Contests Galore!

There are three upcoming competitions for aspiring writers! Play-Makers Spokane, Floating Bridge Press Poetry Chapbook Competition and The Scenes of Life all have approaching deadlines.

Play-Makers Spokane is seeking comedy scripts for Hit & Run V, a staged reading of new plays. If selected, scripts will receive a rehearsed staged reading in Spokane, WA in November, 2011. Script requirements are:

* Ten and 15 minute plays, 20 pages maximum

* Comedies only, please

* Produced OK

* Playwrights of all ages and from any country are welcome to submit, but all plays must be written in English.

* Two play submissions maximum per author

* Solo plays, monologues, musicals, and children's plays are not eligible

* No entry fee, no payment to writers; this is a volunteer event

* Deadline: June 1, 2011

Submission procedure: E-mail a cover letter and script with character breakdown and production history as a Word or PDF document to playmakersspokane@gmail.com. Questions? Contact Hit & Run coordinator Sandra Hosking at sandrahosking@hotmail.com.

The 16th Annual Floating Bridge Press Poetry Chapbook Competition is open for submissions until February 16, 2011. If you are a current resident of Washington State, you may submit a chapbook manuscript of up to 24 pages of poetry with a $12 entry fee. The winner receives $500, a Seattle reading in September, and 15 copies of the prize-winning chapbook. Their books are beautiful, archival-quality, perfect-bound, and collectable.

Floating Bridge Press considers all individual poems for inclusion in their annual journal, Floating Bridge Review.

For complete guidelines and a look at their titles, please visit their website.

Last but not least!!

The Spokane Community College Player's, also known as The Drama Club, will be performing a series of one act plays called The Scenes of Life. They are looking for play submissions that are no longer than 15 minutes long and have no more than five performers. The official deadline is Friday, January 14th, 2011. Final decisions will be made January 21st and the performance will be March 4th. For more information, please contact Adam Sharp

asharp@scc.spokane.edu.

Fishtrap Executive Director Search

What is Fishtrap??

Fishtrap is an an organization in Wallowa County in Northeastern Oregon which advocates, "Promoting clear thinking and good writing in and about the West." They sponsor readings, workshops, classes, conferences, Fellowships and residencies.

The Fishtrap Board recently opened the formal search for their next Executive Director. Please check out their application guidelines and pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested in such a leadership position with one of the oldest literary organizations in the Northwest. The search is open-ended at this point, with no published deadline for applying.

Secondly, they have just published the application guidelines for 2011 Fishtrap Fellowships. The Fishtrap Fellowship program brings emerging writers to their flagship event, Summer Fishtrap, held each July at Wallowa Lake. Scholarships are also available and that information can be found on their website as well. Deadline for Fellowship applications is February 1.

Rock and Sling!

The editors of Rock and Sling believe that all creative work is an act of faith. In keeping with the original vision of Rock and Sling, they wish to continue to be a hallmark of quality writing, embracing broad differences in experience - spiritual, cultural or political. It is their desire to be a forum for writers and artists engaged explicitly or obliquely with the problems, triumphs, heart breaks, ecstasies of faith, and the complicated joys in life. They hope to serve as a forum for an open and vigorous intellectual and artistic discussion, and a meeting place between those elements of our world that oftentimes oppose one another.

Rock and Sling seeks the highest quality work which embraces, wrestles with, argues with, celebrates and brushes against our ideas of faith, whether it is on the cultural or spiritual level. The journal's founders stated, "an accepted Rock and Sling submission may not even make explicit reference to Christianity, but it will maintain a universal spiritual curiosity." Above all, they desire work which seeks beauty and excellence, in form and in meaning, and explores the boundaries of what we know to be true.

Thom Caraway of Whitworth University is the Editor-in-chief of Rock and Sling.

Veteran's Voices Project 2011

Tincan started at Eastern Washington University in 1994 thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce. This local program uses information technology and interactive media for education and community development. In 1999, Tincan became a nonprofit and shifted focus from equitable access to telecommunications and computer technology to the development of meaningful content that showcases the vibrant community through the online arena. They recently moved to a new local in downtown Spokane that boasts a 32 station media lab and a full video production studio. Among other things, they teach many students about video production and have built an great online history archive filled with regional information.

The Veterans' Voices project seeks to tell the story of the Vietnam War as only those who marched through the harshness of war can explain. Funded by a grant from Humanities Washington, Tincan is collecting oral history interviews with Vietnam Veterans to capture the things they carried with them both physically, mentally and spiritually. This is in celebration of the 2011 Big Read book, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.

Eight high school students from the Spokane area are studying the history of the war and the art of film to create a film to reflect Get Lit! Program's 2011 theme of "Telling the American Story." The students will read The Things They Carried; attend workshops with Whitworth professor Dr. Dale Soden; conduct oral histories with Vietnam Veterans; and create a 10-minute film that will be shown during the Get Lit! Festival when Tim O'Brien will be in town to talk about his work. (Date: April 16, 8pm at the Bing Crosby Theater.)

If you know any Vietnam Veterans who would be interested in sharing their story, please contact Elisha Durrant at elisha@tincan.org or 509.744.0972.

For more information on The Big Read, which runs March 4 to April 17 or the 13th annual Get Lit! Festival, which will take place from April 13-17, click here.