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WRITERS CORNER

The Spring Green Literary Festival board of directors seeks to act as a catalyst in our community for literary events that bring together and encourage writers and readers. Listed below are links for encouragement, inspiration, reading, and writing:

Writing
Reading
Writing, for the rest of us

Writing

To celebrate the National Poem Month of April, take a look at Poem a day:

To celebrate National Poetry Month, we sent a poem a day by e-mail for 30 days to anyone who asked to receive them. Now, with over 25,000 subscribers, we are proud to continue with a whole new series of daily poems. Each weekday, you will receive a poem from some of the best poets in the world including Mark Strand, Sharon Olds, and Laurie Sheck, as well as classics from Langston Hughes, Robert Burns and more. This year, we'll also be featuring audio clips from The Knopf National Poetry Month Collection.

Orhan Pamuk's acceptance speech for his 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature:

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward...

William Faulkner's acceptance speech for his 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature:

[T]he young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

Reading

Absinthe Literary Review: An on-line magazine of transgressive short stories, essays, and poetry. The stories are well-written and thought-provoking. Chosen the most important online literary journal by the Stanford-based LOCKSS Archiving Program. Disclosure: the editor-in-chief of Absinthe Literary Review is a former member of the board of directors of the Spring Green Literary Festival. The inclusion of this hyperlink was not made at the request of the editor-in-chief of Absinthe Literary Review.

Arts and Letters Daily: Daily report of news in art and literature. Includes reviews of new books, essays and articles. Updated 6 days a week.

ArtsJournal: "The daily digest of arts, culture and ideas." From their "About Arts Journal" page:

"The site is a digest of some of the best arts and cultural journalism in the English-speaking world. Each day ArtsJournal features link to stories culled from more than 200 English-language newspapers, magazines and publications featuring writing about arts and culture."

Powells.com: A website created by the owners of Powells, one of the largest independent bookstores in the United States. Includes links to their blog and newsletter, available for free to those who sign up.

The Writer's Almanac: Important events in the lives of writers, followed by a reading of the day. Introduction and reading by Garrison Keillor, host of Prairie Home Companion. The Writer's Almanac includes a link to downloading and playing the daily offerings.

Writing, for the rest of us

Writing Brave and Free: Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing, by Ted Kooser and Steve Cox.

Information on this book from the Powell's bookstore website:

Unlike “how to write” books that dwell on the angst and the agony of the trade, Writing Brave and Free is upbeat and accessible. The focus here is the work itself: how to get started and how to keep going, and never is heard a discouraging word such as “no,” “not,” or “never.”

Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month): Takes place in November. Tens of thousands of people around the world sign up to do the seemingly insane and certainly stupid: write a 50,000 word novel in a month.

Why do it? Here's Chris Baty, the organizer:

"99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never make the time to write a novel. It's just so far outside our normal lives that it constantly slips down to the bottom of our to-do lists. The structure of NaNoWriMo forces you to put away all those self-defeating worries and START....

How not to write a novel, by Anita Sethi in The Guardian Unlimited:

3. Write 50, 000 words calling your protagonist "Marla". What a goddamn awful name! Go through the draft and change her name to "Roshni". Done it? Idiot - the first name was so much better. Change it back again!...

6. Write about your traumatised childhood and become trapped in a prison of self-indulgent wallowing. Locate childhood diaries and type them up...



	Friday and Saturday. September 12 & 13, 2008