| SPARKS: News & Notes from
Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative
|
|
|
|
Greetings!,
Here we are, smack dab in the middle of summer. What better time to celebrate being a writer? If you're looking for company to party with, there's always the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference later this month and the Emandal Farm Artists Colony in August. But however you spend the rest of your summer, be sure to take time out to reward the writer you've worked so hard to become. The month's Sparks offers something for everyone, including a new Searchlights and a CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS for Petaluma Readers Theatre. Whether or not you're a fan of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert has a thing or two to tell us about nurturing our creative spirits.  | | Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius |
Celebrate yourself this Summer, and Keep Writing!
|
|
CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS Petaluma Readers Theatre in collaboration with Tiny Lights Publications presents Haunted DEADLINE: August 14, 2013 Performances: October 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 2013 at the Clear Heart Theatre in Petaluma What haunts you? Are you troubled by nightmares, ghosts, regrets, premonitions? Does the past, with its painful secrets and ghastly mistakes, whisper curses in your characters' ears, or do complications in your current life set your nerves to twitching? Fact or fiction, horrible or hilarious, Petaluma Readers Theatre and Tiny Lights invite you to let some skeletons out of the closet to share the stage with Edgar Allan Poe and other dark masters. 1,500 words or fewer (3-5 minutes performance time is ideal), no gratuitous violence or obscenities, autumnal flavor appreciated. Authors selected by Petaluma Readers Theatre agree to the possibility of being edited and showcased (with proper attribution and never for profit) in PRT videos and podcasts. Please send manuscripts as Word attachments to Susan Bono, Editor of Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative: sbono@tiny-lights.com by August 14. For questions or more information about Petaluma Readers Theatre, visit their website: www.petalumareaderstheatre.com or contact Director Jennifer March: jenmarch@comcast.net. |
|
Your Muse/Your Time: Accessing the Story Within
An Artists Colony at Emandal Farm  August 23rd-27th, 2013
How's it going with your muse? Are you happy in a world of your own, or are you both feeling a little restless? Could you use some company or a change of scene? For 5 glorious summer days, you and your muse can have a room of your own, splendid meals, and ample time to write, wander and reignite your creative fires. Best of all, you'll be an integral part of a community of writers, artists and photographers with opportunities to mingle and share work in progress. Writers of all genres and levels welcome.
Susan Bono facilitates our writing program. Our massage therapists will be available. Emandal is located 140 miles north of San Francisco in the heart of Mendocino County, near Willits. Contact us for more information, or to sign up.
|
Triple Whammy:
Three Authors Discuss the Wild New World of Publishing.
Friday, July 12th @ 7pm. Occidental Center for the Arts
3850 Doris Murphy Ct. (Corner of Bohemian Hwy and Graton Rd.)
Join us for a panel discussion with moderator Susan Bono and authors Becca Lawton (Junction, Utah), Jordan E. Rosenfeld (Forged in Grace), and Jill Koenigsdorf (Phoebe & the Ghost of Chagall), plus a launch of these authors' books. An interesting and informative event for both readers and writers! Book sales and signing. Free admission, but donations happily accepted. Refreshments served.
|
Searchlights & Signal Flares
Tiny Lights' Online Writers' Exchange
Most memorists agree that honesty is the best policy, but how do you manage to toe the line? Some brave (and honest!) writers tackled this month's question. Did you see the call? Do you wonder now how you would have answered it?
Read the confessions of Bill Vernon, this month's featured writer,
along with:
 Bill Vernon's poems, short stories and non-fiction have appeared in four poetry chapbooks, anthologies and journals such as APPALACHIAN STORY, HIPPOCAMPUS REVIEW,YANKEE, ALBANY REVIEW, CINCINNATI REVIEW, BLUE UNICORN, THE ARCHER, GRASSLANDS REVIEW, POETRY OHIO: SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE CORNFIELD REVIEW, THE RUNNER, HEMLOCKS AND BALSAMS, and PASSAGES NORTH. Five Star Mysteries published his novel OLD TOWN in 2005.
YOUR TURN, WRITERS: Add your voice to the conversation! Searchlights needs your insights! Go to the Searchlights & Signal Flares Guidelines page to find out how to send a light. These are questions only you can answer. How important is community? (07/15/13) If you could achieve one goal in 2013, what would it be? (08/15/13 What do you wish you could write about? (09/15/13)
|
There's still time to join these and other fantastic teachers in a setting that is without equal! Take your story to a place of refreshing sea breezes and pristine beaches! MCWC.ORG
Short Fiction: Peter Orner
Peter Orner is the author of two novels, Love and Shame and Love, a New York Times Editor's Choice Book recently published in paperback and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, set in Namibia, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
Memoir: Judith Barrington
Judith Barrington's prose books are: Lifesaving: A Memoir (winner of the Lambda Book Award and finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir), and Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, used in numerous writing programs. Her work has been included in many anthologies and literary journals, including Creative Nonfiction, Prairie Schooner, Americas Review, Poetry London, and The Chattahoochee Review.
Novel: Josh Weil
Josh Weil is the author of The New Valley (Grove/Atlantic 2009), a novella collection that won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from The American Academy of Arts and Letters; the New Writers Award from the GLCA; and a "5 Under 35" Award from the National Book Foundation. A New York Times Editors Choice, it was also shortlisted for the Library of Virginia's literary award in fiction. Weil's other fiction has appeared in Granta, One Story, The Sun, Esquire, Agni, and American Short Fiction, and he has written non-fiction for The New York Times, Oxford American, and Poets & Writers.
Poetry: Joshua McKinney Joshua McKinney is the author of three collections of poetry: Saunter, co-winner of the University of Georgia Press Poetry Series Open Competition in 2001; The Novice Mourner, winner of the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize in 2005; and Mad Cursive (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2012). His work has appeared widely in such journals as Boulevard, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and many others. He teaches literature and poetry writing at California State University, Sacramento. Short Fiction & Non-fiction: Carolyn Cooke
Carolyn Cooke's Daughters of the Revolution was listed among the best novels of 2011 by The San Francisco Chronicle and The New Yorker Magazine. Her new collection, Amor & Psycho, is out from Knopf this summer. Her short fiction has appeared in two volumes each of Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and was collected in The Bostons, which won the PEN/Bingham Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway.
Emerging Writers: Lewis Buzbee
Steinbeck's Ghost, Lewis Buzbee's first novel for younger readers, was selected for the California Library Association's John and Patricia Beatty Award, and was a Smithsonian Notable Book. His second middle grade novel, The Haunting of Charles Dickens, won the Northern California Book Award and was nominated for an Edgar Award. A new novel, Bridge of Time has just been published, and a new nonfiction book, Blackboard, will be published in the fall of 2013.
|
|
Flash in the Pan
Online Quarterly @ Tiny Lights
We're prospecting for gold again.
Send us your flashes.
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 throughout the year on the Tiny Lights website. Send your jewels to editor@tiny-lights.com.
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: echaps@wordrunner.com |
Writers Forum of Petaluma
presents
Anne Jordan
"The Structure of Story"
July 18, 2013 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Petaluma Community Center, 320 No. McDowell Blvd.
$15 at the door
This two-hour talk will be about how all stories can be broken down into four equal parts, which helps writers to create manageable outlines. Once you know the secret, you'll never get writer's block again.
ANNE JORDAN is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable author and Hollywood screenwriter who has taught creative writing and screenwriting classes to thousands of students at many of the universities and colleges in Northern California. She's also an Executive Producer at Popcorn Entertainment Group, and the Executive Director of the Northern California Screenwriters.
For Info: www.thewritespot.us
|
Tiny Lights Recommends: Sonoma County Free Bookmobile Help bring free books to Sonoma County residents.
*********************
For reservations, or more information call: OCA 707 874 9392. OCA is located in Harmony Village in downtown Occidental at 4008 Bohemian Hwy.
********************************
|
|
|
|
|
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.
Print editions of Tiny Lights, which includes original art:
Current issue: $5 each
Back issues: $3 each
Checks payable to Tiny Lights Publications, P.O. Box 928, Petaluma, CA 94953
|
|
 Susan Bono, Editor
Tiny Lights Publications
P.O. Box 928, Petaluma, CA 94953
(707) 762-3208
www.tiny-lights.com |
|
|
