Italy Travel Article Writing Contest: Best Italian Travel Writing Story

Arttrav.com article writing contest with prizes!
Deadline Sunday, September 13, 2009

Italy Travel article writing contest with book and bag prizes and a grand prize from Context Travel.

Deadline for submission: Sunday September 13, 2009, midnight EST.
Winners will be announced Sunday September 27, 2009 on www.arttrav.com
Winning essays will be published each Sunday starting September 27 2009.

Description

Arttrav.com announces its first ever travel article WRITING CONTEST. Submissions should be about a place (town, piazza…), monument, or work of art in Italy. They should be written approximately in the style of those on arttrav, in that they should contain the following information essential to the informed traveler: historical background with accurate dates, social context or relevance to other places or works of art, opening hours and location if relevant, book or links bibliography, and photos or video. The form of writing may vary from articles or reviews of exhibitions or events (preferably something ongoing for Fall 2009) to descriptions of museums or sites, or anything else you think can fit in a category. What distinguishes the writing on arttrav is that articles tend to be quite specific, rather than “trip report” or general introductory type material.

Winning submissions will be chosen from the seven following categories: Rome, Florence, Museums, Churches, Fuori Porta, “Art… that Travels!”, and Student (*see note below). Category descriptions and examples are online. Your article may be considered under more than one category (for example, a student writing about a museum in florence qualifies for three categories). One grand prize winner will be chosen cross-category.

Your piece will be judged by two art historians, Alexandra Korey and Caroline Hillard, on the basis of clarity and interest of writing, and on perceived value of the essay for a traveling public.

Eight winning essays will be published on arttrav.com and awarded prizes.

For more information, to submit your piece, or to learn about the prizes visit the arttrav site.

Diversion Press Seeking Poets for 2009 Poetry Anthology

The 2009 Poetry Anthology

Poems will be judged by the editors of our Poetry Anthology. This contest will have NO reading or entry fee, but each person is limited to submitting only five poems total. Each poem should be typed on a separate page with the authors name and E-mail address on each poem. Please see our website for more details.

All poems will be considered for publication and those who win the contest will have their poems marked as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place and there will be up to three Honorable Mentions.

Poets DO NOT have to buy the Anthology; in fact, the winners will get a free copy in addition to their prize money. Winners will also be announced on our web page and may also have their winning poems displayed. Please see our website for more details on submitting poems, prizes, and deadlines at www.diversionpress.com and contact us with any questions at diversionpress@yahoo.com

You may request a PDF of our catalog, delivered free of charge to your Email address, by simply sending an Email to us with “Catalog Request” in the subject line.

Diversion Press
P.O. Box 30277
Clarksville, TN 37040
diversionpress@yahoo.com
www.diversionpress.com

Diversion Press
P.O. Box 30277
Clarksville, TN 37040
diversionpress@yahoo.com
www.diversionpress.com
Email: diversionpress@yahoo.com
Visit the website at http://www.diversionpress.com

(In)Scribing Gender: International Female Writers and the Creative Process

(In)Scribing Gender: International Female Writers and the Creative Process

Edited by Jen Westmoreland Bouchard
Diversion Press (www.diversionpress.com)

The purpose of the (In)Scribing Gender anthology is to explore the creative processes of women writing fiction, non-fiction and poetry from multiple cultural contexts, in different styles, and within various disciplines. Through personal anecdotes, interviews, articles, narratives and essays, established and emerging female writers from diverse backgrounds will expound on topics such as creative inspiration, locating the muse, the limitations and liberties associated with categorization and labels (academic, institutional, social, artistic, literary, or other), conducting literary or scholarly research as a woman, cultural perceptions of female writers, female/feminine literature, feminist literature, and gendered representations.

This anthology will examine how gender shapes an author’s creative process and the ways in which gender tints the lens through which a writer’s work is viewed by literary and/or academic audiences.

In both academic and literary circles, specific labels (and their attendant expectations) are often foisted upon, or in some cases chosen by, female writers. One of the goals of this anthology is to begin to deconstruct these culturally specific (in terms of literary, academic and global cultures) categories, both imagined and real.

To articulate and overcome the myriad gender-related social challenges of the twenty-first century, the world’s creative literary and academic minds must unite. In this vein, (In)Scribing Gender will encourage dialogue between international female authors and provide a global readership with the opportunity to more fully comprehend the intricacies of the creative process as it applies specifically to women writers.

Essays, articles and narratives on (but not limited to) the following themes are encouraged. We welcome a wide range of disciplines, topics, and stylistic, theoretical and methodological approaches. Entries may be self-referential or focus on another writer’s process. Contributors are also welcome to submit interviews related to these themes.

• Inspiration, the muse, the creative spark
• Culling, organizing, and articulating ideas for an article, story, poem or book
• Verbal and written imagery (drawing from the theories of Mitchell, Paivio and others)
• Academic writing as a creative endeavor
• Theories of creativity, gender and audience reception as they relate to the creative process (drawing from the theories of Benjamin, Adorno, Arieti, Wertheimer, Ghiselin, Wallace and others)
• Negotiating gendered literary themes and gendered representations (women writing on men and women, creating gender-specific fictional characters)
• Language and gender
• Poetry written by and for women
• Gender and authorial authenticity
• Writings on gender, culture and sexuality
• Feminist vs./and/or feminine literature

All entries should be between 5,000-10,000 words. Interested contributors should email an abstract of around 300 words, a short bio, and a current CV to Jen Bouchard at jtwestmore@yahoo.com by August 15, 2009. Completed manuscripts will be due by December 15, 2009.

Jen Westmoreland Bouchard, editor
jtwestmore@yahoo.com
or
Diversion Press
diversionpress@yahoo.com
www.diversionpress.com
Email: jtwestmore@yahoo.com
Visit the website at http://www.diversionpress.com

Social Sciences in Asia Monograph Series

We invite contributions to the interdisciplinary Social Sciences in Asia Monograph Series. It publishes original materials and the revised editions of special issues of the Asian Journal of Social Science. A double blind process, two experts would appraise each manuscript. The Social Sciences in Asia Monograph Series welcomes submissions from specialists on any facet of Asia, including sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, economists, geographers, and historians.

The Social Sciences in Asia Monograph Series was the initiative of the editorial team of the Asian Journal of Social Science at the Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore. It was initially the Asian Social Science Series, with Brill and the Times Academic Press co-publishing the first three volumes between 2001 and 2002. In 2003, the Series became Social Sciences in Asia and henceforth carries only the Brill imprint.

Founded in 1683 in Leiden, Holland, Brill is an academic publisher of repute. It publishes about five hundred new manuscripts and reference books, as well as more than a hundred journals every year.

For all queries, please contact Kiat-Jin Lee, the Editorial Assistant, at soclkj@nus.edu.sg. In addition, for inquiries about the aptness of your virtually concluded manuscript, please dispatch a book proposal. Furthermore, for questions regarding the suitability of your proposed monograph, please enclose a 150-word abstract.

Kiat-Jin Lee, Ph.D.
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
Postdoctoral Fellow, National University of Singapore
Editorial Assistant, Social Sciences in Asia Monograph Series

office 11 Arts Link, Blk AS1, #02-20 (mail 11 Arts Link, Blk AS1, #03-06), Singapore 117570
telephone 6516-6884, fax 6777-9579
Email: soclkj@nus.edu.sg

Hard Times Writing Contest - Submit Best Stories

The Writers' Workshop's Hard Times Writing Contest - Offers a $300 first prize, $200 second prize, $100 third prize. Write about a difficult experience in your life, how you overcame this obstacle, and how you were changed by it. Winning stories will be chosen for originality and creative writing style.

All work must be unpublished and should not exceed 5,000 words (double-spaced, 12-point font). Multiple entries will be accepted. Submit your name, address, phone number and work title on a separate cover sheet.

Entry fee is $20 per entry (check or money order payable to Writers' Workshop). Enclose a self-sealing SASE for comments and winners' lists, and mail to: Hard Times Contest, 387 Beaucatcher Road, Asheville, NC 28805. Must be postmarked by June 30. Information, twwoa.org, 1-828-254-8111.

Creative Writing Corner Short Fiction Competition

Short Fiction Competition

End Date: Jul 15, 2009

Description: CWC invites fiction entries from new and established writers for its inaugural competition. The top three entries will receive the cash awards listed below. In addition, the top five entries will receive copies of What the Shadow Told Me, the award-winning novel of our judge, Kurtis Davidson. The first place winner will also receive a detailed review of his/her work from Kurtis Davidson.

Awards:
1st Place: $500
2nd Place: $250
3rd Place: $100

Judge: Kurtis Davidson, a pseudonym for the collaborative team of Kurt Ayau and David Rachels, first appeared in print in the Summer 2003 issue of The Portland Review with the literary satire "Great Forgotten American Poets of the 20th Century." Since then, the two-headed Davidson's shorter work has appeared in The North American Review, Ink Pot, The Southeast Review, The Yalobusha Review, and The Backwards City Review.

Davidson's debut novel, What the Shadow Told Me, won the Gold Medal for Best Novel from the Pirate's Alley William Faulkner Society. Julia Glass was the judge. It was published in April 2005 by Eastern Washington University Press.


Rules:

• Only members of CWC can enter - membership is FREE.
• Entries must be submitted electronically through the CWC website. You do NOT need to make your work visible to other site members to enter the contest.
• Reading Fee: $15. Reading fees must be paid electronically through our secure website.
• Submissions must be no longer than 3500 words. Submissions exceeding the word count will not be considered for this contest.
• Entries submitted after the deadline will not be considered for this contest. You may, however, enter your work in future contests if you miss the deadline.
• Up to three entries per author will be accepted. Each entry requires a separate reading fee.
• Previously published work should NOT be submitted and will not be considered.
• We accept simultaneous submissions.
• CWC retains the first print and electronic publication rights for all contest winners (and only winners) and may publish your work in a future print publication. CWC is not required to publish any work and can disqualify any work from publication for any reason.
• The winner will be notified by email and will be announced on our website.
• Creative Writing Corner reserves the right to disqualify any submission at any time for any reason.

To enter the contest and find out more, visit the Creative Writing Corner site.

Opium Magazine Bookmark Writing Contest: Win $1,000

Opium Magazine’s 250-Word Bookmark Contest

Judged by Andrew Sean Greer

We’re thrilled to announce the return of Opium Magazine’s 250-Word Bookmark Contest, this time judged by the inimitable Andrew Sean Greer. This means it’s time to spin your own bookmark-length yarn (no longer than 250 words), to snare the grand prize of $1,000. Stories will be featured in Opium9, and release in Oct. 2009. Better yet, for the first time ever, now second- and third-place stories will be paid $100. More ways to win! Insanity!

The rules? Easy. Write a story or prose poem that is 250 words or less. The winning story, along with a handful of finalists, will appear in Opium9 which will debut in October 2009. Below, read a shining example--a finalist from Opium6.

The Deadline: July 31, 2009.

The Cost: $10 for a single entry; $17.50 for two (to pay: shop.opiummagazine.com)
How to Submit: Submit your bookmark-length manuscript here: http://opiummagazine.com/submissions/ (Make sure to tag your entry “Contest.” And, please, no .wpd files!). Then head to Opium’s Store: shop.opiummagazine.com to pay via credit card or Paypal (sorry for the inconvenience, but international users must use Paypal).

The Judge: Andrew Sean Greer is the author of four books, most recently The Story of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli. His stories have appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading and O. Henry Prize Storiy anthologies, and he lives in San Francisco and New York. He is big in Italy.


The Reward: $1,000 for 1st Place, $100 for 2nd and 3rd Place, and publication in Opium9.

The Odds: We can’t know this until all entries are in, but we receive between 200 and 300 entries (plus, while not all are paid for, we have published at least seven contest finalists in each issue).

(Our first bookmark contest, featured in Opium6: Go Green (But Save Me First), judged by Aimee Bender, was won by Rachel Khong.) Opium6 is out of print, but to order the PDF online, go here: shop.opiummagazine.com. To order only the bookmark contest finalists, go here: shop.opiummagazine.com.

More on the contest can be found on the Opium Magazine site.

Midnight In Madrid: Another Excellent Thriller in the Russian Trilogy

Midnight in Madrid (The Russian Trilogy, Book 2)

“An arm grabbed him from behind and locked hard around his neck. A yoke job and a perfectly professional one. Rizzo knew the drill. With his heel, he smashed down onto the instep of the man behind him and uppercut with his elbow. But then he felt a jab in one of his buttocks. It was a sharp jab that was hot with pain, then suddenly very cold.” (p. 130)

During a late spring thaw, the body of a Chinese national is found floating down an alpine glacier in Switzerland. Special agent Alexandra LaDuca has something in common with the dead man; they were both looking for the same stolen piece of art. Now when Alex reaches Madrid, the highly trained U.S. Treasury agent faces more obstacles then she had any idea were in the mission. And so begins Book Two of Noel Hynd's excellent Russian Trilogy. I loved the first book of this series, a fast paced thrill ride through Ukraine and the Eastern Bloc.

The stolen piece in question is a small sculpture called the Pieta of Malta, the same piece that Michelangelo may have based his great work of the fifteenth century on. The mystery around this relic thickens when it becomes clear that there are people who would kill to own it.

Alex and her unexpected new partner travel through a web of intrigue and danger that equals The Da Vinci Code or spy fiction like the Maltese Falcon. The nonstop chase leads Alex into the most dangerous situation of her life.

Midnight in Madridtakes place in the modern day world, full of spies, terrorists, art thieves, and gangsters. Of course secretive and corrupt government systems are a given, but talented and smart Alex wades through the intrigue to find the truth in this spellbinding suspense novel.

Like Hynd's first book in the Russian Trilogy, Midnight in Madridis an action packed, fast paced read. I'm eagerly awaiting Book Three, although based on how much research Hynd puts into creating the scenes and characters, I think it will be a little while. In the mean time, pick up the Russian Trilogy's books One and Two- excellent summer reads.

Interview With Author of Terror On The Seas: Daniel Sekulich

An interview with Daniel Sekulich, author of Terror on the Seas: True Tales of Modern-Day Pirates

Of late, pirates have been making headlines. Pirates out of Somalia have been staging audacious attacks on merchant vessels and supertankers in the Indian Ocean. One of the most recent attacks caught the keen attention of the US media because it involved the abduction of an American sea captain. The captain effected a heroic escape and, once back on American soil, signed a deal with CAA to sell his story to book publishers and film producers—thus marking a rare instance in which the victim stands to profit more than the pirates.

That said, there is something odd, it seems to me, about our current fascination with pirates. It is as though, after disappearing for several hundred years (with their beards, their parrots, peg-legs, eye-patches and galleons), pirates have re-emerged. But is this actually the case? And who are these pirates, and how do they compare to the immutable caricatures we’ve come to associate with the word “pirate”?

Several years ago, in a decision that now seems remarkably prescient, the Canadian journalist and filmmaker, Daniel Sekulich, set out to answer these questions. He traveled through much of Asia and Africa—the predominant seats of modern piracy—to try to discern the place piracy occupies in the world today. What he learned forms the core of his illuminating new book, Terror on the Seas—at once a work of dogged investigative journalism and a thoroughly researched cultural history of piracy.

Daniel Sekulich has kindly agreed to talk about his book.

Q: You set out to write this book about three years ago, at a time when the subject of piracy wasn’t as prominent as it is today. Did you know something the rest of us didn’t? Was it a matter of you being early to the story, or were the rest of the journalists late?

A: I can’t speak for others and I understand that many journalists end up chasing stories after they break and become “important”. But quite often the best stories are ones that lurk just below the surface, overlooked for a variety of reasons, and piracy is one of those. In its most recent incarnation, piracy has been a serious issue for two decades, since the Cold War ended, and I’d been aware of the problem since at least 1997. And, to be fair, there were a number of journalists, security analysts and shipping industry insiders who have been writing about the issue since the early 1990s, but because most of the incidents used to occur in places like Southeast Asia and often involved Third World mariners, the topic just didn’t register with most ordinary people here. Yet while working on my last book, Ocean Titans, I kept hearing enough stories about piracy from seafarers to make me realize it was a big issue, and would only get bigger, mainly because the vast majority of incidents go unreported. It just seemed to me that ignoring the problem would only allow pirate gangs to grow, which is exactly what has happened with Somali pirates. My gut instinct told me that this was worth exploring in more depth and that it would only be a matter of time before Western nations realized the scope of the problem, though even I must admit to being surprised at the level of recent attacks.

Read the rest of the interview here, or get a copy of Terror on the Seas: True Tales of Modern-Day Pirates now!