The Musicworks 2011 contest has two parts. One contest is a music contest where participants submit original works in several specified genres including acoustic electric and glitch. The second part is a writing contest: describe your surroundings through sound. The deadline for both is May 16, 2011! Written submissions can only be 500 words. It also costs $20 to enter, but don’t let that stop you!

Subterrain magazine is now accepting submissions for their LUSH Triumphant Literary Awards Competition. Submissions can be fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction pieces. There is a submission fee of $25, but it includes a one-year submission to Subterrain. The average word limit is between 3,000 and 4,000 words. This seems very cool, and I encourage you all to get involved! The deadline is May 15, 2011.

Also, our very own Week of Writing contest will be closing on Monday, April 18, 2011. There are five categories for this contest and they include fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, humor, and op-ed/persuasion. The first place winner is given $125 and the second place winner receives a $25 gift card to the Drexel bookstore. The deadline is almost here, so submit, submit, submit!

Have fun, and prepare for the excitement of spring!

…Now what?

On October 17, 2009, Rosemont College (located in Rosemont, PA, at 1400 Montgomery Avenue) is hosting an all-day writer’s workshop. For a fee of $75 — okay, maybe not a drop in the bucket for the average college student, but hear me out — you gain access to a whole slew of events from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can find the whole schedule in detail here, but for starters, you’ll:

• get breakfast and lunch
• hear published authors speak
• take your manuscript through a round of “speed-dating” with real editors (just like during Drexel’s own Week of Writing — and if you missed it, check out my article)
• breakout sessions including topics like “Finding a Home for your Short Story,” “Polishing your Poetry,” “How to Succeed in Submissions,” “Do I Need a Publicist?” and more.

So get your baby out in the world!

Say what?

(To get the full effect you have to hear the “Say what?” in a drawn-out, falsetto squeal.)

First of all, I’m Irish. That means I’m pale. And that means that I blush like [insert various clichés to your heart's content]. Not only do I have the skin tone of a dead fish before my slight summer freckling comes along to barely mask it (oh boy), I have a voice that’s been compared to Daria’s on more than ten occasions. So I’m basically pretty primed for these reading shenanigans.

But besides the personal awkward factor, it got me thinking. What is it about reading aloud that’s so elusive? You’re good at it, or you’re not. It’s rare to just be able to rattle off a page with good pacing, good breathing, using intonation without lapsing into children’s-show voices à la Lamb Chop… It’s tricky business. An audience member even commented on the reading of a participant in the reading marathon, who had gone up before me. She remarked on the gap in interpretation of an author’s work, between reading it to yourself, with the tone and literal voices set in your mind, and having it interpreted for you. Is reading aloud an art that’s fallen along the wayside?

(That’s mostly rhetorical, don’t stress yourself out.)