Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Big Changes are afoot at Cirque – A literary journal for the North Pacific Rim.  We are pleased to share these latest updates straight from current editors Mike Burwell & Sandra Kleven, cirquejournal@yahoo.com
A New Editor: Between Issue #5 (Winter Solstice December 2011) and Issue #6 (Summer Solstice, June 2012) many changes have come down in the house of Cirque. Editor Mike Burwell has moved out of the Pacific Rim to Santa Fe. With the move, he has decided to gradually step away from Cirque in order to put more time into his own poetry. Poet & essayist Sandra Kleven of Anchorage has stepped up to take the reins of Cirque, and for the next few issues the editing of Cirque will be a collaborative Kleven/Burwell effort. Sandra Kleven is interested in building a reading staff, so if you are interested in screening submissions for poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, plays or doing book reviews and writer interviews contact her at cirquejournal@yahoo.com
No More Hard Copies: Another big change is the decision to discontinue giving hard copies as payment to those published in Cirque’s pages. Providing hard copies to authors doubles the cost of each issue of Cirque and we hope this will not deter writers from submitting their work. Current and past issues will continue to be live full-text on-line and free on Cirque’s website at www.cirquejournal.com and for sale print-on-demand at MagCloud at http://www.magcloud.com/browse/magazine/54110. What this means is that your work is forever viewable on line and for sale in hard copy. You never go out of print! This change will go a long way to further guarantee Cirque’s long life.
Stay tuned for Issue #6 (forthcoming June 21) and don’t forget the September 21, 2012 deadline for Issue #7, Winter Solstice 2012. Keep those high quality submissions coming!

This is the final call for proposals for the 49 Writers fall workshop season – we are accepting proposals through Friday, June 1, 2012 for our workshops that begin in September and run through November. While our course offering are flexible, they generally fall into one of three categories: Elements courses that are 6 to 8 hours long; genre-based workshops that typically run 12 to 15 hours; and special topics that can be covered in a single session of 2 or 3 hours. In Anchorage, we’re likely to schedule two in each category per term, leaving room to add a course or two with visiting writers if the opportunity arises. Click here for more information about how to submit a proposal. 

We mentioned a while back that Craig Public Library was organizing a statewide Pitchapalooza event with literary agents Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry (The Book Doctors) http://www.thebookdoctors.com/ via video conference, using the newly available Alaska OWL Project in public libraries. We are happy to announce that you can now sign up online here for the event and for email updates.  The three Alaska Statewide Pitchapalooza events will take place on Thursday, August 16 at 7pm, Friday, August 17 at 3pm, and Saturday, August 18 at 2pm.

This weekend, Saturday May 26 through Monday, May 28, there will be a Wilderness Writers Workshop in Hope. See http://alaskawritersguild.com for more information.

On Sunday, May 27, 2pm, JR Anchta presents “Embedded in Afghanistan” at the Kettleson Memorial Library, Sitka.

A heads-up: on Monday, June 11, 2pm, Nobel Prize recipient Brian Schmidt presents Surveying my life: Journeys from Alaska and the Southern Sky. He will discuss his connections to Alaska, the importance of education, and his research in astronomy. UAA Campus Bookstore, 3211 Providence Dr., Anchorage. More information: contact Rachel Epstein or (907) 786 4782.

As part of their special exhibit, Art in the Making, the University of Alaska Museum of the North is trying to reach Fairbanks-area artists to put them on the map. They’re asking artists to take a survey and tell where they write, dance, make music, practice painting, photography, theater, and more. This is not a scientific survey, but is aimed at covering a city map with lots of colored dots–artists making art. Please click here for the survey. The exhibit and map will be on display through December 1, 2012.

Andromeda recommends this Slate article about authors and other creatives who return repeatedly to the same themes. The top example used was our own David Vann and his latest novel, Dirt
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