A small friend is turning 6 in two weeks.
She lives across the country,
and we can't make it to the luau party.
We can't come for cake and balloons and birthday hugs,
but we can send pineapples
and kitties
and fancy toothpicks.
They're like tiny, paper aloha hugs.
So, in shuttling wildebeests to soccer camp lately,
I have discovered a few good surprises
in being the carpool soccer mom.
Books on CD.
Car-goofy kids.
And sketchbook time
while all my soccer players
do their runs and drills.
Big chunks of sketchbook time
help when working out new ideas.
It's funny that I can sketch happy around a crowd,
but I can't write a drop.
My thoughts turn to stone and my stories sink.
But then, that's kind of a theme for me with words anytime lately.
I know some writers who scribble serious magic
in coffee shops and airplanes.
What about you?
When do you do your deep story work?
Can you create masterpieces with everyone there?
Do you thrive with hum and buzz?
Or do you like a hush when you create?
Wherever you find yourself this week,
I wish you peaceful breezes, sweet surprises, and
aloha.
Books {and CD books} we're enjoying this week:
Captain Cat by Inga Moore
Dream Friends by You Byun
Ling and Ting Share a Birthday by Grace Lin
Ling and Ting: Together in All Weather by Grace Lin
A Boy and a Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz, ill. by Catia Chien
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
Chasing Secrets by Gennifer Choldenko
The Cat Who Came in Off the Roof by Annie M. G. Schmidt
Are you a writer aged 12–17? Would you like to submit a vignette to us for our new Blooming Vine Leaves feature?
Please submit no more than 800 words in total per submission period. This means you can send one piece worth 800 words, or 8 pieces worth 100 words each, and/or anything in between. If you are submitting multiple pieces, please submit them all in one document.
Deadline for submissions: Feb. 28, 2015
If you are submitting your work as part of a school project, please let us know which school you are from.
If more than 20 students from the same school submit at the same time, and you are all accepted, we will send your school a generous package of books for your school library.
Submit your work here.
Creative Minds Writing Contest
Submit here.
We invite submissions for Imagine’s Creative Minds Essay Contest.
The first-place winner will be published in the January/February issue of Imagine. Second- and third-place winners will be excerpted in print and published in full online. Winners will receive copies of the issue in which their work appears.
Winners will be announced in the Jan/Feb issue of Imagine and on the Imagine website.
Contest Guidelines:
Entrants must be 18 years old or younger.
Entries must be received by 5:00 ET on Friday, November 7, 2014.
There is no theme or topic for this competition. Essays may be any work of creative nonfiction including, but not limited to, memoirs, personal essays, travel writing, and lyric essays. We will not accept book reports, critical works, or research papers.
Essays must not exceed 1,000 words and must be titled.
Entrants may submit up to two essays.
Entries must include text only. Do not include photographs, illustrations, or background graphics or colors.
Essays must be entrant’s original work. Essays that have won other contests or that have appeared in any print or online publications are not eligible.
Save all essays in a single Microsoft Word document with your last name as the file name. Submit your entry online here.
Questions may be directed to:
mhartmanATjhuDOTedu (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )
See the winning essays from previous years in our essay archives.
The Great River Shakespeare Festival is now accepting entries for the 2014 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest.
This year’s Contest, the seventh annual, celebrates the memory of Maria Faust, who was a lover of poetry and a passionate supporter of the arts and the Great River Shakespeare Festival. The Sonnet Contest itself has attracted international entrants, and Contest activities this year may include an opening event that features a discussion and sharing of sonnet forms. A closing award ceremony, which includes the reading of prize-winning sonnets and recognition of winning poets will conclude this year’s contest.
The free reception Award Ceremony will be the closing GRSF Front Porch Event on Saturday, August 2nd, 2014 at 10:30 a.m. in the Miller Auditorium of Stark Hall at Winona State University. Mark your calendar for readings of the sonnets by members of the GRSF company and the opportunity to meet some of the poets.
Cash prizes, totaling $1,200, will be awarded in a number of categories, including:
Best Overall
Best Yourth (17 & Under)
Laureate’s Choices
Local Area (Winona & adjacent counties): Adult and Youth
Sonnets may be written in Shakespearean, Petrarchan, Spenserian or Non-Traditional form, and the contest is open to anyone interested in participating. Previously published and unpublished sonnets are welcomed.
The Contest entry fee is $5.00 for up to 3 sonnets. Enclose the entry fee check made out to: Ted Haaland, with a memo of “Maria W. Faust Fund.” Entries must be post-marked, First-Class mail, no later than July 1st, addressed to:
GRSF Maria W. Faust Sonnet contest
c/o Emilio DeGrazia
211 West Wabasha Street
Winona, MN 55987
Submissions will not be returned. Do not include your name on the sonnet submissions. Please include a separate information sheet with your name, address, email, phone number, Names of Sonnets, Age (if entering Local Area/17 and under), and how you heard about the Sonnet Contest.
Winners will be announced by August 2nd online.
Anthology of Winning Sonnets
The anthology of winning sonnets from the first five years of the GRSF/Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, This Melody Weaves In And Out is still available.
Copies of the book are available through the GRSF merchandise booth and at select locations in Winona for $10 each.
Yesterday I taught a teen writing workshop at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ. As I told the teens…
If you haven’t entered your life-changing story, now’s the time. Stephanie Morrill has offered to giveaway one of the first three books in her Skylar Hoyt series. An amazing gift. Thank you Stephanie!
Cover Pictures captured from http://goteenwriters.blogspot.com
But an even bigger gift is what you can do for someone else. You can encourage them with the story of your life. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be poetic. It just has to be yours. Winners are not judged, they’re chosen at random to say thank you for entering. So tell us…What has Jesus done for you?
The extraordinary week that has been this week found me in a classroom last evening among teens who have lived through the hardest kinds of sorrow and who look at now and look ahead and imagine themselves writing. I'd written a talk. It was soon abandoned. It was more important to sit on a desk with my things sprawled about me and listen for the young writers' stories. We talked about whether or not writing heals, and about whether or not it's possible for writers to write what they do not know. Poems were recited from memory. Early plot lines unspooled. A question asked about the pretensions of books versus the power of movies. One of the girls in the room had been reading Undercover; she described it, with great sophistication, to her peers. One of the young men, a science fiction and horror writer, had also tried to read the book. It wasn't for him, he said, and then he worried that his words had somehow wounded.
I had a copy of Mary Oliver's poem "Wild Geese" in my folder. I read it aloud. It was a still and perfect moment, a poem that spoke with force and meaning to the writers in that room. You do not have to be good, the poem begins. You do not have to walk on your knees/for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
"I like it a lot," the science fiction writer said. "It means we can be who we are."
I hope you have an inkling of what you did for those young people. The encouragement that comes from someone who has been brave enough to go for her dreams and has succeeded is priceless. Bravo for taking the time to go, and bravo to those bright young folks for the work they’re already doing!
Kelley, thank you so much! That’s such a nice perspective!