Bacopa Literary Review 2011 
Contest Submission Guidelines

September 1 -- November 30, 2010

Prizes (Each Genre)
    * First Place – $300.00, Second Place – $100.00
    * First, Second, and Honorable Mention winners will be published.
    * All submissions will be considered for publication.
    * All authors whose work is published in Bacopa will receive one free copy of the 2011 Bacopa Literary Review.
    * All submissions will be judged blind.

    Notification
    * First, Second and Honorable Mention winners will be notified via email.
    * Winners will be posted on the WAG website.

Eligibility
    * Manuscripts in English and unpublished at the time of submission. (If your submission is accepted elsewhere, please notify the
      Bacopa Contest Editor).
    * No limit to the number of submissions from one person in any category.
    * WAG Membership is not required.
    * For accepted manuscripts, WAG acquires first serial rights; upon publication, rights revert to the author. WAG requests that the
      Bacopa Literary Review be credited as original publisher for subsequent publications.

Manuscript Format—Fiction, Nonfiction, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir
    * Word limit: 250 -- 3,300 words
    * Double-spaced
    * One-inch margins, all sides, 0.5 paragraph Indent, left justified.
    * 12-point type in Arial or Times New Roman ONLY.
    * Cover Page: Name, Address, Email, Phone, Manuscript Title, Word Count, and a brief Bio of 50 or fewer words.
    * Page 1 and following: Title/Page Number Upper Right.
    * Page 1: Word Count under Title/Page Number.
    * Submit the File in .rtf or .doc ONLY.
    * NOTE: Author’s name appears ONLY on the cover page and must not appear on the manuscript.

Manuscript Format—Poetry
    * Up to 50 lines per poem.
    * Up to three poems per submission.
    * Poems need not be double-spaced.
    * 12-point type in Arial or Times New Roman ONLY.
    * Cover Page: Name, Address, Email, Phone, Title(s) and Line Count(s) for each poem, and a brief Bio of 50 or fewer words
    * Submit the file in .rtf or .doc ONLY
    * NOTE: Author’s name appears ONLY on the cover page and must not appear on any of the poems.

Questions
    * If you have contest questions, email the Bacopa Contest Editor

 

Only submissions following all the above guidelines will be considered.

Method of Transmission – Email Only
    * Fill out a separate Entry Form for each submission — NO mailed, paper manuscripts.
    * Unless you are a WAG member and this is your first submission, when you submit your Entry Form you'll see a link to PayPal for
      the $11 submission fee.
    * Payment must be received by the contest deadline, 11/30/10.     

Entry Fees
    * We must receive your Entry Fee at the same time you email each submission.
    * Writers Alliance of Gainesville (WAG) members in good standing, your first submission in any genre is FREE. Members also receive
      a free copy of each annual Bacopa Literary Review.
    * WAG Members – Additional submissions are $11 each
    * All Others – $11 each submission
    * We prefer PayPal payment as indicated in the Entry Form. If you have extenuating circumstances you may mail a personal
      check, in time for receipt by 11/30/10 and with the title of the work noted on your check, to:

           Writers Alliance of Gainesville
           WAG Contest
           P.O. Box 358396
           Gainesville, FL 32635   

Join WAG
    * To join WAG, click here for the WAG Membership page and payment instructions.

 

Poster For “Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of the Spook Who sat by the Door”

By Tambay, on September 15th, 2010

Back in June, I alerted you all to a work-in-progress documentary directed by University of California-Davis film Professor, Christine Acham, titled Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of the Spook Who sat by the Door, about the making of the Ivan Dixon-directed political firebrand of a film.

I later received an email from Professor Acham, updating me on the film’s status. Specifically, first, it now has a Facebook page (HERE), and you’re all encouraged to become fans, or “like” the film’s page, so that you can stay directly informed; and second, the film has a website, but it’s still under construction; however, feel free to bookmark it for future reference here: www.infiltratinghollywood.com; and lastly, there’s a trailer for it, which I embedded for you all to watch below!

Now we’ve got our first look at the film’s poster. If you’re not familiar, the gentleman on the cover is Mr Sam Greenlee who wrote the novel that the film was based on, and who you’ll also see in the below trailer, if you haven’t already watched it when I posted it previously.

So, check out the film’s Facebook page, if you’re on Facebook; Professor Acham says it’ll be updated as progress is made on the film; and here’s the trailer again:

September 20, 2010, 1:47 pm — Updated: 2:21 pm -->

Lynn Nottage Awarded Steinberg Prize

By PATRICK HEALY

Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Lynn Nottage

The $200,000 Steinberg award for playwriting, the most lucrative prize in theater, will go to Lynn Nottage for her body of work that most recently includes the 2009 Pulitzer Prize recipient “Ruined,” the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust announced on Monday.

The distinguished playwright award is presented every other year; the first winner, in 2008, was Tony Kushner (“Angels in America,” “Caroline, or Change”). In alternating years the trust gives awards to playwrights at earlier stages of their careers — a category that generated some debate in 2009 among the award’s judges, who had different views on the definition of an emerging writer. That year Bruce Norris (“Clybourne Park”) received a $50,000 award, and David Adjmi (“Stunning”) and Tarell Alvin McCraney (“The Brother/Sister Plays”) received $25,000 apiece.

Ms. Nottage, 45, has several plays to her credit, including “Intimate Apparel” and “Mud, River, Stone”; her latest, “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark,” will have its premiere Off Broadway at Second Stage Theater in the spring. During an interview on Monday before a “Vera Stark” workshop, Ms. Nottage said she was overwhelmed by the Steinberg honor and its cash award.

“There’s a real sense of satisfaction after so many years in the trenches, when I was pretty much living day-to-day and holding onto my money like a miser,” Ms. Nottage said, “though there’s also this ‘why me?’ guilt when I think about all the other writers still in the trenches.” She said that she planned to save the money for long-term family needs; she and her husband have a 12-year-old and a 19-month-old.

“Ruined,” about a group of physically and emotionally scarred prostitutes in war-torn Congo, won virtually every award that it qualified for during its seven-month run Off Broadway in 2009. That Manhattan Theater Club production, despite being critically acclaimed and extended multiple times, never sufficiently swayed commercial producers to transfer it to Broadway, making the play ineligible for a Tony Award. It took time for Ms. Nottage to make peace with the Broadway disappointment, she said.

“I’ve pretty much moved on, in large part because I feel the journey of the play to regional theaters and overseas is ultimately more important,” Ms. Nottage said. “With more people and more cities having access to the play, this part of history can be more a part of current conversation about the treatment of women and the history of Africa.” Ms. Nottage is now adapting “Ruined” into a screenplay; the drama has been optioned by HBO, she said.

>via: http://www.shadowandact.com/?p=31396&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium...

Women who strike

21/09/2010 # 8:42 am # Express - current affairs # No Comment

Women protesters during recent public service strike

Victorine Ntambo reflects on popular perceptions of the recent public service strike and the gender dimension of the protests.

We call them sisters. A very soothing title for a profession made up of a handsome number of women.  Nurses all over the world – and particularly in South Africa where hospitals are under-staffed – work long, difficult hours, yet they are underpaid. The government and many people think nurses’ rewards should lie in being of service to others. At the same time, teachers enjoy their jobs because they took an oath to empower our children and even some grown-ups too. Their working conditions are terrible and most of them do not have offices. They do most of their administrative jobs from their homes; houses that are often in a terrible condition. But the government and many non-teachers think they do not have the right to decent salaries and housing allowances.

During the recent public service strike in South Africa, newspaper images and television screens were filled with images of groups of women toyi-toying in response to the government’s refusal to an 8% salary increase. These groups comprised teachers and nurses, alongside their public sector colleagues. The public has responded with disappointment and anger, especially where demonstrations have turned violent and because schooling and medical services have been disrupted. Because to them, teachers and nurses are lucky to have jobs and they knew what they were letting themselves in for when choosing the profession.

I do not write to condone violence nor the disruption of classes and the treatment of patients and non-strikers. I will never do that because the strikers have civil rights. What they do not seem to remember though is that while it is everyone’s democratic right to strike, it is also everyone’s democratic right to decide not to strike. As such, it becomes unacceptable to threaten or intimidate people who make either decision.

Let us assume that teachers are in this profession because of their call to educate the nation while nurses are angels of mercy. It is assumed that women are by nature educators and nurturers because amongst other things, they often come to the aid of those in need for nothing in return. When teachers and nurses go on strike, it seems to touch a raw nerve in our country’s consciousness because it is similar to a mother who goes on strike, and refuses to nurture the family or do any housework until she gets some recognition for it. When people protest to violent acts by women, it is because the picture painted in our minds seems like that of mothers who abandon their homes and children to go to war. Images of violent women during strikes evoke horror sights.

Teachers’ unions, nurses’ unions and COSATU have all been very vocal in stating that compassion does not pay the bills at the end of every month.  In fact one striker stated on television news that they (educators) are the ones who make the directors and ministers of government who they are. I guess on the other side of the coin, nurses put forward a similar argument. Teachers and nurses are expected to give everything, and get very little in return for it. Loyalty and care is a two-way street, isn’t it? The government should be able to give what it expects to take.

Is it right for me to ask why the demand of these teachers and nurses has to be so irrelevant that the strike has to result to violence? Looking at the gender composition of these two professions and of the service profession in general, I am tempted to state that its employees find themselves at the very bottom of the public service pay scale because about 80% of the teachers in this country are women. The figure for nurses is possibly higher. In my opinion, these women should be paid more for working in the frontlines of education and social care, for dealing with children’s emotional and social challenges, for being the parents to our children during the day, for touching blood, bedpans, dying patients and for being in the front lines of overworked and stressed principals, head teachers, doctors, midwives and other specialists.

I am not for a moment denying that you find lazy, inefficient and disinterested teachers and nurses who are insufficiently trained and have bad attitudes, just like in every single profession. In fact the point I make in this article is that the responsibility for caring for patients in state schools and hospitals is that of the government. That the government has to create the kind of scenario in which teachers and nurses have the right to office space, equipment, expertise, support, financial encouragement, and other working conditions in order to do their jobs. Otherwise, the government will be failing both the teachers, nurses and the citizens. People now blame the teachers and nurses whose frustration has reached boiling point. This, in my view, is blaming the victim rather than the perpetrator.

Haitian Women Struggle to Keep Hope Alive

By Wadner Pierre

Zanmi Agrikol farm/Friends of Agriculture, in Bas-Plateau Central. Credit:Wadner Pierre/IPS

GONAIVES, Sep 20, 2010 (IPS) - "I'm going to do everything possible to raise my daughter. My daughter is my future. And I can see my future in her," says Mirlene Saint Juste, a rice merchant in the Opoto market of Gonaives in northern Haiti.

Haitian women like Saint Juste who work as street vendors are widely viewed as one of the country's main economic engines. Their loud sales pitch on busy market days has earned them the affectionate nickname "Madame Sara", after a type of yellow bird in the countryside that loves to sing.

Cetoute Sadila, now middle-aged, has worked since she was 15 at the Lester market in the valley of Artibonite, Haiti's largest department.

"I have been selling rice here since I was little girl," she says. "I used to sell a medium-sized can of rice for 30 gourdes (74 cents). Now, I have to sell it for 105 gourdes (about 2.60 U.S. dollars) because the fertiliser is very expensive." Still, Sadila said she is able to send her children to school and university.

Not all are so lucky. While Artibonite, and its capital, Gonaives, were largely spared by the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, Port-au-Prince and its surrounds suffered colossal damage.

The slow pace of recovery has pushed women who were already on the brink of destitution over the edge.

Rosemene Mondesir is a single mother of seven children who has lived in a displaced persons camp for the last eight months. "I have always been the mother and father of my children - before and after the earthquake," she says. "I need assistance to feed and send them to school."

The filthy, ramshackle camp is situated about a 40-minute drive north of Port-au-Prince. Residents have dubbed it "the desert of Canaan" because there are so few trees and no potable water. The area used to be a dumpsite for the victims of death squads, particularly following the first coup against former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991.

But in Haiti, women are always well-organised, whether in the marketplace or the camps. As the dust from the quake settled, they have joined hands to combat rapists and opportunistic thieves.

Stephanie Henry, a 28-year-old civil engineer, is the leader of Ann Kore Yo/Let's Support Them, a grassroots women's group based in Cersal camp in the Delmas district. "A group of women and I decided to found this organisation to help other young women," she told IPS. "The young are more vulnerable."

"Some of them lost their parents in the earthquake. They have to sell their bodies to get some money to live. It is very sad," Henry says.

Teen pregnancy is also much more visible than before the earthquake. Dr. Magalita Lajoie, a general practitioner who specialises in community health, told IPS, "I was working in a camp where I registered six cases of 13-year-old girls who became pregnant after Jan. 12."

"Rape is a big problem in the camps," she said. "We have trainings for 14-year-old girls living in the camps we work at. We teach them what to do in case someone rapes them. We also teach them how to protect themselves from getting pregnant. In turn, they teach the other girls."

Those who work with women in the camps say that the authorities are often indifferent to crimes against women and rapists are rarely brought to justice.

"The Haitian government and MINUSTAH [the U.N. peacekeeping force] have to take responsibility to provide security for the camps. They have to protect the women and children from being abused or raped by the predators," said Mario Joseph, a lead attorney with the Bureaux des Avocats Internationaux (BAI), at a press conference last month with Blaine Bookey, a U.S. lawyer working with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH).

A report published in July by human rights groups including Madre, IJDH and BAI called "Our Bodies Are Still Trembling: Haitian Women's Fight against Rape" detailed ongoing sexual violence in the camps and criticised the Haitian president and U.N. mission in Haiti for not providing security or electricity.

Komisyon Fanm Viktim Pou Viktim, or KOFAVIV/Committee of Women Victims for Victims, has worked with survivors of sexual violence since 2004. In a report published Jul. 18, KOFAVIV contradicted U.N. claims that security has been provided in problem areas. "People living in many camps are forced to provide their own security, with little resources, through informal security patrols or 'brigades'," the group said.

In the first two months after the earthquake, KOFAVIV tracked 230 incidents of rape in just 15 camps in Port‐au‐ Prince.

While the government and the international community work on a reconstruction plan, many feel that the immediate problems facing Haitian women have slipped under the radar – even though they must play a key role in putting Haiti back on its feet.

Besides personal safety issues, there are no child support laws to protect single mothers, who comprise the majority of homeless seen on the street.

Marie Benjami, a mother of three, is among the more fortunate ones. She has a job at the Zanmi Agrikol farm, a project of Zanmi Lasante/Partners in Health, located in Bas- Plateau Central.

"I have been working with Zanmi Agrikol/Friends of Agriculture for two years. I can only help my children by coming here. If I didn't work here, I don't know what I would do to support them," she said.

This Nov. 28, Haitians will head to the polls to choose a new president, 10 senators and 99 members of parliament. Fanmi Lavalas, widely seen as the most popular political party in the country, has again been excluded from the election on technical grounds.

But women may still have something to cheer about. Despite their many hardships and a culture of discrimination, at least two - Mirland H. Manigat and Claire-Lydie Parent – have registered to run for president.

Route 66

Stardust

Steal Away-Mahalia Jackson & Nat King Cole

Nature Boy

http://www.billytaylorjazz.net presents Billy Taylor as Jelly Roll Morton.