Events: University of Calgary FreeX Conference

“More Please” Creative Writing Showcase

Join us for a night of creative excess!

University of Calgary’s 2012 Free-Exchange Conference “More Please:
Explorations of Excess” kicks off with its annual Creative Night at Pages
Books on Kensington Friday, March 9th at 7pm.

Featuring readings by:
Kellie Chouinard
Alex Gayowsky
Brian Jansen
Michael G. Khmelnitsky
Will Owen

Hosted by:
Jon R. Flieger

All welcome! Wine and refreshments will be served.

Events: Stories Under a Full Moon with Richard Van Camp

The Calgary Distinguished Writers Program invites you to an evening of

Stories Under a Full Moon with Richard Van Camp
Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 7:30 p.m.
in the Gallery Hall of the Taylor Family Digital Library
A book signing and open reception follow the reading.
Admission is free

In celebration of the Full Moon and Aboriginal Awareness Week on the University of Calgary campus, Richard Van Camp, proud member of the Dogrib Nation, storyteller extraordinaire, and the North’s most accomplished literary figure, will share stories and gossip of the North from his many award-winning tales. Van Camp is author of a host of short stories, children’s books, baby books, radio plays, short films, and illustrated comics. Recently named ‘Northerner of the Year’ by Up Here Magazine, Van Camp is also CBC Radio’s Writer-in-Residence for North by Northwest. His first novel, The Lesser Blessed, a coming of age novel of First Nations teens in a NWT town, is currently being made into a movie cast with Hollywood stars.

Richard Van Camp, current Writer-in-Residence at the University of Alberta, comes to Calgary courtesy of the exchange program between the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program and the Department of English at the U of A. Each year, these institutions host the other school’s writer-in-residence for free public events.

For more information contact: cdwp@ucalgary.ca or 403 220 8177, or visit the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program online atwww.calgarywritersprogram.com

Call for Submissions – Political Fiction

Editor Sandra McIntyre with Roseway Publishing (Nova Scotia & Manitoba) is seeking short story submissions for an upcoming anthology of political fiction. “Political” is open to interpretation—stories can be about politics, whether overtly or obliquely, or political by virtue of their stance, voice, point of view, or underpinnings.

Stories should be 4000 words maximum. There is no minimum length. Short graphic fiction is welcome. Simultaneous submissions are okay. Multiple submissions are okay. Submissions of previously published stories are okay. Canadian authors only.

Payment: $100 for “anthology rights” (print and electronic rights).

The deadline for submissions is: June 1, 2012.

Send stories by email to sandra@sandralit.com

Send stories by mail to:
Sandra McIntyre
c/o Roseway Publishing
32 Oceanvista Lane Black Point, NS B0J 1B0

To receive confirmation that your story has been received, please include an email address or a SASE with your submission.

Seeking Submissions – CFPs, Open Calls, and Contests

If you’re looking for venues to submit to, here are a few suggestions for upcoming markets:

Single Onion 91: Lecture Series 2012

The Present of Poetics / The Poetics of the Present
Date: February 9, 2012

This evening at the Auburn (#163 115 9th Ave S.E.) will feature Rita Wong, Rachel Zolf, and Sharron Proulx-Turner, as part of the Single Onion Poetry Reading Series.

Rachel Zolf’s poetic practice explores interrelated materialist questions concerning memory, history, knowledge, subjectivity and the conceptual limits of language and meaning. She is particularly interested in how ethics founders on the shoals of the political. Her fourth full-length book, Neighbour Procedure, was released by Coach House Books in 2010. Previous collections include Human Resources (Coach House, 2007), which won the 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, Shoot & Weep (Nomados, 2008), from Human Resources (Belladonna books, 2005), Masque (The Mercury Press, 2004), finalist for the 2005 Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and Her absence, this wanderer (BuschekBooks, 1999), finalist in the CBC Literary Competition.

An Associate Professor in Critical and Cultural Studies, Rita Wong investigates the relationships between contemporary poetics, social justice, ecology, and decolonization. She is currently researching the poetics of water, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. A recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop Emerging Writer Award, Wong is the author of sybil unrest (Line Books, 2008, with Larissa Lai), forage (Nightwood, short-listed for the Asian American Literary Award for Poetry in 2008 and winner of Canada Reads Poetry 2011), and monkeypuzzle (Press Gang, 1998).

Sharron Proulx-Turner is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta. She’s from Mohawk, Algonquin, Wendat, Ojibwe, Mik’maw, French and Irish ancestry. Her previously published memoir, Where the Rivers Join, written under a pseudonym, was short-listed for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, and her second book, what the auntys say, was shortlisted for the league of Canadian poets’ Gerald Lampert Prize for best first book of poetry.

Call for Artists in Residence: Calgary 2012

Calgary 2012 is putting out a call for Artists in Residence, with an application deadline of January 20. The Artist in Residency (AiR) Program is designed to explore the Calgary 2012 themes of Looking Back, Calgary Now and Looking Forward and connect artists and historians with other aspects of Calgary’s diverse identity such as: commerce, sports, agriculture, science, technology and other urban and suburban experiences. Wherever possible, residencies will take place in unexpected, everyday spaces to engage and delight the public. Residency locations may include: community gathering spaces, places that are part of City-wide celebrations, sporting events and public transportation. Highlights of this program will be presented as part of the Calgary 2012 Closing Symposium in early 2013.

Call for Submissions: Echolocation

Echolocation, the graduate literary journal housed at the University of Toronto, is pleased to announce our Call for Submissions for Issue 12. We invite you to share this call with your department.

Echolocation invites new and established writers to submit their poetry, fiction, drama, creative non-fiction, and visual art. We also welcome interviews with writers, literary criticism and critical essays on any aspect of contemporary writing.

Submission Deadline: February 29, 2012

While we place no restrictions on style or content, we welcome writing that surprises us, and that unabashedly bends the rules of genres and literary traditions. Echolocation accepts only previously unpublished work. We are happy to accept simultaneous submissions, but we ask that you notify us immediately if work is accepted elsewhere. Please send 1-5 poems and fiction/non-fiction under 10 pages. While we do accept longer pieces, shorter ones have a better chance at publication. We do blind readings: please upload your work without your name on the manuscript or file.

Submit with Submishmash:
http://echolocationmag.submishmash.com/submit

More information about Echolocation:
http://echolocationmag.wordpress.com/

We look forward to reading your work!

Sincerely,

Echolocation Editors
University of Toronto

A High Performance First Thursday

Happy New Year, Dandelion readers! It’s not yet a week in to 2012, and already Calgary is off to a great start as the cultural capital of Canada is off to a great start. Check out these events taking place January 5:

Full details at http://www.firstthursdays.ca.

Launches in December

Book Launches

Pages Books & Frontenac House invite you to celebrate In This Place: Calgary 2004 – 2011. Cadence describes In This Place as “the images, both written and graphic, of the themes that define the city Calgary. The overlooked, the feral, the discarded, the unexpected and mysterious. It is about looking backward and forward, inwardly and outwardly, like glimpses through a train window. These images are about the capturing of all the tiny moments and improbablke fragments, all theexuisite little slivers pulled from the stuff of everyday life. They are about the importance of finding beauty, meaning, and mystery in the place you live. These images are about a city that is in the process of transforming itself.”

Photographs by George Webber
Words by Aritha van Herk

When: 7:30, Friday, December 16, 2011
Where: Pages on Kensington, 1135 Kensington Road NW, (403) 283-6655

---

Calgary Launch of OHMHOLE, a novel by Tyler Hayden

Imagine a not-so-distant future in which everyone is HIV positive and, sooner or later, ends up in a state-operated hospice dying of AIDS. In a broken socio-economic order, governments have been reduced to a single function: extending the lives of their citizens with anti-retroviral treatment (ART) drugs. Meanwhile, rumours have coalesced into a widespread belief in the existence of a cure for HIV that is also exchanged through bodily fluids. Sex, casual, friendly or indifferent in all its forms offers a possible cure. Consequently, genders, sexuality and relationships have been altered drastically. Elliott lies in the hospice among the dying, his only remaining purpose: to serve as a subject for sociological and psychological research, research that is conducted via a nano-tech device to which the patient is wired. The device, called a Spade has a twofold purpose: to read and manifest Elliott’s thoughts along with bits of cultural detritus into his room, and to produce a tranquilizing effect on the patient.

Tyler Hayden recently completed an MA in English at the University of Calgary.

When: 7:30, Thursday, December 15
Where: Pages on Kensington

Upcoming Events in December 2011

Readings

On Friday, December 2, join a group of emerging fiction voices from the University of Calgary. Five PhD students from the University of Calgary’s Creative Writing program will read from their decidedly awkward fiction. Join us for wine, cheese, and open-mouthed sobbing! Open to the public, all welcome.

Rod Moody-Corbett
Carly Stewart
Brian Jansen
Hollie Adams
Jon R. Flieger

Where: Judith Sloman Reading Room (Social Sciences Tower 1114)
When: 3 PM, Friday December 2

Exhibits

On December 2, join Ferdinando Spina for his opening, “Sounds I Have Seen, Visions I Have Heard.” A local artist, Fred Spina lives a life of balance – Balance between his career as a social worker helping abused children; his passion for art which is manifested by sculpting, painting and poetry writing; and his family life. Fred has been an artist in Calgary for nearly 20 years. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and has works in many public and private collections. The Vorpal Gallery in New York and San Francisco represents Fred’s works.

Where: Art Point Gallery, 1139 11th Street SE, Inglewood, Calgary
When: 5 – 9 PM, December 2

Invitations To Submit

!? Press invites submissions from Calgary poets:

“Calgary has a great poetry scene, and ?! Press would like to celebrate it with a poetry chapbook! If you write in/about/around Calgary, or if you used to, or will be doing so in the near future, send a submission of no more than 5 pages with contact info and a short bio to magyarazni @ gmail.com by December 1, 2011.

“The chapbook will either be print or online, depending on how things shake out and what kind of submissions are received, and will appear by March 2012. Previously published material and simultaneous submissions are welcome, so long as it’s okay with your other publisher. Interpret ‘poetry’ as loosely as you like. Submissions don’t have to be about Calgary, so long as you’ve had some connection to the city in some way at some point, or the work can be about Calgary if you aren’t connected to the city. Tell your friends/enemies/students/random people you meet on the C-Train, and happy poeting!”

Deadline: December 1