearby.

“I’ve taken them many times to the hospital, where they get pills” for emotional problems, Mr. Ali said. “All of them take pills.”

He says Samar’s 8-year-old brother, Muhammad, talks to himself when he is alone. “When we go out and see a family, they get sad,” he said. Sometimes he finds the children in a room together, crying. “When they remember the accident, it’s like they just died.”

The photo of Samar had far-reaching impact, for it was visual testimony to a particular scourge of this war: the shooting of innocent civilians as they approached American checkpoints or foot patrols, killings made possible by liberal rules of engagement aiming to protect soldiers from suicide car bombers. The image was a point of discussion at the highest reaches of the Pentagon as it considered ways to reduce civilian casualties.

The Iraq war delivered few singular images for the popular imagination, partly because the country was too dangerous for photographers to move around freely, but also because in an age of saturated media coverage and short attention spans, it may be more difficult for news images to take root in the collective memory.

The military also set strict rules for embedded journalists that kept many graphic images from the public eye; the military asked Mr. Hondros to leave his embed assignment after he shot the pictures of Samar.

Liam Kennedy, a professor at University College Dublin, researches conflict photography and uses Mr. Hondros’s image of Samar in his class as one of the few photos from the Iraq war that could stand out in history, comparing it to the famous Vietnam image by the Associated Press photographer Nick Ut of a young girl running from a napalm attack.

“It really seems to say something of what’s going on at the time,” Professor Kennedy said. “All the arbitrariness of the violence that was going on at that time is summed up by that girl.”

Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the Middle East and North Africa division for Human Rights Watch, keeps a copy of the photo on a bulletin board in her office in New York. She remembers crying when she first saw the photo in a newspaper, and having to explain the image to her children.

“At the time, I thought it captured perfectly the horrors of the war that was not really understood by Americans,” she said. “Everything in that girl’s face symbolized what I felt all Iraqis must feel.”

She added, “I kept thinking, ‘I wonder what life will be like for this girl?’ ”

Mr. Hondros spoke about the photograph in a 2007 interview with the syndicated news program “Democracy Now.”

“I think one of the reasons the photo had this sort of resonance that it does is because it has a sort of empty feeling,” he said. “You know, the poor girl, all alone in the world now, just standing there in the dark.”

This week Samar, hugging a pillow to her chest, recalled: “He was taking pictures of me, I remember. Then he stopped, and they brought me a jacket and put me in the truck and treated the wound on my hand. And they gave me some toys.”

She had never seen the picture until this week, but she said she understood that it showed the world “the sad thing that is happening in Iraq.”

Near the end of the interview, she pointed to a family photograph on the wall. “I always dream about my father and mother and brother,” she said.

Duraid Adnan contributed reporting.

 

 

HISTORY + AUDIO: Celebrating Cinco de Mayo - Thursday – May 5, 2011 > FLASHPOINTS

Thursday – May 5, 2011

Posted on May 05, 2011 by Flashpoints

Carlos Muñoz, photo by Claudio Gonzales

Today on a special edition of Flashpoints we celebrate Cinco de Mayo, which marks the defeat of French forces on May 5th 1862 by an ill-equipped rag-tag army of Mexican Indians and Mestizos. Joining us to help understand the significance of the holiday and the ongoing battle for ethnic studies is Dr. Carlos Munoz, one of the pioneers in ethnic studies and Chicano studies in this country. Also we will be joined by American Indian movement founder Bill Means who will help us remember who Geronimo really was and also talk about the disrespect heaped on the Native American community in the context of the killing of Osama Bin Laden. And we will be joined by Lelani Clark to talk about the ongoing struggle against the ban on teaching Mexican American Studies in Tucson. I’m Dennis Bernstein with Miguel Gavilan-Molina all this straight ahead on flashpoints stay tuned.

LISTEN ONLINE:

Download this clip
Play this clip in your Computer’s media player

Guests:

Bill Means, remembering Geronimo/Bin Laden

Lelani Clark fighting the ban against ethnic studies.

Dr. Carlos Munoz professor emirates UC Berkeley Ethnic/Studies Pioneer.

 

VIDEO: Aurelio (Honduran Garifuna) > Sub Pop Records

Aurelio

Part 1, the recording of "Wamada" off Aurelio's Next Ambiance / Sub Pop release, Laru Beya http://www.subpop.com/artists/aurelio

FREE download of the song Laru Beya;

BUY the album Laru Beya:http://www.subpop.com/releases/aurelio/full_lengths/laru_beya

Born in the tiny coastal hamlet of Plaplaya on Honduras’ Caribbean coast, Aurelio Martinez, 39, may be one of the last generations to grow up steeped in Garifuna tradition. These traditions encompass the African and Caribbean Indian roots of his ancestors, a group of shipwrecked slaves who intermarried with local natives on the island of St. Vincent, only to be deported to the Central American coast in the late eighteenth century.

Martinez recalls his humble but highly musical beginnings in his remote hometown. “In the village I was born, there is still no electricity,” Martinez told Afropop Worldwide in a 2006 interview. “When I was a child, I had very natural toys. My first toy was a guitar I built for myself from wood taken from a fishing rod. So that’s how I played my first chords.”

He learned these chords from his family, including his father, a well-loved local troubadour who improvised playful paranda songs that embrace Garifuna roots and Latin sounds. He became a drummer almost as soon as he began to walk, thanks to his uncles and grandfather. From his vocally talented mother, he learned to sing and picked up many songs she crafted.

A prodigy of percussion, Martinez began performing at Garifuna ceremonies when just a boy, even at the most sacred events where children were usually not allowed. By the time he left Plaplaya to attend school at 14, he was a respected musician with a firm grounding in Garifuna rhythms, rituals, and songs.

While attending secondary school at the provincial capital of La Cieba, Martinez dove into diverse and innovative musical projects that took him outside the traditional sphere of performance. He played professionally with popular Latin ensembles, wrote music for theater and pop groups, and refined his musical skills with private teachers.

He soon founded a Garifuna ensemble, Lita Ariran, one of the first Garifuna groups to appear on an internationally distributed recording. Martinez’s virtuosic musicianship and passionate performances made him a mainstay of the La Cieba music scene, where he was best loved for his take on punta rock, the high-energy, Garifuna roots-infused pop genre that took Central America by storm in the 1990s.

His musical career took a global turn thanks to his Belizean friend and fellow musician Andy Palacio, who organized a major Garifuna festival and invited Martinez. The two artists struck up a decades-long friendship thanks in part to their shared hopes for the future of Garifuna music and culture.

Through Palacio Martinez met Ivan Duran, the tireless producer behind Belize’s Stonetree Records, and participated in a compilation of paranda, the Latin-inspired genre his father had favored, a style that was slowly dying out among the Garifuna. The comparatively youthful Martinez, youngest of the three generations on the recording, proved that the music was still alive and kicking.

With Duran, Martinez began thinking about the evolution of the music he had grown up with, and his first solo album Garifuna Soul (2004) explored his roots in both paranda and traditional rhythms. Martinez’s richly resonant voice and soulful acoustic songs caught the attention of the global music press and put Martinez on the map as a tradition-bearer with an innate musicality and subtle innovative streak.

When not performing and recording, Martinez took on a new role in 2005: as a representative to the Honduran National Congress, the first of African descent in the country’s history. Devoting himself to a different approach to supporting and promoting Garifuna culture, Martinez set aside his music making for years as a legislator and politician.

However, it was Palacio, himself involved in politics in Belize, and Duran who brought Martinez back to his first calling, music. In 2008, Palacio passed away unexpectedly at the young age of 48, leaving the Garifuna community stunned and bereft. “Aurelio was still a congressman, but he left the congress session to go to Belize for the funeral,” Duran recalls. “He hadn’t been playing guitar for months because of his intense political commitments. But after Andy’s passing, he gave a few concerts and he knew he needed to start recording right away.”

Laru Beya was not only a way of honoring Palacio as a person; it was a means for continuing his mission of uplifting and expanding what it meant to be a Garifuna artist. Together with Duran, several veteran Garifuna musicians, and the occasional local ensemble dropping into the studio, Martinez began laying down the tracks for this recording in a cabana on the beach.

Taking up Palacio’s mantle as bard and advocate for his people, however, did not mean Martinez stopped his exploration of new approaches to Garifuna sounds, in particular their musical links with West Africa. Thanks to a mentorship with Afropop legend Youssou N’Dour (as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative), Martinez found himself in Senegal, learning from the stunning singer, rethinking his arrangements, and meeting everyone from big names in Dakar (Orchestra Baobob, who recorded with Martinez) to unknown talents hanging out in the back alleys of the city’s poor medina.

The result is a lush journey marked with thoughtful reflections of the Garifuna past, the sometimes difficult present, and the promising glimmers of the future for artists like Martinez. “This album is about far more than just keeping tradition alive; it’s about urging people to action when they listen. We’re dealing with an emergency, and we don’t know if Garifuna music will survive,” muses Duran. “But this album will show people in Central America and around the world that Garifuna music is alive and well, and that artists are moving it forward.”

“We’re not going to let this culture die,” Martinez affirms. “I know I must continue the culture of my grandparents, of my ancestors, and find new ways to express it. Few people know about it, but I adore it, and it’s something I must share with the world.”

 

PUB: Tenth Glass Woman Prize

The Tenth Glass Woman Prize reading period is now in effect, from March 22, 2011 through September 21, 2011. 

 

GUIDELINES FOR The tenth Glass Woman Prize:  

The Tenth Glass Woman Prize will be awarded for a work of short fiction or creative non-fiction (prose) written by a woman.  Length: between 50 and 5,000 words.  The top prize for the tenth Glass Woman Prize award is US $500 and possible (but not obligatory) online publication; there will also be one runner up prize of $100 and one runner up prize of $50, together with possible (but not obligatory) online publication. 

Subject is open, but must be of significance to women.  The criterion is passion, excellence, and authenticity in the woman’s writing voice.  Previously published work and simultaneous submissions are OK.  Authors retain all copyright is retained by the author. 

There is no reading fee.  

Previous winners are welcome to submit again for any subsequent prize.

Submission deadline:   September 21, 2011 (receipt date; anything received after that date will be considered for a future prize).  Notification date:  on or before December 21, 2011.  

The winners will be announced on this web page.  Submissions will not be returned, rejected, or otherwise acknowledged except for the winner and results announcement on this web page.  I promise that every submission will be read with respect and with commitment to the voices of women in this world. 

Only one submission per person per submission period, by email, with "Glass Woman Prize Submission" in the subject line and the text pasted in the body of the email (no attachments!*) to:

glasswomanprize@gmail.com

IMPORTANT:  

-    "Glass Woman Prize Submission" in subject line
-    Text in body of email
-    Please put your email address in the body of the email as well

 

I will regretfully ignore and delete submissions of anything other than specified above, for example: submissions with any kind of attachment*, more than one piece of writing in a given prize reading period, more than 5,000 words, poetry, plays, or submissions without "Glass Woman Prize Submission" in the subject line of the email. 

*Please note that some fancy email stationery comes across as attachment; almost all illustrations come across as attachments; please do not use them in connection with the Glass Woman Prize.