SPARKS: News & Notes from
Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative
Announcements (Click and Go)
18th Annual Personal Essay Contest
Searchlights & Signal Flares: "What does it mean to have a voice?" Featured Writer: Rebecca Lawton
Greetings!,   

The holiday season is really upon us, and one of its gifts will be the long-awaited Contest 2011 edition of Tiny Lights joining the last wave of seasonal mail tomorrow. Many thanks to our subscribers and contest participants for your support and patience! Our winners this year came from all over: Vermont, Oregon, California, Washington, Iowa,Virginia, and Canada, making for an international sensation!  
 
While you're waiting for the mail, do enjoy the latest Searchlights: What does it mean to have a voice? and the recent Flash in the Pan. And if you have about 20 minutes, I invite you to listen to Dylan Thomas reading his lyric memoir, "A Child's Christmas in Wales." His is a voice like no other. May it inspire your own holiday classic.
Dylan Thomas reads  
Dylan Thomas reads "A Child's Christmas in Wales"

Keep Writing.   

 

  Susan Bono, Editor

 Tiny Lights
18th Annual Personal Essay Contest 
flash_girl
Deadline: February 17, 2012


You have a story in you, waiting to be given to the world. Tiny Lights is looking for essays that feature a distinctive voice, discernible conflict and an eventual shift in the narrator's perspective.

Prizes for essays up to 2,000 words will be awarded as follows:
  • First Place: $350
  • Second Place: $250
  • Third Place: $150
  • Two Honorable Mention Prizes: $100 each.
Three FLASHPOINT prizes of $100 are also offered for work up to 1,000 words.
artwork by Judith Stephenson 
Writing Istanbul

Istanbul, Turkey

w/ Sheila Bender, Susan Bono & Yesim Cimcoz

 

Writing Istanbul Conference: May 11-15,  2012

3-day optional trip to Ephesus, Selcuk, Pamukkale: May 16-18

 

The Spice Market, the Blue Mosque, dervishes, Turkish baths, ancient ruins, and more!

 

Experience these wonders in the company of writers.

Give yourself and your writing a whole new perspective.

Safe. Affordable. Remarkable.  

For rates and details 

For questions and  information: [email protected]

 


Searchlights & Signal Flares 
Tiny Lights' Online Writers' Exchange
  
signal tower

Do you hear what I hear? Not likely. Every human translates the messages the  world sends in a different way. It's a wonder we agree on anything. As writers, after all our talk of craft, tone and style, we are still left with questions such as:

   What does it mean to have a voice? 

 

Read what Rebecca Lawton, this month's featured writer, has to say on the subject, along with our other contributors this month:

Arlene L. Mandell
B.J. Yudelson
Becky Povich
Catherine Crawford
Claudia Larson
Marilyn Petty
Rodney Merrill
Sara Baker
Susan Bono
Theresa Sanders

This Month's Featured Writer: Rebecca Lawton   
flash_girl

Rebecca Conrad Lawton is an author and natural scientist whose passion is exploring and writing about the outdoor world.  Her work has been published in Orion, Sierra, The San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Shenandoah, Standing Wave, THEMA, the acorn, More, and other magazines. Her memoir on rivers and the whitewater guiding culture, Reading Water: Lessons from the River (Capital), was a San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller and ForeWord Nature Book of the Year finalist. 

 

She has received the Ellen Meloy Fund  Award for Desert Writers, the Redwood Writers Award for Poetry, and other awards.  She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes-in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her website: http://www.beccalawton.com/index.html


 
WRITERS: It's your turn to shine in Searchlights. Go to the  Searchlights & Signal Flares Guidelines page to find out how.  Here's the next question:   
  How do you grow as a writer?
 (Deadline 1/15/12)
   
Send Searchlights submissions with bio (and title!) to [email protected]

 

Flash in the Pan Online Quarterly

  

broom mightiercover

 

At Last!     

 The Twenty-sixth Flash in the Pan!

American Mind Over Matter by Mary Glatz 

Unfinished Dream by Patrice Garrett
Words by Jo Lauer
Orange by Cypress Ducayne
Christmas Spirit by Kay Butzin
Clarity by Fran Claggett
Scent Thief by Carol J.. Howard
Somewhere Over Nunavut by Alison Timmons
Before Our Last Goodbye by Judith Kelly Quaempts
Noblesse Oblige by Mimipeel Roughton
Shady Grove by Catherine Montague
Stitches by Andrea Marcusa 

 

Guidelines   

    
What is a Flash in the Pan? It's life caught in the blaze of a match, a beam of moonlight, the glare of a home-made explosion. These  pieces of first-person non-fiction prose (500 words or less) are like potato chips--you won't be able to stop with just one. Our gems are posted quarterly in January, April, July and October on the Tiny Lights website. A select few appear in the hard copy editions of the magazine. Send your jewels to [email protected].
Go to:Flash in the Pan



   

 

Read issues at www.echapbook.com  

See www.echapbook.com/submissions.htm  for submissions guidelines.

    

Contact Publisher Jo-Anne Rosen:  [email protected]   

 


 

 

 

 

Enter the dream.

       SUBSCRIBE 

to the print edition of Tiny Lights

 

   

 

  Sonoma County Events
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Iota Press  is a letterpress shop and literary studio in Sebastopol. 

Along with the usual enchantment and shenanigans, Iota's Slow Print Cooperative has morphed into a quarterly offering of little books. "Almost a journal. Nearly a magazine. Kind of a trip." $30 per year for 4 chapbooks. $10 single copies.  

 

Location:  925-c Gravenstein Hwy in South Sebastopol (next to "Beekind").

Contact: Eric Johnson....823-6152  Our latest works online at:  www.iotapress.com

 

broom mightiercover


Tiny Lights Recommends:


       Sonoma County Free Bookmobile 

Help bring free books to Sonoma County residents.  

 

 
 ***************
Walking With Your Muse: weekly writing practice classes in Santa Rosa with Margaret Caminsky Shapiro: 707-575-8820
www.handwritingonline.net  

 

******************

WRITERS FORUM, PETALUMA  

Marlene Cullen hosts this series of writing workshops on the third Thursday of the month from 7-9 p.m. at the Petaluma Community Center.

Call 778-4380 (Petaluma Community Center) or visit www.thewritespot.us for  info.  

 $15 at the door

 

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Online Classes with
Ken Rodgers
                                  
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                  OCCIDENTAL CENTER FOR THE ARTS


For reservations, or more information call: OCA   707 874 9392. OCA is located in Harmony Village in downtown Occidental at 4008 Bohemian Hwy. 


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Since 1995, Tiny Lights has been celebrating the power of personal voice with a biannual journal devoted to short essay. The annual essay contest, which offers $1500 in prizes, provides the material for the summer issue, while the winter issue is by invitation only.

The online component of Tiny Lights is designed to catch what can't be contained in the pages of the newsstand editions. Lights Online provides a venue for additional voices, information about Tiny Lights and resources for writers of personal essay. Sparks: Email News & Notes is our free monthly electronic newsletter.

Subscriptions to the print edition of Tiny Lights, which includes original art:
$10 per year (2 issues)
Current issue: $5 each
Back issues: $3 each
 Checks payable to Tiny Lights Publications, P.O. Box 928, Petaluma, CA 94953
Or take advatage of our new PayPal feature!

islandSusan Bono, Editor
Tiny Lights Publications
P.O. Box 928, Petaluma, CA 94953

(707) 762-3208
www.tiny-lights.com