Genre: Fiction

Iowa Review Introduces Contest for Veterans

G&A: The Contest Blog
4.9.12

In partnership with the family of a Vietnam veteran known for his antiwar writing and activism, Iowa Review has launched a multigenre writing contest open to U.S. military veterans and active duty personnel. The Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award competition, which offers one thousand dollars and publication in Iowa Review, is accepting entries of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on any subject.

Pulitzer Prize winner and Vietnam veteran Robert Olen Butler will select the winning work from a pool chosen by the journal's editors (all finalists will be considered for publication). Butler, much of whose work is informed by his experiences in the U.S. military, served in Vietnam as an intelligence agent and a translator. He is the author of twelve novels, most recently A Small Hotel (Grove Press, 2011), six short story collections, and a nonfiction book on craft, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction (Grove Press, 2005).

Writers may submit their work with a fifteen-dollar entry fee via Submittable or postal mail (an extra ten dollars gets entrants a yearlong subscription to the magazine). The deadline is June 15. Visit the Iowa Review website for complete guidelines.

In the video below, Butler discusses how his time in the military led the former playwright to fiction, and how his experiences in Vietnam have shaped his work.

North Carolina Writers’ Network Spring Conference

The 2022 North Carolina Writers’ Network Spring Conference was held on April 23, both in person at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro and online. The conference featured classes in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, as well as conversations on the craft and business of writing. The faculty included poets Charmaine Cadeau, Stuart Dischell, and Laura Mullen; fiction writers Caleb Johnson, Derek Palacio, and Maegan Poland; and creative nonfiction writers Belle Boggs, Rachel Priest, and Julia Ridley Smith.

Type: 
CONFERENCE
Ignore Event Date Field?: 
yes
Event Date: 
March 13, 2025
Rolling Admissions: 
ignore
Application Deadline: 
March 13, 2025
Financial Aid?: 
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline: 
March 13, 2025
Free Admission: 
no
Contact Information: 

North Carolina Writers’ Network Spring Conference, P.O. Box 21591, Winston-Salem, NC 27120. (336) 293-8844. Ed Southern, Executive Director.  

Ed Southern
Executive Director
Contact City: 
Greensboro
Contact State: 
NC
Country: 
US
Genre: 
Poetry
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction

Blast From the Past

The Time Is Now
4.4.12

Conjure someone you haven't seen or talked to in over ten years. Imagine you receive a phone call from this person today. Why are they calling? What do they want? Write a story about it.

Harry Crews

Caption: 

"The writer's job is to get naked—to hide nothing." Southern Gothic novelist Harry Crews, who passed away Wednesday in Gainesville, Florida, at the age of seventy-six, wrote seventeen novels, including Feast of Snakes and The Knockout Artist. He taught fiction writing workshops at the University of Florida from 1968 until his retirement in 1997.

Genre: 
Fiction
Tags: 
documentary
Harry Crews

Beyond Baroque Literary | Arts Center

Indie Bookstore, Reading Venue, Writing Center

Beyond Baroque is one of the United States’ leading independent literary arts centers and public spaces dedicated to expanding the public’s knowledge of poetry, literature, and art through cultural events and community interaction. Founded in 1968 as an experimental literary magazine, Beyond Baroque is based out of the original City Hall building in Venice, California. The Center offers a diverse variety of literary and arts programming including readings and workshops.

Forty-Year-Old Author Is Arabic Booker's Youngest Recipient

G&A: The Contest Blog
3.28.12

Last night in Abu Dhabi, Lebanese author Rabee Jaber was awarded the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, given for the past five years for novels originally written in Arabic.

The forty-two-year-old author took the award, also known as the Arabic Booker (it is sponsored by major literary prize underwriter Man Booker), for his historical novel The Druze of Belgrade.

Still unpublished in English, a state that is likely to change shortly if the fate of past honorees' work serves as any indication, Jaber is a well-known author in his native Lebanon. He has published seventeen novels and, in 1992, won the country's Critics Choice Award for his debut, Master of Darkness.

Jaber received fifty thousand U.S. dollars, and each finalist received ten thousand dollars. The shortlisted authors were Jabbour al-Douaihy of Lebanon for The Vagrant, Ezzedine Choukri Fishere of Egypt for Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge, Nasser Iraq of Egypt for The Unemployed, Bachir Mefti of Algeria for Toy of Fire, and Habib Selmi of Tunisia for The Women of al-Basatin.

The award was presented at the launch of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. The winner and shortlisted authors will appear in conversation tomorrow evening at the festival to discuss risk-taking in Arabic fiction.

Past winners of the Arabic Booker include Saudi novelist Raja Alem (The Doves' Necklace) and Moroccan author Mohammed Achaari (The Arch and the Butterfly), who split the award last year, as well as Egypt's Bahaa Taher (Sunset Oasis) and Youssef Ziedan (Azazel), and Abdo Khal of Saudi Arabia (Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles).

Wish You Were Here

The Time Is Now
3.27.12

Look through your desk or visit a thrift store or drugstore to find a selection of postcards. Write short missives to yourself in the voice of an imagined character, sending a dozen or so cards to your home address. Allow your reaction to receiving the postcards and the messages themselves, inspire the beginnings of a story.

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