"I Hear the Wind Waiting" - Leaf Press 2014 co-op poem

Since 2009, the editors of Leaf Press organize a collaborate winter poem for the start of the year, collecting couplets from different poets, to publish as co-op poem on the first Monday of the new year.

The theme for 2014 is: "Wind" - the poem is now online at: Leafpress coop poem 2014: I Hear the Wind Waiting

It's composed of lines by 37 poets, here the first 3 lines from 3 contributors:

"Thoughts, tousled by the wind

signposts of past years

There are thos who listen, see it,..."

No one knew what the others wrote, the brief guidelines were: "An entry consists of one line or one couplet. Each line approximately 12 syllables."

The co-op series
And  here, for the joy of poetic cooperation, the previous poems:
2013 - tree
2012 - Lines Drawn from Greening Winds
2011 - The Change in Winter Light
2010 - Cold
2009 - Snow

About Leaf Press
Leaf Press is an independent press located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Ursula Vaira founded Leaf in 2001 as a poetry chapbook publisher. Since 2007 Leaf has been publishing trade poetry while continuing the chapbook tradition and the weekly on-line Monday's Poem.

"Be There Now" - a collection of true travel stories

"Be There Now" is a collection of true travel stories featuring twenty-two contributors who share adventures and escapades from around the world.

The stories include the tale of an amateurish kidnapping in Nicaragua that could have been told by Woody Allen, and a David Sedaris-esque tale of two ships passing in a Paris art supply store. Existential stories from a man lost on the flooded Amazon River at night, and from a woman who encounters a grizzly–in the same area where her father and stepmother were killed by a bear.

Insightful stories about a woman’s spiritual journey in Peru (complete with hallucinogens!), and about a female journalist’s friendship with an Iraqi translator in Syria. And stories about endangered species in exotic locales, including helping a sea turtle lay its eggs on a Costa Rican beach, and taking a blind man to visit the mountain gorillas in Rwanda.

The book is available as paperback ($12) or as e-book for very travel-friendly 99 cents (link).  It's published by the indie book publisher "Dream of Things", you can find more about the book on their website: "Be There Now". 

Stories, places and authors include: 

• Foreword by Mike O’Mary, Series Editor; Introduction by Julie Rand, Editor
• Once in a Lifetime [Guatemala] by Terri Elders
• Talk About “Embarrasant” [France] by Dominick Domingo
• Día de los Muertos [Mexico] by Kathe Kokolias
• Demon Blockers [China] by Jennifer Choban
• Still Alive [Syria] by Kelly Hayes-Raitt
• The Happiest Place on Earth [Disneyland] by Dina Kucera
• Berlin [Germany] by Jennifer Lang
• A Quick and Cozy Kidnapping [Nicaragua] by Ben Bellizzi
• Turbulence [On a plane] by Roz Warren
• Encounter [Alaska] by Shannon Huffman Polson
• Perfect Pulpo [Mexico] by Suzanne LaFetra
• Where Light Germinates [Peru] by Melissa Heisler
• The Jigg’s Up [Newfoundland] by Carol McAdoo Rehme
• A Trembling Voice [Costa Rica] by Frank Izaguirre
• Horse, Horse, Tiger, Tiger [China] by Ferida Wolff
• Open Eye [New Mexico] by Lynn Pinkerton
• In the Footsteps of Fossey [Rwanda] by Irene Morse
• Driving Compassionately [Bali] by Peter Marmorek
• Pickles and Hiccups [On the way home] by Randy Richardson
• Treks [Kathmandu] by Katherine Horrigan
• Virtual Travel [On the Internet] by Trendle Ellwood
• Nowhere [Drifting in the heavens] by William Hillyard

Mindful Writing Challenge - January 2014

The Mindful Writing Challenge  started in January 2011 with a blog and an invite: "Why would you want to join in? - Because choosing something to write about every day will help you to connect with yourselves, with others, and with the world. It will help you to love everything you see - the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the beautiful and the ugly. You don't have to be a 'writer' to get involved. The process of paying attention is what's important."

The result: more than 350 people across the world paying more attention to what was around them, and writing mindful notes, also called "small stones". Which induced an ongoing twitter stream: twitter/smallstone.

Mindful Writing Month
Now the next month of mindful writing month is coming closer, with an announcement and an invite to join. The Mindful Writing Challenge will start on January first, it's a great way to enter the new year on a fresh note. Here's the very short version of the invitation:

Mindful Writing Month - The Very Quick Version:  

1. Pay proper attention to one thing every day during January. 

2. Write it down (this is a small stone). 

3. Get daily support & inspiration.

For more, visit the blog paget: Mindful Writing Challenge January 2014

The 2013 storySouth Million Writers Award: Finalists + Notable Stories

2013 storySouth Million Writers Award: Final Voting is open!

Great stories are being published online. The storySouth Million Writers Award for best online fiction of the year will help all internet-based journals and magazines gain exposure and attent. The purpose of the 2013 storySouth Million Writers Award is to honor and promote the best fiction published in online literary journals and magazines during 2012. The award process includes several steps, the first steps was nominations from editors and readers.

The Million Writers Award Finalists are now online, and voting is open, it will end December 31st. The voting will determine the top 3 selections from 2012, to be announced in January. Together with the Finalists, the list of all 50 notable stories of 2012 is online on the same page.

For even more stories, visit the Editor Nominations List: more than 70 online magazines nominated their best stories, creating a wonderful mixed list - great to explore new magazines, new authors and new stories.

There's also a Reader nominations List, but sadly some readers and writers misread the guidelines, thninking that this already is the voting stage and so several stories pop up again and again and again,

The reason for the Million Writers Award is that most of the major literary prizes for short fiction (such as the Best American Short Stories series and the O. Henry Awards) have traditionally ignored web-published fiction. This award aims to show that world-class fiction is being published online and to promote this fiction to the larger reading and literary community.

Guidelines The award is for any fictional short story of at least a 1,000 words first published in an online publication during 2012. To help promote online stories, the Million Writers Award accepts nominations from readers, writers, and editors. There is no entry fee. For more details, visit the Award Rules.

Prize
Each year, the Million Writers Award offers prizes to the authors of the winning story, a runner-up, and an honorable mention. These prizes are possible thanks to your generous support. Please click on the donate link below to offer your support. Donors have the option of being listed on the Million Writers Award Page or remaining anonymous.

NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month

The 50.000 word marathon is on again: National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo) is an annual internet-based creative writing project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel between November 1 and November 30.

Writers wishing to participate first register on the project's website, where they can post profiles and information about their novels, including synopsis and excerpts. Word counts are validated on the site, with writers submitting a copy of their novel for counting.

Pep talks give advice along the way, and the extended NaNoWriMo forums offer the chance to interact, motivate each other, and procrastinate.

About NaNoWriMo
This writing project was started by Chris Baty in July 1999 with 21 participants in the San Francisco Bay area. In 2000, it was moved to November "to more fully take advantage of the miserable weather" and launched an official website. With more writers joining each year, NaNoWriMo turned into a global event. In 2010, over 200,000 people took part - writing a total of over 2.8 billion words.

Best of luck and energy and inspiration and perseverance to all who join!

NaNoWriMo Website

related links: other web projects; on writing

Open Culture - free e-books, lessons, films, courses, readings..

Open Culture is a web resource for free cultural media in the web.

The mission of Open Culture is "to bring together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Free audio books, free online courses, free movies, free language lessons, free ebooks and other enriching content — it’s all here."

Website link: Open Culture

Some selected categories:
- free audio books
- great science videos
- free Science Fiction classics
- top cultural video sites

It's also worthwile to browse the diverse entries on the starting page, with features like:
- 30 Free Essays & Stories by David Foster Wallace on the Web
- Two Scenes from Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, recreated in Lego
- Listening to Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, (Maybe) the Longest Audio Book Ever Made

Wiki Loves Monuments - photo contest

Wikipedia international photo contest around cultural heritage 

Since September 1st, more than 50 countries from all over the world are in the race to show the best pictures of their heritage to the world through their participation in Wiki Loves Monuments 2013.

It's the fourth year the contest is on, and 2013 might just turn into a new world record photo contest: "This year we are very excited to have for the first time Arab speaking countries join: Algeria, Jordan, Tunesia and Egypt all joined for the first time! But also in Asia the contest sees more participating countries, with China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Nepal and Azerbaijan. Also, the only continent without a permanent population (but with monuments!), Antarctica, is participating this year. But even in Europe where the competition started we’re able to welcome new participating countries, such as Armenia and the United Kingdom. The biggest country participating is Russia, and the smallest is Aruba."

How to join
If you would like to participate in Wiki Loves Monuments (which also includes an international contest and prizes), the only thing you have to do for that is upload a freely-licensed image of a monument in one of the participating countries to Wikimedia Commons. Links to the respective national websites are available in the sidebar of the contest/participate page.

Found Poetry Review - Special Issue: W/R/T David Foster Wallace

September 12, 2013, marks the fifth anniversary of David Foster Wallace’s passing. 

The Found Poetry Review remembers his life and contributions with a special online edition of their journal: W/R/T David Foster Wallace

"Though Wallace’s articles, interviews and books are like he was — finite — our capacity for conversation with him through found poetry continues. In this special issue, nearly 30 poets share their conversations with David Foster Wallace. As the world remembers his life and work this September, I invite you to pick up one of his texts and consider what conversations of your own you might have with him."
- FPR Editor-in-Chief Jenni B. Baker

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30 Free Essays & Stories by David Foster Wallace
For his own words, visit the link list that was collected by the magazine Open Culture: "We spent some time tracking down free DFW stories and essays available on the web, and they’re all now listed in our collection of Free eBooks. But we didn’t want them to escape your attention. So here they are — 23 pieces published by David Foster Wallace between 1989 and 2011, mostly in major U.S. publications like The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. "

The list of essays and stories starts, painfully fittingly for this week, with...

• “9/11: The View From the Midwest” (Rolling Stone, October 25, 2001)
• “All That” (New Yorker, December 14, 2009)

...and ends with:

• “Ticket to the Fair” (Harper’s, July 1994)
• “Wiggle Room” (New Yorker, March 9, 2009)

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Women to Read: Where to Start & New Voices

In April, author Kari Sperring started a twitter initiative, basically by asking readers to recommend science fiction and fantasy by women after several frustrating experiences both in bookshops and in review surveys.

Following the initative, SF Signal invited author A.C. Wise to write a series of guest posts, and give a sampling of female sf authors and recommended reads. Here are the links:

SF Signal: Women to Read: Where to Start
Part 1: Le Guin, Jacson, Eskrigde, Hopkinson
Part 2: Morrison,  Bradley, Bell, Files
Part 3: SF books with women to read about

New Voices
A.C. Wise also but a long list together of new voices: "Ccalling on the power of the internet hivemind, I asked for examples of women who made their first speculative fiction sale (pro or otherwise) within the last two years or so. And lo! The internet delivered onto me a glorious list of names, which I’m delighted to share with you:"
Women to Read: New Voices

100 Great SF Short Stories by Women
After reviewing the reprint of the sf-anthology "Women of Wonder", Ian Sales collected a list of science fiction short stories by women: Toward 100 Great SF Short Stories by Women

#Womentoread
The original blog post of author Kari Sperring who started the initiative is online at  Womentoread
Make sure to visit the ongoing twitterstream #womentoread

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Impossible Spaces

"Impossible Spaces" is a new collection of twenty-one dark, unsettling and weird short stories that explore the spaces at the edge of possibility.

Sometimes the rules can change. Sometimes things aren’t how they appear. Sometimes you can just slip through the cracks and end up… somewhere else. What else is there? Is there somewhere else, right beside you, if you could only reach out and touch it? Or is it waiting to reach out and touch you?

Don’t trust what you see. Don’t trust what you hear. Don’t trust what you remember. It isn’t what you think.

The collection is available as paperback + e-book: Impossible Spaces

Authors + Editor: The collection is edited by Hannah Kate, with stories by Ramsey Campbell, Simon Bestwick, Hannah Kate, Jeanette Greaves, Richard Freeman, Almira Holmes, Arpa Mukhopadhyay, Chris Galvin Nguyen, Christos Callow Jr., Daisy Black, Douglas Thompson, Jessica George, Keris McDonald, Laura Brown, Maree Kimberley, Margrét Helgadóttir, Nancy Schumann, Rachel Yelding, Steven K. Beattie, Tej Turner, Tracy Fahey

About Hannah Kate
Hannah Kate is a poet and short story writer based in North Manchester, UK. Her work has appeared in local and national magazines, as well as in anthologies. In her other life, as Dr. Hannah Priest, she is an academic researcher and writer. She blogs at HannahKate.net

book page: Impossible Spaces

"I Must Be Off" Travel Essay Competition: winners, links, destinations

The travel blog "I Must Be Off!" organized its its first annual Travel Essay Contest. More than 80 travel essays went online, from destinations all over the world

Now the winners have been announced. Editor Christopher Allen explained: "Choosing the top twenty essays from the 87 sent in, many in the last few hours before the submissions deadline, was not so difficult; but I have lost a bit of sleep choosing the top two. One reason I decided to give two top prizes was because I knew there would be drastically different interpretations of the "travel" essay. And indeed, I Must Be Off! received so many different styles of writing--informative, humorous, reflective, academic, just plain fun, etc--that selecting only two is actually no fun at all. But it must be done."

Read the full announcement here: I Must Be Off! Travel Essay Competition

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Travel Essay: Winners + Recommended Reads

And here are the direct links to the winners and highly recommended reads,  in no particular order:

The WINNERS of the I Must Be Off! Travel Essay Competition:

The Children of Chitwan, Nepal by Hannah Thompson-Yates
"Jyoti. Jaya. Jyomi. Babita. Sangita. Sanju. Kamari. Nabina. Jeet. Samir. Bimala. Susma. Salina. Thirteen children, one bedroom and four beds. Four stone walls and a stone floor, with one ABC poster hanging from the door. Down the corridor they also have a kitchen, and nineteen year old Jyoti spends day after day preparing roti and dhal bhat for the family...."


God's Own Country by Saahil Acharya
"The boat ride took an inordinately long time to complete. Most of my companions dozed right through its duration, while a few occasionally woke up, peered through the windows at the water and the surrounding jungle, and went back to sleep. There I was, in a motorized boat, being taken around an artificial lake in the middle of Periyar tiger reserve in Kerala, India...."


Travel Essay Competition: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

• Rock, Paper, Scissors by Romi Grossberg
• A Month in the Life of Bangladesh by Paola Fornari
• A Trip To the Past, Italian Style by Foster Trecost
• Matheran Memoirs by Rishita Dey
• Kurigram to Dhaka by Night by Rilla Norslund

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About I Must Be Off & Christopher Allen
Christopher Allen is the author of Conversations with S. Teri O'Type (a Satire), an episodic adult cartoon about a man struggling with expectations. Allen's award-winning fiction and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly's Best of the First Ten Years anthology, Prime Number Magazine, The Best of Every Day Ficton, Pure Slush, Bootsnall Travel and Chicken Soup for the Soul. A finalist at Glimmer Train in 2011, Allen has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize twice. He is the managing editor of the daily litzine Metazen. Recently, Allen--along with editors Michelle Elvy and Linda Simoni-Wastila--hosted Flash Mob 2013 in celebration of International Flash Fiction Day.

Flash Mob 2013 & International Flash Fiction Day 22. June

Flash Mob 2013 is a hybrid blog carnival and competition celebrating flash fiction. On June 22 — International Flash Fiction Day — winners will be announced and feted in various ways, beginning with a flash mob happening here and elsewhere, and also prizes, prizes and more prizes.

Flash Mob stories from Africa, Asia, Europe, America, Oceania... Following the flash call, authors from all around the world wrote a flash story and published it directly in their blog. Links to the stories are now online at: Flash Mob 2013 - click the different continent links on top, and then on the author images to get to the story - here are the shortcuts:
Flash Mob: Africa - Asia - Europe - The Americas - Antarctica - Oceania


Flash Mob Team: The organizers represent various points on the globe: Christopher Allen (Munich, Germany), Linda Simoni-Wastila (Baltimore, Maryland) & Michelle Elvy (New Zealand). The competition will be judged by an international panel that includes Robert Vaughan (USA), Leah McMenamin (New Zealand), Marcus Speh (Germany) and Nuala Ni Chonchúir (Ireland).

More Flash

• new: National Flash Fiction Day 2013: links to the UK Flash day + beyond 
• Flash Across Borders: flash stories + notes + quotes on the flash format
• micro cosmos #24: BluePrintReview flash issue, with flash notes (scroll down)
• fridayflash: a twitter-based flash story share+spread