http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/index.cfm?forumid=1 FuseTalk Enterprise Edition http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=221 2008-06-02T12:53:18 -05.00 Mary Stojak 1
For whoever was that was looking for an opening in a writers group - if you can make it to Columbia - heard that the fiction group there has an opening again. They are part of the Maryland Writers Association, Baltimore Chapter. Not bad, I needed to free up my Wednesday nights so I bowed out a while back. One of the leaders is a former New York editor. M ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=124 2007-01-22T14:06:17 -05.00 Lorine Kritzer Pergament 29 ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=114 2006-12-15T08:43:58 -05.00 Eddie Jeffrey 1
Dance: Solo Performance
Fiction
Media
Music: Solo Instrumental Performance
Music: Solo Vocal Performance
Theater: Solo Performance
Visual Arts: Computer Arts
Visual Arts: Installation and Other Genre
Visual Arts: Painting
Visual Arts: Works on Paper

HOWEVER, i noticed in the WHO MAY NOT APPLY section for fiscal year 2007 those pursuing graduate courses in any of the msac iaa categories [that would be us] are ineligible for any of these grants. this might change for fy 2008, but i doubt it. i guess the reasoning is they don't want this money being used as financial aid, but i could be wrong. anyway, it's a bummer.

if you want to take a look see for yourselves and you notice something i might have missed, please go to MSAC.ORG and report back your findings. ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=98 2006-10-08T19:04:43 -05.00 Juan Gaddis 2 http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=97 2006-09-29T20:57:06 -05.00 Jerri Bell 6
My sons' elementary school hosts afterschool clubs. This year, in a desperate attempt to find any pretext to spend less time in my office (hooray for the Navy's commitment to community service and for my nice boss, whose only requirement is that I come in by 6:30AM on Wednesdays), I volunteered to do a creative writing activity for students in grades 3/4/5.

Looks like around 7 kids signed up -- fortunately, it conflicted with a science club that my older son wanted so I don't have to try this for the first time in front of him!

I've been adapting some segments of the Fiction Techniques class for elementary school, if you can picture it: structure, characters, scene-and-summary, setting as mood, and dialogue. We're also going to talk about good stories, about submitting things for publication, and about reading our work in public. The end-of-semester finale, if you will, is going to be the publication (probably on line) of a "literary journal" of student work and a "coffee house" reading for the families in December.

I'm having a blast looking back through some of my favorite kids' books (like A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and Harriet the Spy) for passages that illustrate the techniques we'll be talking about. It's fun to read those books "like a writer," because one can learn new things from good children's fiction.

Has anyone else done anything like this with elementary school kids? Any ideas what the potential pitfalls might be? ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=40 2006-07-30T20:49:37 -05.00 Eugene Chay 1 Gather.com and Amazon.com are sponsoring a short-form writing contest where the prize is publication and sale on Amazon.com.

It appears they're running this contest four times from June through September (once per month), and this announcement clearly comes too late for you to submit for June and July. The August and September contests are wide open, though. ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=39 2006-07-30T19:05:44 -05.00 Eugene Chay 1 The Advocate reports that a gay-themed novel has won an online contest for new novelists.

Unpublished author Dora McAlpin-Zeeks of Odenton, Md., won a $5,000 prize from TheNextBigWriter.com. The Web site, which features emerging writers and has a membership of 3,000, held a six-month contest among 200 novels, which elicited 50,000 votes and online reviews. McAlpin-Zeeks, a mother of three with a day job as a writer-researcher for the U.S. government, won the popular vote. Her novel, Out of the Dark, tells the story of a teenage boy with both HIV and leukemia who becomes romantically involved with one of his male teachers.

The contest was apparently sponsored by TheNextBigWriter.com. ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=28 2006-05-30T16:10:33 -05.00 Eddie Jeffrey 5 the Paris Review and she says to "get past that blank horror", as she called it, of actually writing and getting into a rhythm, she'll start over from page one to wherever she is and just retype and edit the whole thing and go from there. She says when she gets up past page 100 she might only go back to page 40 or even back as far as 20, but still, that's a lot of revision and work. Others, like Steinbeck, say to get the thing out and THEN go back and revise it, otherwise you're using revision as an obstacle.
In any event, both used methods that worked for them, and both could write all day without the pesky inconvenience of the "day job", at least that's mostly true. How do the rest of us handle this burden/curse/gift? I've got the Didion mindset, where I feel lost if I don't go back and edit and "get it right" and get back into a rhythm, but I also feel that if I don't push it sometimes, I never get past a certain point and get bogged down in nuance and punctuation. You know. Silly stuff. ]]> http://advanced.jhu.edu/ft/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=18&threadid=26 2006-05-24T08:28:31 -05.00 Jim Kendrall 2 author's bio, I find that he/she has an MA in writing from JHU. When that happens,
the discovery that a JHU alum has published a nice story, I get a boost, a shot of
smug pride that, "Yea, we're some damn fine writers over here at JHU." I
logically conclude that if he/she went through the MA in writing program and they are
publishing good work, and if I'm in the same program, then...

In any event, I wonder if there is any efficient way to get a comprehensive listing
of works published by JHU writing alumni. ]]>