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NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION BRANCH (OTTAWA)

BIWEEKLY NOTICES FOR TWO WEEKS:  March 28 TO April 10, 2016

 

Need more information on CAA-NCR?  Visit us at http://canadianauthors.org/nationalcapitalregion/

 TO ALL READERS: Please send all submissions & event notices in the body of an email; (the text needs to permit copy and paste. Exceptions: Accompanying images such as photos and book cover) to Carol Stephen at  cstephen0@gmail.com

 

MEETINGS AND EVENTS

 

CAA-NCR APRIL MEETING TOPIC: EXPOSE YOURSELF!  Ways to get attention for your book while remaining fully clothed. (No fifty shades of grey here)

 PRESENTER: Sheryl Bennett-Wilson
DATE: Tuesday, April 12, 2016
TIME: 7:00 – 9:00 pm
LOCATION:  McNabb Recreation Centre, 180 Percy St. east of Bronson

In many ways there are far more opportunities today for authors to get exposure and coverage for their book then there ever were. That being said, there is also a huge amount of competition for readers’ eyeballs. So what is an author to do?

Having worked in broadcasting (both radio and television) for over 25 years, and witnessed the explosion in social media in the last ten years, Sheryl can tell you that sometimes the simplest and most straightforward of methods work best. And more often than not, it is the ‘put-yourself-out-there’ author who gets the reviews, gets the interviews and gets people talking about their book.

But where does one start? How do you find out whom to approach? When should you start talking about your book? Sheryl hopes to help you get started on the journey and provide useful advice so you can create your own marketing plan, discover the best way to write a release and understand the best way to approach radio/television.

BIO: Sheryl Bennett-Wilson worked in broadcasting in Ottawa – both radio and television – for over 25 years. For the last number of years she has written numerous articles for local and national publications, provided press and marketing material for companies, professionals, authors, musicians and a number of charities. She has also written, directed and produced corporate videos, provided editing for non-fiction books, written and continues to write content for websites and for over twelve years was the Event Manager of an annual trade show.

 

CAA-NCR MEMBER NEWS

 

CAA-NCR MEMBER, J.C. SULZENKO, AS CURATOR OF POETRY QUARTER FOR THE GLEBE REPORT HAS ANNOUNCED AN OPEN CALL FOR POETRY

DEADLINE: Monday, April 11

The third edition of “Poetry Quarter,” a compilation of poems, curated by JC Sulzenko and published quarterly in the Glebe Report community newspaper, will appear in the May 2016 issue.  The Glebe Report is now seeking submissions of poems for possible selection for this issue. The poem or poet must have a connection to the Glebe or close neighbouring community (i.e. the poem must be about the Glebe or the poet must live, work, study or volunteer in the Glebe (or close neighbouring community)). Poets of all ages are welcome to submit.

Poems should be:

• Original and unpublished in any medium
• On any subject within the bounds of public discourse
• No more than 30 lines each

Please submit your entries (up to 7 poems) by April 11 to editor@glebereport.ca. Please be sure to include your Glebe connection, your contact information, and your grade, if you are in school.

 

CANADIAN AUTHORS ASSOCIATION NEWS FROM NATIONAL

 Canadian Authors 2016 Literary Awards – Part 2

Entries are now being accepted for two additional 2016 award categories:
The CAA Emerging Writer Award is for a body of work by a Canadian author under 30 deemed to show exceptional promise. Nominees need not be published. The postmark deadline for this award is April 30, 2016.

The Canadian Authors Fred Kerner Book Award is a brand new award given exclusively to members. Any genre is eligible. The postmark deadline for this award is April 15, 2016.
Details and submission forms at http://canadianauthors.org/national/awards/submit

Now in its 41st year, the CAA Literary Awards program honours writing that achieves excellence without sacrificing popular appeal. For more information about past winners, shortlisted authors, awards events, and sponsorship opportunities, visit our awards pages at http://canadianauthors.org/national/awards/

 

WORKSHOPS

 WRITESCAPE RETREAT UPCOMING: SPRING THAW 2016: APRIL 22-24, OR APRIL 22-26, 2016

 

SPRING THAW: Looking for writing time? Polishing a project? Don’t miss Spring Thaw.
This all-inclusive writing retreat is held at the fabulous Elmhirst’s Resort on Rice Lake in Keene. Stay for the weekend or treat yourself to an extra two days of writing.

• 10-page manuscript evaluation with written feedback from Ruth and Gwynn
• one-on-one consultation with either Gwynn or Ruth
• private writing time
• optional daytime creativity sessions to fire up your pen
• a companion workbook with inspiration, prompts and supports
• optional evening activities to network and share ideas and inspiration with retreat colleagues
• comfortable cottages with wood-burning fireplace
• first-class amenities and delicious meals

Upcoming 2016 Workshops

•  Offered On Demand Scrivener for Writers: The Basics Two evenings in an intimate class setting to get started in the ultimate writers’ toolkit. Scrivener’s all-in-one writing software has a learning curve that, once mastered, can fire up your manuscripts, organize your research, and reveal cool tricks for creative minds. Heather O’Connor (a.k.a. Dr. Scrivener) will show you how. Location: Private residence in Whitby area.

 

• April 16 Get That Grant! Dozens of grants are open to writers. Hands-on writing activities will help you learn how to find grants and prepare a winning grant application with Heather O’Connor and Gwynn Scheltema. Location: Trent University, Oshawa Campus.

For more information on Writescape and to register for a retreat or workshop, visit: http://writescape.ca/site/

 

THE ONTARIO WRITERS’ CONFERENCE: INSPIRING. EDUCATING. CONNECTING

 

APRIL 30 – MAY 1, 2016 AJAX, ONTARIO

WHAT TO EXPECT:

Manuscript Mentoring: Sit down with a writing mentor, or practice your elevator pitch with a literary agent.

Student Scholarship: Are you a student with an interest in writing? Apply for our student (16+) scholarship!

Festival of Authors: Interviews, author readings and literary mingling, all in a café-style atmosphere with a cash bar and sweet endings.

Cornerstone Award: This award is presented to a Canadian person or organization that demonstrates exemplary support of Canadian writers and the writing field in general. More details here: http://thewritersconference.com/

 

SCBWI’S ART OF STORY CONFERENCE RUNS APRIL 29 – MAY 1

 

If you write for children–or are interested in doing so, you may be interested in the upcoming Art of Story conference, offered in Ottawa by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), April 29-May 1.  The conference offers:  Advanced workshops for published authors and illustrators–with plenty also on offer for beginners. An early-bird draw: Register by March 15 for a chance to win one of two free 10-page manuscript critiques by Christie Harkin of Cockwise Press.  For full conference details and to register, visit The Art of Story 2016

OTTAWA SUBMISSION CALLS AND OPPORTUNITIES

 

BYWORDS.CA SUBMISSION CALL

                             

DEADLINE:  The 15^th of every month for the following month’s issue

Bywords.ca considers previously unpublished poetry from emerging and established poets for our online monthly magazine. We consider work by current and former residents, students and workers of Ottawa. We also publish poems by contributors to our predecessor, the Bywords Monthly Magazine.  FOR SUBMISSION INFORMATION VISIT www.bywords.ca  and click on Guidelines.  Amanda Earl, Managing Editor.  Bywords.ca’s literary events calendar here: http://www.bywords.ca/calendar/index.php  with up-to-date info on NCR readings, book signings, writers’ circles, literary festivals, spoken word showcases & slams. Event submissions can be sent to events@bywords.ca
SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITIES 

 

• Additional links to contests and submission calls visit Canadian Authors National Capital Region website here: http://canadianauthors.org/nationalcapitalregion/contests/writing-contests-calls-for-submission/  
• Arc Magazine Contest: Archibald Lampman Award  deadline March 31, 2016
• The Masters Review Anthology – Judge Amy Hempel $5000 awarded. $20.00 USD Ends on 3/31/2016. Submissions are open from January 15, 2016 to March 31, 2016. This year stories will be selected by author Amy Hempel who will select ten winners from a shortlist of forty. This category is open to ALL EMERGING WRITERS. Anyone who has not yet published a novel at the time of submission. We are looking for today’s top emerging writers. Send us your best! Details and to submit: http://mastersreview.com/anthology/

•  Ottawa Magazine 2nd Annual Short Story Fiction contest. DEADLINE: midnight FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016.  open to residents of the National Capital Region, excluding residents of Quebec. Cost $20, includes a one-year subscription to Ottawa Magazine. Winner will receive $500, the runner-up $250, both stories to be published by June 1, 2016 online. Will appear in the Summer 2016 issue of Ottawa Magazine. All submissions may be considered for publication on Ottawa Magazine’s website. MORE INFO & TO SUBMIT: http://ottawamagazine.com/arts-and-culture/calling-all-writers-announcing-our-2nd-annual-short-story-fiction-contest/
• Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest Deadline:  Monday April 4 2016 Entry fee: $10 per poem Prizes: $1600: $300 first place, $200 second place, $100 third place, 8 honourable mentions of $75, 8 judge’s choice of $50 complimentary anthology, trophy, and award ceremony during the Spring Pulse Poetry Festival. Details: www.springpulsepoetryfestival.com  Enquires: Send to David Brydges mybrydges@yahoo.ca 

 

• The Ontario Poetry Society’s Clean as a Whistle Contest Contest submissions for unpublished and previously published poems on the theme of hygiene, poor grooming, soaps, shampoos, cleaning and so much more are currently being accepted. Open to Everyone. Deadline: Thursday, March 31, 2016 Details: http://www.theontariopoetrysociety.ca

 

• CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! ACCEPTING: POETRY, REVIEWS, ESSAYS, AND INTERVIEWS for Vallum’s forthcoming issue, 13:2 “THE WILD” ! The wild is both outside us and inside us. The wild can take many forms. It is the unknown, the feared. It can be a landscape, or even the wild of the mind. It can be celebrated, or thought of in terms of a taboo, or a trap. How do you interpret “The Wild,” what does it bring out in you? What forms are still wild? Send us your “wildest” poems! DEADLINE: May 15, 2016 (postmarked) Please visit our website for submission guidelines: http://www.vallummag.com/submission.html

 

•  Ink Bottle Press & The Ontario Poetry Society Present: Memory and Loss ~ a Canadian Anthology of Poetry, Dedicated to the victims of Alzheimer’s. Editor & Compiler is I.B. Iskov. Open to all poets living in Canada.  Poems wanted on the themes of Dementia and Alzheimer’s.  This is not blind judging and this is not a contest. Submission fee $15. to help cover the cost of printing & postage. All profits from this project will be donated to The Alzheimer Society of Canada. Submission Deadline is June 15, 2016, postmark date. Send your submission, complete with cheque or money order payable to Mark Clement,  & mail to Attn: I.B. Iskov, Anthology Editor, #710 – 65 Spring Garden Ave., Toronto, Ont. M2N 6H9. Full details and guidelines at: http://www.theontariopoetrysociety.ca/Anthology_Memory%20&%20Loss.htm

 

• The Antigonish Review Announces Two Writing Contests! GREAT BLUE HERON POETRY CONTEST & SHELDON CURRIE FICTION PRIZE $2,400 in Prizes! Deadlines: Fiction entries must be postmarked by June 1, 2016, Poetry must be postmarked by June 30, 2016 Guidelines: Previously published works, works accepted for publication or simultaneous submissions are ineligible. No electronic submissions, please. Fiction entries must be typed, double-spaced, one side of page only – poetry must be single-spaced. Please include a separate cover sheet containing your identifying information as well as the titles of all entries. Past winners may not enter. MORE INFO: http://www.antigonishreview.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=59&Itemid=62

 

• The Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2016 is now open for entries, presenting an opportunity for emerging and established writers and poets to showcase their work and further their involvement in the literary world. Now in its ninth year, the award is an internationally renowned prize presented by Aesthetica Magazine and judged by literary experts. Prizes include: £500 each (Poetry Winner and Short Fiction Winner)/Publication in the Aesthetica Creative Writing/Annual One year subscription to Granta/Selection of books courtesy of Bloodaxe and Vintage/Consultation with Redhammer Management (Short Fiction Winner)/Full Membership to The Poetry Society (Poetry Winner). Short Fiction entries should be no more than 2,000 words. Poetry entries should be no more than 40 lines. Deadline for submissions is 31 August 2016. To enter, visit aestheticamagazine.com/creativewriting

 

OUT AND ABOUT IN TOWN

 MEETINGS, BOOK LAUNCHES AND POETRY READINGS ABOUT TOWN

 Tuesday, March 29, 2016 7 PM, Octopus Books Centretown, @25One Community 251 Bank St. 2nd floor, Ottawa.  Free.  Book launch & celebration of kashmiri poetry, Cosmophilia, poems by Rahat Kurd, Co-presented by Muslim Link, Expressions of Muslim Women, the Ottawa Muslim Women’s Organization, and Talonbooks, please join us for a reading and discussion of Cosmophilia, by Rahat Kurd.  A Muslim woman engaging in religious and political imagery in lyric and narrative styles, Rahat Kurd steps out our of her cultural comfort zone to provide a unique book of poetry that combines reflections on Kashmir, Muslim culture, and religious imagery, with an often alienating yet also stimulating city life.  Rahat Kurd is a prose writer whose essays have appeared in The Walrus and Maisonneuve magazines. The poetry sequence “Seven Stones for Jamarat”, published in Exile Literary Quarterly, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was a finalist in the 2014 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Prize. Rahat was selected as Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category of the 2013 Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Awards.  “What a joy! Cosmophilia is everything at once: international, urban, historical, current, traditional, innovative… These are poems of beauty and challenge, dissonance and harmony, charged with Kurd’s sense of her very own everywhere.”

-Wayde Compton, City of Vancouver Book Award Winner, The Outer Harbour

 

OTTAWA INTERNATIONAL WRITERS FESTIVAL

 

Thursday Mar. 31, 2016 5:00pm • Pressed • 750 Gladstone Ave. Ottawa Author Meets Readers: Federal Decisions with Local Implications  Info & Tickets

 More events coming in April for the Writers Festival: http://www.writersfestival.org/events

 

VERSeFEST NEWS RELEASE: 

 

At last week’s poetry festival, this year’s inductees to the hall of honour were announced after the last biweeklies went out. to mark the recognition to rob mclennan and Andrée Lacelle, we are including this release (Carol Stephen)

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 VERSeFest Hall of Honour Inductees Announced  Ottawa, ON – Mar. 18, 2016 –  VERSeFest, Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, is pleased to announce this year’s inductees to the Hall of Honour, rob mclennan and Andrée Lacelle, for outstanding service to the Ottawa-Gatineau poetry community.

mclennan and Lacelle will be inducted into the Hall of Honour 7:00 P.M., Sunday, March 20^th. The ceremony will also include readings by Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke and Governor General Award winner Robyn Sarah.

For three decades, rob mclennan has been at the forefront of promoting poetry in the city of Ottawa. His literary productivity has been outstanding, with over two dozen trade books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. He has demonstrated tireless community leadership in his activities as the founder of the Ottawa small press book fair, the organizer of the factory reading series, and the editor and founder of Chaudiere Books, ottawater, the Peter F. Yacht Club, and above/ground press. All of these activities, alongside the generosity of his mentorship and his editorial flair, have helped to shape the creative ethos of this city.

Born in Hawkesbury, Andrée Lacelle has published a dozen books and received numerous literary accolades. She was the first to receive the French-language Trillium Book Award for Tant de vie s’égare (Éditions du Vermillon, 1994 [2007]) and she has also been shortlisted for the Governor General Award. Instrumental to the promotion of French-language literature, she has been a long-time contributor of book reviews. She has also reviewed Franco-Ontarian literature on the show “Panorama” (TFO, 2006-2010) and on her radio program “Au cœur des mots” (2011-2014). Her literary collaborations recently included co-writing and co-editing pas d’ici, pas d’ailleurs, Anthologie poétique de voix féminines contemporaines (Montélimar, Voix d’encre, 2012).  Her poems have been translated into English and Czech.

The VERSeFest Hall of Honour recognizes established poets from the greater Ottawa-Gatineau region who have produced a substantial body of work and have made a significant contribution in building the poetry community as a leader and mentor.

 

 COMING EVENTS:

 IN APRIL: 20TH ANNIVERSARY PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY AUTHORS FESTIVAL.
APRIL 13TH TO 16TH, 2016. Please join us for what we think will be the best Authors Fest ever! And keep checking the website for up to date information on events or find us on Facebook. http://www.pecauthorfest.com/

 

OTTAWA, JUNE 4 PROSE IN THE PARK:

Ottawa’s favourite open-air literary festival and book fair, Prose in the Park, will take place on June 4, 2016, 11 am – 6 pm in the Parkdale Park. And it is absolutely free. Everyone is welcome!  Prose in the Park (Prose des vents en français) is a blingual festival devoted to bringing together both established and emerging authors from across Canada. We are pleased to have some of the best authors of Montreal joining the upcoming festival, particularly Heather O’Neill, whose Daydreams of Angels should be required reading for every lover of Canadian literature. From Kingston, we will be joined by Steven Heighton, a brilliant novelist and poet, whose Every Lost Country takes readers a fantastic adventure to far-off Tibet.

From Toronto, we have Andrew Pyper, the Stephen King of Canada, and Ian Hamilton, whose Ava Lee crime series are a wonderful bridge between Canada and contemporary Asia. From Vancouver, Dietrich Kalteis is coming. His fast-paced noir crime set in the West Coast is some of the most enjoyable crime fiction on the market today. To celebrate Canadian writers of Caribbean heritage, we offer a remarkable panel, including 2015 Giller prize judge Cecil Foster.  There are also wonderful Ottawa authors, including 2015 Governor General Award winner for YA fiction, Caroline Pignat, Canada’s premier fantasy writer Charles de Lint and celebrated literary fiction writers, Alan Cumyn and Mark Frutkin. And we are still organizing our Francophone panels, which offer a wide selection of brilliant prose en français.

For more information on the event and featured authors, check out the 2016 program on our website at www.proseinthepark.com