Trigger Warning: This installment is collaborative, and it should not be construed that either author represents or shares Alice Walker’s personal, including anti-Semitic and/or trans-phobic, views.
Happy New Year Friends:
Because writer’s block is censorious but isn’t necessarily interpretive, this issue includes:
A sip…
Alice, Mine is the alias the muse employs with a profound refusal to explain the hanging comma…
A shout out…
Anti-Semitic, controversial, defensive, political, and trans-phobic are a few monikers applied to activist, author, editor, educator, humanist, and poet, Alice Walker.
Most celebrated for penning the epistolary, A Color Purple, and brutally criticized because of its sexual explicitness, and honest depiction of child molestation, domestic violence and LGBTQ+ characters, she also writes children’s books, essays, short- stories, and non-fiction with insightful treatment of “hot button” topics.
A Southerner with the honor of having a work listed each decade since 1990 as one of the American Library Association’s top 100 banned and challenged titles, her literary impact includes having located and properly observed Zora Neale Hurston’s previously unmarked grave.
The youngest of eight and an early learner, she attended Spelman College, completed her undergraduate studies at Sarah Lawrence College, has a bibliography of 30+ works, is a mother and grandmother, and identifies with pacifism, universalism, and spirituality.
Visually impaired because of a childhood accident, she admittedly includes autobiographical dimensions to her stories including, The Temple of My Familiar, the intergenerational, interracial, confusing woven tale of how humans live many lifetimes trying and failing to escape the pain of the past.
The recipient of many fellowships including the Guggenheim (1977), Ingram Merrill Foundation (1967), MacDowell Colony (1967, 1974), Radcliffe Institute (1971), and the first Black woman awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1983), she is a womanist, and her writings teach all marginalized girls and women that “ugly” has a big voice, and the loudest noise(s) cannot silence that simple truth.
A sentence…
Prompts gleaned from The Temple of My Familiar:
“Blue eyes are like money; pay your way in.”
“Artists, he now understood, were simply messengers. On them fell the responsibility for uniting the world.”
“And the depth of the laughter!” The way it seemed to go so far down inside it scaped the inside bottoms of the feet.”
“People are called ‘stars’ not only because they shine – with the glow of self-expression and the satisfaction this brings – but because the qualities to their sparkle, their warmth, their light, but they will be forever distant from us.”
But Fanny Nzingha found the spirit that possessed her first in herself. Then she found the historical personage who exemplified it. It gave her the strange aspect of a trinity – she, the spirit, the historical personage, all sitting across from the table from you at once.”
A few useful tips…
After the manuscript is completed:
Read comparative titles.
Take a break, then self-evaluate.
Read your manuscript and make final edits.
Draft your marketing plan and communications strategy.
Create a list of agents, editors, and publishers you wish to work with.
Use beta readers and open critiques as opportunities to eliminate the unnecessary.
Draft your Submission Packet or indie-publish if maintaining creative control is important.
A few contests/competitions…
Erma Bombeck Writing Competition
Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy & Science Fiction Writers of Colour
Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award
Stacey Doris Memorial Poetry Award
The Hillman Prize for Journalism
Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
The Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers
The TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting
Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Early American History
Write Track Competition for Historical Romance
A few grants/fellowships/retreats/scholarships…
Biographers International Organization Frances “Frank” Rollin Fellowship
The Sidney Hillman Foundation Labor and Workplace Reporting Grants
A few freelance opportunities…
Going is seeking a writer with a personal connection to the lunar New Year.
Matador is seeking pitches from experienced golf writers.
Meridian is accepting pitches about untold stories in tech.
Youth Today welcomes pitches on topics related to youth and young adults in the US.
A few submission opportunities…
34 Orchard is seeking dark and intense fiction and poetry.
Auger Magazine is seeking fantasy fiction and poetry.
Belmont Story Review is seeking fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
Heathen is seeking stories that heavily involve monsters, beasts, the supernatural, or fantastical world-building.
Ride Texas Magazine is open for pitches.
A few sessions & workshops…
January 1st
January 3rd
Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop
January 4th
January 6th
How to Start Writing Your Book Series
January 7th
Ongoing
The Coffee House Writers Group
Creative Writing for Military, Veterans, Caregivers & Spouses
How to Start a Catholic Prayer Journal
Literature and Lapdogs Writing Group
And a final thought…
This installment is a collaborative effort; the featured author and writing prompts were suggested by the very adventurous and globetrotting,
- host of Water in My Bones - subscribe here:It also contains an affiliate link; I earn commissions when you purchase books using that link, or you may please buy me a coffee.
Thanks for reading,
Thank you.
Wow! What a roundup - thank you very much!