The EWF Writing Competition: We’re taking a break

"Thanks to all those writers who have contributed in the past to the EWF Writing Competition. In case you’ve been wondering why you haven’t seen any information about entering the contest this year, here's the scoop: we're taking a break.
     Our writing contest has slowly been taking on a life of its own, growing to include eight categories - poetry and prose for four age groups - which all need judging, prizes, presentations, marketing and more. The administrative duties have grown, as have the expenses in postage, prizes and volunteer time. The organizing committee has decided to streamline the entire Festival this year, and we're putting any sponsorship money towards the Festival itself, which is, after all, where the focus should be.
     The increasingly unwieldy contest needs a renewal, and this just isn't the year to do it. We've decided to step back, take a break, and find a new Chair or (I hope) Chairs/committee to re-invent the writing contest for our 20th Anniversary next season.
     Writers of all ages – and the teachers and parents who have supported our young writers, especially – we thank you for your efforts and contribution. Please don't run away! The new Contest Chair(s) will be reaching out to you next year.
     As the outgoing Contest Chair, I very much appreciate the contribution you have made to the EWF Writing Competition and the support you've given me in my role over the past six years. Stay tuned – and keep on writing!"
— Jean Mills, Contest Chair

This year the Elora Writers' Festival will bring a more accessible tone to an event that is already renown for its intimacy. In previous years we have allowed attendees to purchase a value-added, DINNER ticket that provided for a reception and sit-down meal with our six authors.
     This year every member of the audience will get to break bread, clink a glass and "schmooze" with the authors.
     So join us on Sunday, May 26 and top off a relaxing afternoon of readings by six of Canada's finest authors with an informal reception; replete with appetizers, rollicking conversation and fine Canadian wine.

For more information about the 2013 Elora Writers' Festival go here...

For information about another competition go here...

"[…] writing it down for safe keeping"

"Stephenie Meyer's subconscious has a lot to answer for. Almost 10 years ago, as a young mother in Arizona, she had a dream about an average teenage girl and a beautiful male vampire, sitting in a meadow, lost in conversation about the difficulties of their relationship. The specific problem was that if they became too close – if they gave in to the girl's intense desires – he'd hurt and potentially kill her. Meyer wanted to remember the story, but was struggling with her small sons' relentless needs, so began writing it down for safe keeping. It was the first story she had ever put to paper. A modest woman, a committed Mormon, she loved books, had always conjured up stories, but had previously thought the idea of writing anything herself would be presumptuous.

     That story became Twilight, the first of four books in a saga that has sold more than 100m copies, been translated into 37 languages, spawned a bogglingly successful film franchise, a much-discussed relationship between the film's young stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and a flood of visitors to the small town of Forks, Washington, where the series is set. […]"
— Kira Cochrane, The Guardian
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Independent bookstores... value added

The staff members of our our local bookstore always go out of their way to know exactly what's on their shelves. Especially all the books by the authors that will be reading at this year's Elora Writiers' Festival.

Find out more about the Festival and Robert Rotenberg here...

And get The Guilty Plea, and all of Robert's other books here...

"When someone writes as well as [Rupert] Thomson does, it makes you wonder why other people bother."

"In Secrecy, Gaetano Zummo, a real-life sculptor in wax in 17th-century Italy whose dramatic depictions of plague victims saw him commissioned by the Florentine court, is troubled by his past and by a dark, repressive Florence that is going through an economic slump 200 years after the Renaissance. [Rupert] Thomson was interested in a time 'when everyone was neurotic, disapproving and suspicious and there had to be a gap between your thoughts and your actions. What intrigued me about [Zummo's] sculpture is that it works on different levels. In his plague pieces you see something macabre about mortality and the transience of life, but also something sensual. And that is the way the whole world operated at that time. There is a level of visibility where things were obvious and open. And then there was the hidden life. As in Prohibition America, everything was forbidden, and so anything was possible.'

     The book is packed with arcane information about wax and much else, delivered via Thomson's habitual Rolls-Royce prose. It also builds to a page-turning climax. 'I'm usually fighting my natural page-turning abilities,' he says. 'A lot of people told me that they read The Book of Revelation in a day, which is exactly the sort of thing you'd think a writer is after. But I wanted people to read it slowly. I do build quite a lot into the words and I'm often trying to slow the reader down.' Thomson did allow himself free rein in Secrecy, however. 'I always thought my career would follow a McEwan-like path. Like him, I started off surreal and dark and macabre. But I feel that Secrecy could be read by pretty much anyone and there is no reason why it shouldn't be a mainstream novel.'"
— Nicholas Roe, The Guardian
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Buy all of Rupert Thomson's books here...

The Courage to Hesitate

"Olivia Chow is getting ready to lose Jack Layton for a second time.

     The CBC drama special Jack, the story of their life together and the death of the former NDP leader from cancer in 2011, will air on Sunday, March 10 at 8 p.m.
     Chow hasn’t seen it yet, but she knows the time is coming soon.[…]
     The truth is that it can’t be easy for her to relive those emotionally charged months in 2011 when her husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer, fought it while bringing the NDP to major victory, then succumbed to another cancer in a matter of months, dying at his moment of greatest political triumph.
     'I wanted Jack’s story to inspire more people to get involved and try to make the world a better place,' is how she explains her reason for allowing this film to be made so close to the actual events."
— Richard Ouzounian, The Record
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I find it rather disturbing to that the CBC has taken upon itself to produce the drama special "Jack" about the former leader of the NDP Jack Layton so close to his passing.
     The story, of course, is hard to resist; it holds all the components of great drama: a man struggling with terminal illness as he tackles the most important political contest of his life. But it seems a bit inappropriate and gratuitous: an exploitation of a grieving process that is still ongoing, not only for his close family and friends, but also for the public at large.
     Most endeavours of this kind — the recent Spielberg movie "Lincoln" comes to mind — allow the perspective of history to guide the narrative. If the producers had waited ten years or even longer to approach this subject I'm sure it would have taken on the weight (and value) of a vintage Bordeaux rather than the immediate, fruity, gratification of a Beaujolais nouveau.
     There are so many Canadian stories to dramatize: what about a series based on Alice Monro stories? Has anyone made a decent movie about Ernest Hemingway's time in Toronto?
     A movie about world-famous contralto Portia White? John McCrea (author of "In Flanders Fields")?
     Or Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, the man responsible (in part) for Winnie the Pooh?

From: Jetset Marketplace

"Christopher Milne {A. A. Milne's son] had named his toy bear after Winnie, a Canadian black bear which he often saw at London Zoo, and 'Pooh,' a swan they had met while on holiday. The bear cub was purchased from a hunter for $20 by Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn in White River, Ontario, Canada, while en route to England during the First World War. He named the bear "Winnie" after his adopted hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba. "Winnie" was surreptitiously brought to England with her owner, and gained unofficial recognition as The Fort Garry Horse regimental mascot. Colebourn left Winnie at the London Zoo while he and his unit were in France; after the war she was officially donated to the zoo, as she had become a much loved attraction there."
— Wikipedia
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Caveat Scriptor

From: Wikipedia

"Writer beware. According to an email from the Science Fiction Writers of America, Random House has launched an imprint called "Hydra" with all the hallmarks of a sleazy, scammy vanity-press: no advance on royalties, perpetual, all-rights assignments of copyrights, and all production expenses charged to the writer before any royalties are paid."

— Cory Doctorow, bOING bOING
Read more here…
here...
and here...

Faulkner's Litmus Test

Faulkner's map og Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi
(From: U. of Michigan Library via Hub Pages)

"I write. It is what I have always done, searching for what Robert Frost called 'a momentary stay against confusion.'

     But I want more than just wisdom — every writer does, outside the most hopeless of naïfs. Like most of my fellow scribes, I also yearn for fame, greatness and immortality, preferably in that order. Allow me to be immodest: I would like to write the best thing about Brooklyn since William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice and a campus novel to rival Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I would also like to write a play and perhaps some poetry, if there is time.
     Let me go further: If you do not want your own version of the above, if you are indeed a reasonable and/or responsible young man or woman, then literature is not for you. If you have a compelling personal story to tell, tell it to a therapist. An MBA will do you far more good than an MFA. Pursue writing only if you are pathologically unable to pursue anything else. Otherwise, consider advertising." — Alexander Nazaryan, Salon
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