Announcing Our Next Open Book Prompt
Some of you participated in our Final Moments prompt last summer. We truly appreciated your involvement–the outpouring of heartfelt accounts was overwhelming. We were moved by so many pieces, but ultimately decided against publishing them on our website. It didn’t exactly fit our idea for Open Book, which we want to use as a free means of publishing and sharing with our Passager community. We felt the pieces, though raw and beautiful, were too emotionally charged for our first electronic publication. To those of you who submitted, thank you, and know that your pieces touched us.
But after much deliberation on the future of Open Book, we are excited to announce our next prompt- What The Flesh Is Heir To. In anticipation of the release of our newest book of poetry, Hot Flash Sonnets, by Moira Egan, we are printing one of her poems on Open Book. We encourage you to write a response to the poem. It can be another poem, a story, an anecdote, art, etc. A few of our favorites will be published online on Open Book!
Submissions must be emailed to editors@passagerbooks.com with the subject line “What the Flesh Is Heir To.” Submissions sent as email attachments must use .doc, .pdf, or .jpeg files. There is no word count limitation, though we advise you to keep prose to a length under 2,000 words. The deadline is June 1, 2013.
Click here to visit the Passager Open Book page.
Happy writing, and be sure to spread the word to your friends and writing groups!
upcoming events plus fun news from mychael
Greetings again, folks.
I have some things to bring to y’alls attention.
Firstly, please do not forget about Passager’s Poetry Contest! The deadline is a week away (submissions must be postmarked by April 15), so there’s still plenty of time to submit.
Information and guidelines for the contest can be found HERE. We’re looking forward to reading everyone’s wonderful poetry.
Secondly, for anyone in and around Baltimore, tis the season for CityLit Festival! Join us this Saturday (April 13) from 10-5 at the Enoch Pratt Library on Cathedral. Kendra and I will be in the first floor lobby manning the Passager and UB MFA tables, respectively. Passager will have books and the newest issue for sale, so please stop and pick something up…or just stop by to chat. We enjoy chatting like you wouldn’t believe.
Thirdly, I have some fantastic personal news. Thanks to UB’s Travel and Research Grant, I’ll be attending this year’s Haiku North America Conference! The conference runs from August 14-18 and will be held on the beautiful Queen Mary cruise ship in Long Beach.
If anyone will be in the area or is planning on going, please do not hesitate to find me during the con. I’ll be the guy who is overly excited and possibly sporting a topknot.
Poetry Contest Deadline April 15!
Hello all! I hope everyone is having a great April first, with weather as good as we have here in Baltimore.We just want to remind everyone:
The DEADLINE for the Passager POETRY CONTEST is in TWO WEEKS: APRIL 15!
Don’t forget to submit!
(We had a great time at AWP, met some of you for the first time, and got to say hello to old friends. If you came to our table and wanted to buy some Passager books but had too much to carry, or ran out of money…..you can still get the AWP discount, as promised.)
Online Submissions? Pros and Cons
We have been increasingly feeling pressure to move to online submissions. The problem is that we don’t want to read submissions online, and are fairly certain that we won’t make the best decisions. We can give a different kind of attention to words on paper. Aside from that, we love the beautiful cover letters we receive, some handwritten.
We’d be interested in hearing your thoughts. Is it becoming a hardship to send things through the mail?
Leave your comments, please!
Vermont’s Poet Laureate Gives Jean Connor a Glowing Review!
Here at Passager, we love Jean Connor. She’s kind of our patron saint, our leading lady. She definitely epitomizes Passager’s goal of cultivating creativity throughout the lifetime, and, at 94, she is an inspiration to us all. She’s always on the go, too–(see the post about her poems being set to music by one of Vermont’s leading composers).
When we received word that she was being reviewed by Vermont’s Poet Laureate, Sydney Lea, for five Vermont newspapers, we were thrilled. It just seemed the next logical step for a poetry powerhouse like Jean. Lea wrote a beautiful, moving review of her first book, A Cartography of Peace, and calls her a “miracle…” He says, “her deep strength as a poet resides to no small degree in her quietness, her gift for contemplation, her utter lack of presumption. Hers is not a poetry of razzmatazz. It may be refreshingly accessible on first reading, but in order to capture its full resonance, the reader must take on the quietude of mind that is a hallmark of her work.”
Be sure to check out the review, order the book, and read some of her poems on our site.
To read the full review, visit Sydney Lea’s blog by clicking here.
