literary hashtags on twitter: #amreading #shortstory #sixwords #longreads #worldliterature & more

"Some of the most interesting and useful hashtags on Twitter are designed to build community in the far-flung literary world..."
...noted Salon Magazine in a recent article that featured several literary hashtags for readers and writers.  The article is online at: Literary Hashtags. For unknown reasons, they didn't include direct links for the tags, so here's a linked list, and some additional links, for literary browsing joy:

#amreading + #fridayreads + #books
books, more books & related links

#readwomen2014
literary initiative, more here in this blog

#longreads  + #shortstory + #storysunday
long reads & short story links

#smallstone + #sixwords + #micropoetry

tiny shared moments

#worldliterature 

reviews, articles, blogs...

#bookstorebingo + #LibraryLife
true bookstore moments

#amwriting + #writingprompt
links, news & prompts for writers

#askagent
quick Q&A option for writers

#WeNeedDiverseBooks
children book initiative

Indefinite Space 2015

from minimalist to avant-garde ---
open to innovative, imagistic, philosophical, 
experimental creations---
poetry drawings collage photograph--
Indefinite Space.

The 2015 edition of Indefinite Space contains work from 27 poets + artists: Eric Hoffman, Andrea Moorhead, Valerie Witte, Felino A. Soriano, Rob Cook, Andrew Brenza, Laura Carter, Jill Khoury, John Sibley Williams, John L. Stanizzi, Dorothee Lang, Daniel Lehan, Scott Thomas Outlar, Morgan Bazilian, Alice Pettway, Dan Raphael, Jessie Janeshek, Joseph V. Milford, Mark Young, Raymond Farr, Bradley K. Meyer, Gabrielle Campagnano, Thomas Cochran, K.S. Hardy, Guy R. Beining, Fred Dale, Jim Fisher, Sally Ridgway, Andrew Topel, Michael Rerick, Michael McAloran, Vanessa Couto Johnson, Philip Byron Oakes, George Karos, Peter Layton, Bob Heman, A.J. Huffman, Ivan de Monbrison, Aaron Anstett, Jack Galmitz

About Indefinite Space
Indefinite Space is edited by Marcia Arrieta. She founded Indefinite Space in 1991 after receiving a grant for her work from the Pasadena Arts Council and has continued to publish the journal independently since then. Indefinite Space has a penchant for the avant-garde, the philosophical, the minimal (but not always), the natural, and the intangible.

Indefinite Space 2015
single issue $10
ISSN 1075-6868

related links: poetry, art

March On, Women

re-posted in celebration of International Women's Day 2015, the original post is from 2012:

In honour of International Women’s Month, Michelle Elvy created a mini-blog fest featuring women around the world: "Thanks to everyone who participated in this gathering — your art and your words and your lives inspire."

March On, Women
Dance. Resurrect. Survive.
Quiet. Night. Nothing.
Poetry. Place. Passion.
Colour. Chablis. Celebration.
Caress. Care. Kitty Kat.
Whanau. Wrinkles. Nudes.
Words. Wishes. Roads.
Mystery. Masquerade. Monster.
Finally. Food for thought.

Michelle Elvy lives and writes and edits in New Zealand aboard her 43’ sailboat, Momo. She is the founding editor of the New Zealand initiative Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction as well as 52|250: A Year of Flash, a project that grew during 2010-2011 to include nearly 200 writers and artists. She also edits at Blue Five Notebook and A Baker’s Dozen. Most recently, Michelle has been awarded the Research Grant by the New Zealand Society of Authors/ Auckland Museum Library for her project “Flashback: A New Zealand History in Micro Moments”.

March On, Women
a blog fest in honour of International Women’s Month

Related Links:
Gender+Race, web projects

"What I Won't Repeat": Cooperative 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 2015 is: "What I Won't Repeat" - the poem is now online at: Leafpress coop poem 2014: I Hear the Wind Waiting

It's composed of lines by 23 poets, here the first 3 lines from 3 contributors:

"Every day h/our pattern of life:

Thoughts, thoughts, familiar, treasured and wily

Open mind, open heart, open up the lonely world...."

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:
2014 - Hear the Wind Waiting
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.

Take part in Blog Action Day October 16, 2014

Every year since 2007, thousands of bloggers have come together for one day to talk about one important issue, like Poverty, Climate Change and Human Rights amongst others.

The theme for blog action day 2014 is: Inequality

Bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, photographers, graphic designers, cartoonish, data geeks, tumblers and social media types from all over the world are invited to take part. Blog Action Day is a free event. To join, register your blog at the Blog Action Day website, which promotes participating blogs and websites and gives participants access to great content, tips and reminders.

Blog Action Day is also looking for volunteers to help to organize the event, more here.

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Revisiting Blog Action Day 2013
In 2013, the focus was on the incredibly powerful topic of Human Rights. Bloggers from a record number of countries (130) created amainzg blog posts, info graphics, videos, podcasts and photography to explore what Human Rights means to them and take part in discussions with our partners such as Amnesty International. Just over 6,000 blog posts and social media updates about Human Rights were made for Blog Action Day from 130 countries. Highlights of Blog Action Day 2013 - Human Rights

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize: Winners 2014 + 2015 Prize guidelines

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize unearths and promotes the best new writing from across the Commonwealth, developing literary connections worldwide. The Prize enables and features writers from countries where there is little or no publishing industry, it identifies talented writers who will go on to inspire their local communities.

The Short Story Prize is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction. Regional winners will receive £2,500 and the Overall Winner will receive £5,000. Translators will receive additional prize money. Established in 2012, the Prize now was awarded for the third time.

Winners 2014

• Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi from Uganda is the Overall Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, 2014. You can read more about the author here: Overall Winner 2014. 
• The regional winners and their stories are presented here: Commonwealth Short Story Prize - Regional Winners
• And here are the direct links to the stories: 
  -  "Let's Tell This Story Properly" by  Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Uganda
  - "A Day in the Death" by Sara Adam Ang, Singapore
  - "Killing Time" by Lucy Caldwell, UK
  - "Sending for Chantal" by Maggie Harris, Guyana
  - "The Dog and the Sea" by Lucy Treloar, Australia

Short Story Prize 2015 Info + More
The 2015 Short Story Prize will open for entry 15 September and will close on 15 November 2014. Eligible are unpublished stories, story length: 2000-5000 words, from Commonwealth authors.

More about the prize and the previous winners is online at the Prize homepage: Commonwealth Short Story Prize
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International 21-Day Drawing Challenge

The website lynda.com is hosting a drawing challenge this month:

"Join the exciting + free 21-Day Drawing Challenge! The challenge is to help you make drawing a daily habit —for artists and non-artists alike"

The challenge is on now, it's free to join. For each day, there's a challenge-video with the task and with some drawing advice (news tasks are presented from Monday to Friday, the weekend is free or for catchup).

Participants can share their drawings via Twitter: #draw21days

The task for day 1 is: "Cat"

Links: 

• The Challenge info at Lynda.com: 21-Day Drawing Challenge with Von Glitschka 
• The collected drawings at tagboard: tagboard.com/draw21days

Travel Essay Sesaon at I Must Be Off!

Travel Essay Sesaon at I Must Be Off!
The travel blog "I Must Be Off!" organized its second annual Travel Essay Contest. After collecting the entries in spring, a choice of the entries is now being presented in the blog. The first entries are online, and are reaching from Australia to Europe, and from nature trips to city stories:

Australia: The Scarlet Mile by Gillian Brown
"It is the first time I’ve visited a brothel... I’m in Kalgoorlie, the epicentre of gold mining in Western Australia. Gold was discovered here in 1893 and is now a 24/7, multi-million dollar operation. The Super Pit mine is half a kilometre deep and almost four kilometres long..."

Bangladesh: Harvest Time by Rilla Norslund
"The day starts dusty green, stretching as far as the eye can see in the grainy morning air; clouds are low and heavy and the threat of looming monsoon rains drives people out of their homestead before dawn. Morning light creeping across the fields finds the first of them, already perspiring, swinging scythes and sickles, bundling the dew damp rice, piling and shifting the bundles...."

Bodrum, Turkey’s San Tropez by Jack Scott
"Locals have confidently dubbed Bodrum the St Tropez of Turkey and while this accolade may not be entirely deserved, its smart marina, wealthy yachties, Tiffany Blue waters and tiers of sugar-cube houses make it the prettiest of the three Muğly Sisters.."

From Lake to Lake to Lake to Lake -- Rafting in Mecklenburg "We leave Munich for Mecklenburg Vorpommern at 3:00 a.m. and arrive at the campground where the rafting company docks its beautifully crafted rafts at 9:30 a.m. Six lovely hours in the car. According to the I Must Be Off! distance meter, that's 165 pop songs, 12 news reports (all reporting the exact same news, which can drive a person bonkers) and 3 talk radio programs on various topics---"

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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.

Caine Prize for African Writing: Shortlist Stories online

The shortlist for the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing has been announced in April by Nobel Prize winner and Patron of the Caine Prize Professor Wole Soyinka. The winning story will be announced on Monday 14 July.

The Chair of judges, award-winning author Jackie Kay MBE described the shortlist as, “Compelling, lyrical, thought-provoking and engaging. From a daughter's unusual way of grieving for her father, to a memorable swim with a grandmother, a young boy's fascination with a gorilla's conversation, a dramatic faux family meeting, to a woman who is forced to sell her eggs, the subjects are as diverse as they are entertaining.”

She added, “The standard of entries was exceptionally high so much so that it was actually very difficult for the judges to whittle it down to a shortlist of only five stories. We were heartened by how many entrants were drawn to explorations of a gay narrative. What a golden age for the African short story, and how exciting to see real originality - with so many writers bringing something different to the form."

To commemorate fifteen years of the Caine Prize this year, £500 will be awarded to each shortlisted writer. The winner of the £10,000 prize is to be announced at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 14 July.

The 5 shortlisted stories can be read on the Caine Website, and are also offered as audio versions at Caine Prize podcast.

The Caine Prize 2014 Shortlist:

• Diane Awerbuck (South Africa) "Phosphorescence" in Cabin Fever (Umuzi, Cape Town. 2011)
  Read Phosphorescence
• Efemia Chela (Ghana/Zambia) "Chicken" in Feast, Famine and Potluck (Short Story Day Africa, South Africa. 2013)
  Read Chicken
• Tendai Huchu (Zimbabwe) "The Intervention" in Open Road Review, issue 7, New Delhi. 2013
  Read The Intervention
• Billy Kahora (Kenya) "The Gorilla's Apprentice" in Granta (London. 2010)Read The Gorilla's Apprentice
• Okwiri Oduor (Kenya) "My Father's Head" in Feast, Famine and Potluck (Short Story Day Africa, South Africa. 2013)Read My Father's Head

The Poetry Storehouse

The Poetry Storehouse is an effort to promote new forms and delivery methods for page-poetry by creating a repository of freely-available high-quality contemporary page-poetry for those multimedia collaborative artists who may sometimes be stymied in their work by copyright and other restrictions.

Poetry Storehouse Links

• View the video remixes from Poetry Storehouse poems at Vimeo: Poetry Storehouse. 
• More about the project, including a list of poets whose poems are available for remix and guidelines are a online at poetrystorehouse.com. 
• There also is a  ongoing interview series with poets and remixers in which they discuss their Storehouse experience, hosted by the  Moving Poems discussion forum –  read the interviews here. 

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Some select direct links to video poems:

• 'You as tunnel' by Rose Hunter 
• 'Shift' by Dave Bonta
• 'At Ruby's diner' by Sherry O'Keefe
• 'Playing Duets with Heisenberg's Ghost' by Peg Duthie + 2nd version

Team & Mission 
The Poetry Storehouse team is a collaboration and remix in itself, including Nic Sebastian, Rachel Barenblat, Dave Bonta, and several other. Their mission is:  "..to collect and showcase poem texts and, in some instances, audio recordings of those texts. It is our hope that those texts will serve as inspiration or raw material for other artistic creations in different media."

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Indefinite Space 2014

from minimalist to avant-garde ---
open to innovative, imagistic, philosophical, 
experimental creations---
poetry drawings collage photograph--
Indefinite Space.

The 2014 edition of Indefinite Space contains work from 27 poets + artists: Linda King, Aimee Harrison, Bob Heman, Khaty Xiong, MJ Gette, Rob Cook, Joseph Cooper, Philip Miletic, William Garvin, arkava das, BZ Niditch, Guy R. Beining, Andrew Maximilian Niss, Wes Solether, Dorothee Lang, Stephen C. Middleton, Ariana D. Den Bleyker, Gabrielle Campagnano, Thomas Cochran, K.S. Hardy, Michael Albright, Mark Young, Andrew Topel, Michael Frazer, Ivan de Monbrison, Jeff Harrison, Simon Perchik, Tom Pescatore, Jean Esteve, Christopher Mulrooney, Bruce McRae, Robert Pfeiffer, Marie Nunalee, Dylan Joy. 

About Indefinite Space
Indefinite Space is edited by Marcia Arrieta. She founded Indefinite Space in 1991 after receiving a grant for her work from the Pasadena Arts Council and has continued to publish the journal independently since then. Indefinite Space has a penchant for the avant-garde, the philosophical, the minimal (but not always), the natural, and the intangible.

Indefinite Space 2014
single issue $8
ISSN 1075-6868

related links: poetry, art

Around the World in 12 Books Challenge - Round-up

Book blogger Shannon from Giraffe Days is hosting an international reading challenge this year: Around the World in 12 Books Challenge.

Participants can send links to their reviews, and Shannon puts together a monthly roundup that feels like a virtual world-trip:

Around-the-world February Round-up 
Participants covered all continents, yet again – including Antarctica! – and reviewed 4 books from Asia, 2 from South America, 10 from the UK and Europe, 3 from North America, 4 from Africa, 1 from the Middle East, and 5 from Australia-Antarctic and the Pacific. That’s an impressive 29 books reviewed for the challenge in February!! There was a real mix of genres, including older titles, historical novels, romance, mystery, folktales and non-fiction.

The round-up starts in South Korea, with a book blogger from Estonia.. "Toomas Nipernaadi from Estonia who blogs at Non-native Reader (I love the fact that participants of this challenge come from all over, it’s awesome!!), takes us to Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles with this travel book by Simon Winchester from 1988.
After moving through Brazil, France, Poland, Canada, Nigeria, Israel, New Zealand and various other countries, the round-up ends in Antarctica: "Here’s a first for the challenge! Ekatarina (In My Book) journeyed to the less-visited continent of Antarctica (which I’m including under Australia and Oceania for convenience) with HP Lovecraft’s 1936 novel, At the Mountains of Madness. This story about an old and mysterious civilisation discovered deep in Antarctic ice struck her, initially, as a great plot..." 


January round-up + Joining the challenge
For more international book suggestions and reviws, visit the January's Around-the-world Round-up

You can still joine the challenge, there are also easier levels: Happy Camper: 2 books, Wayfarer: 4 books, Casual Tourist: 6 books. Here's the Sign-up page.
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