The Shadow Scholar

The man who writes your students' papers tells his story

 

Jonathan Barkat for The Chronicle Review

By Ed Dante

Editor's note: Ed Dante is a pseudonym for a writer who lives on the East Coast. Through a literary agent, he approached The Chronicle wanting to tell the story of how he makes a living writing papers for a custom-essay company and to describe the extent of student cheating he has observed. In the course of editing his article, The Chronicle reviewed correspondence Dante had with clients and some of the papers he had been paid to write. In the article published here, some details of the assignment he describes have been altered to protect the identity of the student.

The request came in by e-mail around 2 in the afternoon. It was from a previous customer, and she had urgent business. I quote her message here verbatim (if I had to put up with it, so should you): "You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?"

I've gotten pretty good at interpreting this kind of correspondence. The client had attached a document from her professor with details about the paper. She needed the first section in a week. Seventy-five pages.

I told her no problem.

It truly was no problem. In the past year, I've written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won't find my name on a single paper.

__________________________________________

Related Content

• Live Chat With an Academic Ghostwriter
• Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply

 

Jonathan Barkat for The Chronicle Review

__________________________________________

I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online universities. I've completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can't detect, that you can't defend against, that you may not even know exists.

I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I've worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments.

In the midst of this great recession, business is booming. At busy times, during midterms and finals, my company's staff of roughly 50 writers is not large enough to satisfy the demands of students who will pay for our work and claim it as their own.

You would be amazed by the incompetence of your students' writing. I have seen the word "desperate" misspelled every way you can imagine. And these students truly are desperate. They couldn't write a convincing grocery list, yet they are in graduate school. They really need help. They need help learning and, separately, they need help passing their courses. But they aren't getting it.

For those of you who have ever mentored a student through the writing of a dissertation, served on a thesis-review committee, or guided a graduate student through a formal research process, I have a question: Do you ever wonder how a student who struggles to formulate complete sentences in conversation manages to produce marginally competent research? How does that student get by you?

I live well on the desperation, misery, and incompetence that your educational system has created. Granted, as a writer, I could earn more; certainly there are ways to earn less. But I never struggle to find work. And as my peers trudge through thankless office jobs that seem more intolerable with every passing month of our sustained recession, I am on pace for my best year yet. I will make roughly $66,000 this year. Not a king's ransom, but higher than what many actual educators are paid.

Of course, I know you are aware that cheating occurs. But you have no idea how deeply this kind of cheating penetrates the academic system, much less how to stop it. Last summer The New York Times reported that 61 percent of undergraduates have admitted to some form of cheating on assignments and exams. Yet there is little discussion about custom papers and how they differ from more-detectable forms of plagiarism, or about why students cheat in the first place.

It is my hope that this essay will initiate such a conversation. As for me, I'm planning to retire. I'm tired of helping you make your students look competent.

It is late in the semester when the business student contacts me, a time when I typically juggle deadlines and push out 20 to 40 pages a day. I had written a short research proposal for her a few weeks before, suggesting a project that connected a surge of unethical business practices to the patterns of trade liberalization. The proposal was approved, and now I had six days to complete the assignment. This was not quite a rush order, which we get top dollar to write. This assignment would be priced at a standard $2,000, half of which goes in my pocket.

A few hours after I had agreed to write the paper, I received the following e-mail: "sending sorces for ur to use thanx."

I did not reply immediately. One hour later, I received another message:

"did u get the sorce I send

please where you are now?

Desprit to pass spring projict"

Not only was this student going to be a constant thorn in my side, but she also communicated in haiku, each less decipherable than the one before it. I let her know that I was giving her work the utmost attention, that I had received her sources, and that I would be in touch if I had any questions. Then I put it aside.

From my experience, three demographic groups seek out my services: the English-as-second-language student; the hopelessly deficient student; and the lazy rich kid.

For the last, colleges are a perfect launching ground—they are built to reward the rich and to forgive them their laziness. Let's be honest: The successful among us are not always the best and the brightest, and certainly not the most ethical. My favorite customers are those with an unlimited supply of money and no shortage of instructions on how they would like to see their work executed. While the deficient student will generally not know how to ask for what he wants until he doesn't get it, the lazy rich student will know exactly what he wants. He is poised for a life of paying others and telling them what to do. Indeed, he is acquiring all the skills he needs to stay on top.

As for the first two types of students—the ESL and the hopelessly deficient—colleges are utterly failing them. Students who come to American universities from other countries find that their efforts to learn a new language are confounded not only by cultural difficulties but also by the pressures of grading. The focus on evaluation rather than education means that those who haven't mastered English must do so quickly or suffer the consequences. My service provides a particularly quick way to "master" English. And those who are hopelessly deficient—a euphemism, I admit—struggle with communication in general.

Two days had passed since I last heard from the business student. Overnight I had received 14 e-mails from her. She had additional instructions for the assignment, such as "but more again please make sure they are a good link betwee the leticture review and all the chapter and the benfet of my paper. finally do you think the level of this work? how match i can get it?"

I'll admit, I didn't fully understand that one.

It was followed by some clarification: "where u are can you get my messages? Please I pay a lot and dont have ao to faile I strated to get very worry."

Her messages had arrived between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Again I assured her I had the matter under control.

It was true. At this point, there are few academic challenges that I find intimidating. You name it, I've been paid to write about it.

Customers' orders are endlessly different yet strangely all the same. No matter what the subject, clients want to be assured that their assignment is in capable hands. It would be terrible to think that your Ivy League graduate thesis was riding on the work ethic and perspicacity of a public-university slacker. So part of my job is to be whatever my clients want me to be. I say yes when I am asked if I have a Ph.D. in sociology. I say yes when I am asked if I have professional training in industrial/organizational psychology. I say yes when asked if I have ever designed a perpetual-motion-powered time machine and documented my efforts in a peer-reviewed journal.

The subject matter, the grade level, the college, the course—these things are irrelevant to me. Prices are determined per page and are based on how long I have to complete the assignment. As long as it doesn't require me to do any math or video-documented animal husbandry, I will write anything.

I have completed countless online courses. Students provide me with passwords and user names so I can access key documents and online exams. In some instances, I have even contributed to weekly online discussions with other students in the class.

I have become a master of the admissions essay. I have written these for undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs, some at elite universities. I can explain exactly why you're Brown material, why the Wharton M.B.A. program would benefit from your presence, how certain life experiences have prepared you for the rigors of your chosen course of study. I do not mean to be insensitive, but I can't tell you how many times I've been paid to write about somebody helping a loved one battle cancer. I've written essays that could be adapted into Meryl Streep movies.

I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a passionate condemnation of America's moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the plagiarism committed by the future frocked.

With respect to America's nurses, fear not. Our lives are in capable hands­—just hands that can't write a lick. Nursing students account for one of my company's biggest customer bases. I've written case-management plans, reports on nursing ethics, and essays on why nurse practitioners are lighting the way to the future of medicine. I've even written pharmaceutical-treatment courses, for patients who I hope were hypothetical.

I, who have no name, no opinions, and no style, have written so many papers at this point, including legal briefs, military-strategy assessments, poems, lab reports, and, yes, even papers on academic integrity, that it's hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I'd say education is the worst. I've written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I've written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I've synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I've written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I've completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

As the deadline for the business-ethics paper approaches, I think about what's ahead of me. Whenever I take on an assignment this large, I get a certain physical sensation. My body says: Are you sure you want to do this again? You know how much it hurt the last time. You know this student will be with you for a long time. You know you will become her emergency contact, her guidance counselor and life raft. You know that for the 48 hours that you dedicate to writing this paper, you will cease all human functions but typing, you will Google until the term has lost all meaning, and you will drink enough coffee to fuel a revolution in a small Central American country.

But then there's the money, the sense that I must capitalize on opportunity, and even a bit of a thrill in seeing whether I can do it.

And I can. It's not implausible to write a 75-page paper in two days. It's just miserable. I don't need much sleep, and when I get cranking, I can churn out four or five pages an hour. First I lay out the sections of an assignment—introduction, problem statement, methodology, literature review, findings, conclusion—whatever the instructions call for. Then I start Googling.

I haven't been to a library once since I started doing this job. Amazon is quite generous about free samples. If I can find a single page from a particular text, I can cobble that into a report, deducing what I don't know from customer reviews and publisher blurbs. Google Scholar is a great source for material, providing the abstract of nearly any journal article. And of course, there's Wikipedia, which is often my first stop when dealing with unfamiliar subjects. Naturally one must verify such material elsewhere, but I've taken hundreds of crash courses this way.

After I've gathered my sources, I pull out usable quotes, cite them, and distribute them among the sections of the assignment. Over the years, I've refined ways of stretching papers. I can write a four-word sentence in 40 words. Just give me one phrase of quotable text, and I'll produce two pages of ponderous explanation. I can say in 10 pages what most normal people could say in a paragraph.

I've also got a mental library of stock academic phrases: "A close consideration of the events which occurred in ____ during the ____ demonstrate that ____ had entered into a phase of widespread cultural, social, and economic change that would define ____ for decades to come." Fill in the blanks using words provided by the professor in the assignment's instructions.

How good is the product created by this process? That depends—on the day, my mood, how many other assignments I am working on. It also depends on the customer, his or her expectations, and the degree to which the completed work exceeds his or her abilities. I don't ever edit my assignments. That way I get fewer customer requests to "dumb it down." So some of my work is great. Some of it is not so great. Most of my clients do not have the wherewithal to tell the difference, which probably means that in most cases the work is better than what the student would have produced on his or her own. I've actually had customers thank me for being clever enough to insert typos. "Nice touch," they'll say.

I've read enough academic material to know that I'm not the only bullshit artist out there. I think about how Dickens got paid per word and how, as a result, Bleak House is ... well, let's be diplomatic and say exhaustive. Dickens is a role model for me.

So how does someone become a custom-paper writer? The story of how I got into this job may be instructive. It is mostly about the tremendous disappointment that awaited me in college.

My distaste for the early hours and regimented nature of high school was tempered by the promise of the educational community ahead, with its free exchange of ideas and access to great minds. How dispiriting to find out that college was just another place where grades were grubbed, competition overshadowed personal growth, and the threat of failure was used to encourage learning.

Although my university experience did not live up to its vaunted reputation, it did lead me to where I am today. I was raised in an upper-middle-class family, but I went to college in a poor neighborhood. I fit in really well: After paying my tuition, I didn't have a cent to my name. I had nothing but a meal plan and my roommate's computer. But I was determined to write for a living, and, moreover, to spend these extremely expensive years learning how to do so. When I completed my first novel, in the summer between sophomore and junior years, I contacted the English department about creating an independent study around editing and publishing it. I was received like a mental patient. I was told, "There's nothing like that here." I was told that I could go back to my classes, sit in my lectures, and fill out Scantron tests until I graduated.

I didn't much care for my classes, though. I slept late and spent the afternoons working on my own material. Then a funny thing happened. Here I was, begging anybody in authority to take my work seriously. But my classmates did. They saw my abilities and my abundance of free time. They saw a value that the university did not.

It turned out that my lazy, Xanax-snorting, Miller-swilling classmates were thrilled to pay me to write their papers. And I was thrilled to take their money. Imagine you are crumbling under the weight of university-issued parking tickets and self-doubt when a frat boy offers you cash to write about Plato. Doing that job was a no-brainer. Word of my services spread quickly, especially through the fraternities. Soon I was receiving calls from strangers who wanted to commission my work. I was a writer!

Nearly a decade later, students, not publishers, still come from everywhere to find me.

I work hard for a living. I'm nice to people. But I understand that in simple terms, I'm the bad guy. I see where I'm vulnerable to ethical scrutiny.

But pointing the finger at me is too easy. Why does my business thrive? Why do so many students prefer to cheat rather than do their own work?

Say what you want about me, but I am not the reason your students cheat.

You know what's never happened? I've never had a client complain that he'd been expelled from school, that the originality of his work had been questioned, that some disciplinary action had been taken. As far as I know, not one of my customers has ever been caught.

With just two days to go, I was finally ready to throw myself into the business assignment. I turned off my phone, caged myself in my office, and went through the purgatory of cramming the summation of a student's alleged education into a weekend. Try it sometime. After the 20th hour on a single subject, you have an almost-out-of-body experience.

My client was thrilled with my work. She told me that she would present the chapter to her mentor and get back to me with our next steps. Two weeks passed, by which time the assignment was but a distant memory, obscured by the several hundred pages I had written since. On a Wednesday evening, I received the following e-mail:

"Thanx u so much for the chapter is going very good the porfesser likes it but wants the folloing suggestions please what do you thing?:

"'The hypothesis is interesting but I'd like to see it a bit more focused. Choose a specific connection and try to prove it.'

"What shoudwe say?"

This happens a lot. I get paid per assignment. But with longer papers, the student starts to think of me as a personal educational counselor. She paid me to write a one-page response to her professor, and then she paid me to revise her paper. I completed each of these assignments, sustaining the voice that the student had established and maintaining the front of competence from some invisible location far beneath the ivory tower.

The 75-page paper on business ethics ultimately expanded into a 160-page graduate thesis, every word of which was written by me. I can't remember the name of my client, but it's her name on my work. We collaborated for months. As with so many other topics I tackle, the connection between unethical business practices and trade liberalization became a subtext to my everyday life.

So, of course, you can imagine my excitement when I received the good news:

"thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now".

 

How Corporate America Is Pushing Us All Off a Cliff

Friday 19 November 2010

by: Michael Moore   |  MichaelMoore.com

When someone talks about pushing you off a cliff, it's just human nature to be curious about them. Who are these people, you wonder, and why would they want to do such a thing?

That's what I was thinking when corporate whistleblower Wendell Potter revealed that, when "Sicko" was being released in 2007, the health insurance industry's PR firm, APCO Worldwide, discussed their Plan B: "Pushing Michael Moore off a cliff."

But after looking into it, it turns out it's nothing personal! APCO wants to push everyone off a cliff.

Margery Kraus, president and chief executive officer of APCO Worldwide. (Photo: World Economic Forum / Flickr)

APCO was hatched in 1984 as a subsidiary of the Washington, D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter -- best known for its years of representing the giant tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris. APCO set up fake "grassroots" organizations around the country to do the bidding of Big Tobacco. All of a sudden, "normal, everyday, in-no-way-employed-by-Philip Morris Americans" were popping up everywhere. And it turned out they were outraged -- outraged! -- by exactly the things APCO's clients hated (such as, the government telling tobacco companies what to do). In particular, they were "furious" that regular people had the right to sue big corporations...you know, like Philip Morris. (For details, see the 2000 report "The CALA Files" (PDF) by my friends and colleagues Carl Deal and Joanne Doroshow.)

Right about now you may be wondering: how many Americans get pushed off a cliff by Big Tobacco every year? The answer is 443,000 Americans die every year due to smoking. That's a big cliff.

With this success under their belts, APCO created "The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition." TASSC, funded partly by Exxon, had a leading role in a planned campaign by the fossil fuel industry to create doubt about global warming. The problem for Big Oil speaking out against global warming, according to the campaign's own leaked documents, was that the public could see the "vested interest" that oil companies had in opposing environmental laws. APCO's job was to help conceal those oil company interests.

And boy, have they ever succeeded. Polls now show that, as the world gets hotter, Americans are getting less and less worried about it.

How big is this particular cliff? According to the World Health Organization, climate change contributes -- right now -- to the deaths of 150,000 people every year. By 2030 it may be double that. And after that...well, the sky is literally the limit! I don't think it's crazy to say APCO may rack up even bigger numbers here than they have with tobacco.

With this track record, you can see why, when the health insurance industry wanted to come after "Sicko," they went straight to APCO. The "worst case," as their leaked documents say, was that "Sicko evolves into a sustained populist movement." That simply could not be allowed to happen. Something obviously had to be done.

As Wendell Potter explains, APCO ran their standard playbook, setting up something called "Health Care America." Health Care America, according to Potter, "was received by mainstream reporters, including the New York Times, as a legitimate organization when it was nothing but a front group set up by APCO Worldwide. It was not anything approaching what it was reporting to be: a 'grassroots organization.' It was a sham group."

Health Care America showed up online in 2007 (the year "Sicko" was released) and disappeared quickly by early 2008. You can still find their website archived here. As you'll see, their "moderated forum" allowed normal, everyday, in-no-way-employed-by-the-insurance-industry Americans to speak out. For instance, here's something Nicole felt very strongly about:

"Moore shouldn't be allowed to call his film a 'documentary.' It should be called a political commercial. We need to fix our health care system, but we shouldn’t accept a Hollywood moviemaker’s political views as the starting point."

Here's what Wendell Potter revealed about the insurance industry's media strategy:

"As we would do the media training, we would always have someone refer to him as 'Hollywood entertainer' or 'Hollywood moviemaker Michael Moore.' They don't want you to think that it was a documentary that had some truth."

Thanks for your perspective, "Nicole"!

Now, how big was THAT cliff? A pretty good size -- according to a recent study, 45,000 Americans die every year because they don't have health insurance.

And here we are in 2010. A lesser PR firm might be resting on its laurels at this point, content to sit back and watch hundreds of thousands of people continue to be pushed off the various cliffs they've built. But not APCO! Right now they've taken on their biggest challenge yet: leading a giant, multi-million dollar effort to help Wall Street "earn back the trust of the American people."

We may never know the size of this particular cliff. But we can be sure it's gigantic. According to the New York Times, one of the things Wall Street's recession gave us is "the crippling of the government program that provides life-sustaining antiretroviral drugs to Americans with H.I.V. or AIDS who cannot afford them." Internationally, organizations fighting AIDS and other diseases are "hugely afraid" of cutbacks in funding.

Of course, there are the 101 ways recessions kill quietly. For instance, children's hospitals are seeing a sharp 55% rise in the abuse of babies by parents.

And that's just the previous cliff. If APCO and its Wall Street co-conspirators lull us into turning our backs on them again, we can be sure the next cliff -- the next crash -- will be much bigger.

Anyway, this is all just a way for me to say to APCO: No hard feelings! My getting mad at you would be like a chicken who's still happily pecking away getting mad at McDonald's. Compared to the millions you've already turned into McNuggets, you've actually treated me much, much BETTER! Spying on my family, planting smears and lies about me, privately badgering movie critics to give the film a poor review, scaring Americans into believing they'd be committing a near-act of treason were they to go to the theater and see my movie -- hey, ya done good, health insurance companies of America. And, most important, you stopped the nation from getting true universal health care. Good job!

There's only one problem -- I'm not one of those "liberals" you fund in Congress, the ones who fear your power.

I'm me. And that, sadly, is not good for you.

Yours in good health,
Michael Moore

P.S. It seems to me that APCO's discussion of pushing me off a cliff should legitimately be part of their Wikipedia page. And why not something about their role in Wall Street's new PR offensive? So I'm asking everyone interested to write something up that meets Wikipedia's guidelines and help bring the APCO Worldwide entry up to date. Post it somewhere online and send a tweet about it to @mmflint. I'll award a signed copy of "Sicko" by noon Sunday to the best entry...and then deputize you to post it on Wikipedia for real and make sure APCO's minions don't take it down. Just be sure afterward not to walk near any cliffs!

P.P.S. The late, great comedian Bill Hicks had some thoughts about marketing and the people who do it. 

DuSable Museum founder, cultural leader Margaret Burroughs dead at 95

November 21, 2010

BY MARY HOULIHAN Staff Reporter

Margaret Burroughs, an artist, poet, educator and founder of the DuSable Museum of African American History, died early Sunday morning at her home surrounded by her family.

Mrs. Burroughs legacy reaches across the spectrum, and is a distinctive contribution to black culture.

Dr. Margaret Burroughs, founder of the DuSable Museum of African American History, is shown on Feb. 22, 2008, speaking at Hinsdale Central High School. Burroughs died Sunday morning at age 95.
(Sun-Times Media)

“Every individual wants to leave a legacy; to be remembered for something positive they have done for their community,” Mrs. Burroughs once told Ebony magazine. “Long after I’m dead and gone, the DuSable Museum will still be here.”

Mrs. Burroughs, 95, was born in St. Rose, La., and had a lifelong passion for learning. She moved with her family north to Chicago where she attended Englewood High School. She would go on to attend Chicago Normal College, Chicago Teachers College and the School of the Art Institute.

Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs, founder of the DuSable Museum of African American History, and Mayor Daley look at her collection of artwork at the Feb. 22 dedication of the Dr. Margaret Burroughs Gallery at the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. Shore Dr. Burroughs died Sunday at age 95. 
(John H. White/Sun-Times)

The DuSable got its start in 1961 during a meeting at Mrs. Burroughs’s home. Originally called the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art, it was relocated in 1971 from Burroughs’ home to Washington Park and renamed for Haitian trader Jean Baptist Pointe DuSable, Chicago’s first permanent settler.

Mrs. Burroughs was the author of children’s books and volumes of poetry that spoke to the African-American experience.

Mrs. Burroughs taught art for more than 20 years at DuSable High School.

She worked in sculpture and painting but it was her skill as a printmaker that she became best known for. Her linoleum block prints featured images relevant to African-American culture.

At Mrs. Burroughs request, there will be no funeral service. A public memorial will be held after the holidays.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana is the murder capital of the United States. For the last decade, statistics have shown murder rates four to six times higher than the national average. Eighty percent of the victims are black males, mostly in their teenage years. This is the city’s greatest neglected crisis with profound implications for the issues of violence and crime most American cities face. New Orleans government, law enforcement, community leaders, and well-intentioned citizens cannot agree on a prognosis or a solution to this situation. Wherever a disagreement is escalating into violence, an execution is being planned, or a victim is taking his last breath, it is more than likely a youth is witnessing or carrying out these actions.

 

> New Orleans is the murder capital of the United States

 

> 80% of murder victims in New Orleans are young black males

 

> New Orleans has the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world

 

> 1 in 5 students in New Orleans has carried a gun to school

 

> 1 in 3 people arrested for murder in America are teenagers

 

> 40% of the children in New Orleans live below the poverty line

 

> In New Orleans tax payers spend over $40,000,000 a year to incarcerate residents

 

> 69% of murders amongst teens in New Orleans are due to personal disputes

 

MURDER THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD attempts to bridge the gap of this disconnect by hearing the ideas, opinions, and testimonies from activists, community leaders, police, city officials, youth program directors, family and friends of victims, and the children who live in these violent circumstances. We are looking for positive solutions to an extremely negative situation.

Murder Through The Eyes of a Child Trailer. www.crescentcityfilms.net

 

JULIA WARD HOWE BOOK AWARDS The Fourteenth Annual Awards will be presented May 5, 2011 at the Boston Public Library Boston Authors Club gives annual prizes of $1,000 each for two books (one for young readers). The books must be published the year prior to the award, that is, in 2010 for 2011. The authors must live, have lived or attended college within 100 miles of Boston and resided here at some time within the past five years. Works of fiction, nonfiction, memoir, poetry, and biography are eligible; picture books, text books and self-published works are not. Two copies of the book, which will not be returned, should be submitted along with $25 per title. Winners, finalists and recommended authors also receive one year complimentary membership in the Club. Winners have included: James Carroll, Linda Davis, Anita Diamant, Dexter Filkins, Moying Li-Marcus, Igor Lukes, Michael Patrick MacDonald, Charles Mann, Thomas O'Connor, Sylvia Sellers-Garcia, Nicholas Tawa, Brenda Wineapple and Gordon S. Wood. The prizes were renamed for Julia Ward Howe in 2002. In 2000, a separate award for young readers was added. Winners have included: M.T. Anderson, Pat Lowery Collins, Liza Ketchum, Gordon Morrison, Deborah Savage, Brian Selznick, Carole Vogel, Ellen Wittlinger, Meg Rosoff and Padma Venkatraman. Special recognition is occasionally given for books with a notable Boston connection or to authors for a body of work. A category for "Recommended Books" was added in 2004. Publishers should submit two copies of books published in 2010 (final deadline January 15, 2011) to: Boston Authors Club, 33 Brayton Rd, Brighton 02135 . For more information, contact Alan Lawson, 617-552-8457, And the winners now posted were for the 13th Annual awards.

THE BOSTON AUTHOR'S CLUB 13th ANNUAL AWARDS -- 2010

The Mayor’s Poetry Competition 2010

The Mayor’s Poetry Competition 2010

All potential poets, over the age of 16, are invited to take part in The Mayor's Poetry Competition 2010.  The London Borough of Enfield has a blossoming network of professional and amateur poets and we hope that the competition will attract new accomplished writing, whilst supporting the arts in Enfield.

The competition prizes are as follows:

• 1st Prize - £500
• 2nd Prize - £200
• 3rd Prize - £100
• Special ' Enfield Prize' for a poem on the subject of Enfield : £50

Download the full competition rules

Closing date:  31st January 2011

The Mayor's Poetry Competition 2010 is sponsored by local chemical company Fisher Research Ltd and LondonWaste.

BkMk Press of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Announces

The G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction

The John Ciardi Prize for Poetry

Next Postmark deadline: January 15, 2011

For the best book-length collections of poetry and of short fiction in English by a living author

Prize: $1,000 and publication of winning book for each prize

Submissions:

• Manuscripts must be typed on standard-sized paper, in English. Poetry manuscripts should be approximately 50 pages minimum, 110 pages maximum, single spaced. Short fiction collections should be approximately 125 pages minimum, 300 pages maximum, double spaced.
• Entries must include two title pages: one with author name, address and phone number; and one with no author information. Any acknowledgments should appear on a separate piece of paper.
• Entries must include a table of contents.
• Author's name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript.
• Please submit your manuscript in loose pages, bound only with a clip or rubber band. We prefer that you do not staple or permanently bind your manuscript. Do not submit your manuscript by fax or e-mail.
• Simultaneous and multiple submissions are acceptable. Please notify us of acceptance elsewhere.
• A SASE should be included, for notification only. Note: No manuscripts will be returned.
• A non-refundable reading fee of $25 in US funds (check made payable to BkMk Press) must accompany each manuscript. Entrants will receive a copy of the winning book in their genre when it is published.
• Manuscripts must be postmarked no later than January 15, 2011. 

Manuscripts will not be returned.  No refunds will be issued.

Judging will be blind at all levels. Initial judging will be done by a network of published writers and editors. The final judging will be done by a poet and a fiction writer of national reputation. Winners will be announced in July 2011 and the winning entries will be published in 2012.

These competitions are held annually.

Address To:

 

John Ciardi Prize for Poetry or Sharat Chandra Prize for Fiction
BkMk Press
University of Missouri-Kansas City
5100 Rockhill Road
Kansas City, MO 64110-2499

(816) 235-2558*
Fax (816) 235-2611
bkmk@umkc.edu

Available to contest entrants at the special price of $5 each postage paid are the following titles from BkMk Press:

Stations of the Air by John Ciardi. These poems were collected after Ciardi's death in 1986.

Family of Mirrors, poems by G. S. Sharat Chandra, professor of English at UMKC who died in 2000.

Available to contest entrants at the special price of $10 each postage paid are the past winners of the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry: The Resurrection Machine by Steve Gehrke, 1999 winner, selected by Miller Williams; Kentucky Swami by Tim Skeen, 2001 winner, selected by Michael Burns; 2002 winner Escape Artist by Terry Blackhawk, selected by Molly Peacock; 2003 winner Fence Line by Curtis Bauer, selected by Christopher Buckley; 2004 winner The Portable Famine by Rane Arroyo (selected by Robin Becker); 2005 winner Wayne's College of Beauty by David Swanger (selected by Colleen J. McElroy); 2006 winner Airs & Voices by Paula Bonnell (selected by Mark Jarman); 2007 winner Black Tupelo Country by Doug Ramspeck (selected by Leslie Adrienne Miller); 2008 winner Tongue of War by Tony Barnstone, selected by B. H. Fairchild, and the past winners of the Chandra Prize: 2002 winner A Bed of Nails by Ron Tanner (selected by Janet Burroway); 2003 winner I'll Never Leave You by H. E. Francis, selected by Diane Glancy; 2004 winner The Logic of a Rose: Chicago Stories by Billy Lombardo, selected by Gladys Swan; 2005 winner Necessary Lies by Kerry Neville Bakken, (selected by Hilary Masters); 2006 winner Love Letters from a Fat Man by Naomi Benaron, (selected by Stuart Dybek); 2007 winner Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales by Eleanor Bluestein, (selected by Marly Swick); 2008 winner Dangerous Places by Perry Glasser, selected by Gary Gildner.

In 2010, watch for Ciardi Prize winner Mapmaking by Megan Harlan, selected Sidney Wade; and Chandra Prize winner Georgic by Mariko Nagai, selected by Jonis Agee.

 

Nov2010 Filed under: African Americans in the Media, Arts and Film, Black Church, Blacks in Entertainment, Entertainment, Theater, Writers, culture Author: drjelks

Marcus Gardley, poet-playwright was born and bread on the rolling hills, lively churches, and moody-blue streets of Oakland, California. He is a professor of Creative Writing at Columbia University and works extensively at middle schools and high schools in New York. He has received commissions from the Yale Repertory Theatre, Playwright’s Horizon, The Shotgun Players, South Coast Repertory and Second Stage Theatre. He is the recipient of the Bay Area playwrights Fellowship Foundation Award, the Eugene O’ Neil Memorial Scholarship and the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize. He graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 2004. Mr. Gardley’s new play Every Tongue Confess .

Conceived as a hall for the birthing of new plays, Arena Stage’s newest space, the Kogod Cradle, warmly embraces that essential function with its inaugural presentation: the world premiere of Marcus Gardley’s folkloric exploration of hate crimes in the American South, “every tongue confess.”

The symbolic importance of this moment in Arena’s evolution should not go unstressed: The company is pursuing a hyper-ambitious path as it stretches its legs in its gloriously re-engineered surroundings in Southwest Washington, courtesy of a $135 million makeover. So perhaps it is fitting that the first original work in this beautiful Cradle feels as if it’s still finding its way, too.

Gardley’s play, bolstered by a top-notch cast that includes Phylicia Rashad, Jason Dirden and Leslie Kritzer, tries through lyrical speeches, magical spirituality and densely interlocked subplots to locate the redemptive potential in a horrific set of circumstances: the serial burning of black churches in the Alabama of the mid-1990s. Read More