Wednesday 31 August 2016

The Victorian Writer, October-November Submissions

Check out the pitch page of Writers Victoria, for all details of their upcoming themes.

For the next edition, the theme is:             Popular / Genre Fiction

For December - January the theme is:       Beyond the Page.

More details can be found on their website: https://writersvictoria.org.au/node/311




Publishing opportunities and competitions for September:

As more competition notices come to hand the site will be updated and included on our Opportunities & Competitions page.

  • Glen Phillips Poetry Prize 

          CLOSES: October 21st 2016

Sunday 28 August 2016

Josephine Rowe wins the 2016 Jolley Prize

Date:  27 August 2016

From: Progressive PR and Publicity on behalf of Australian Book Review
(03) 9696 6417
arabella@progressivepr.com.au




Image result for josephine rowe photosAt a ceremony during the Melbourne Writers Festival, Australian author Josephine Rowe was named the overall winner of the 2016 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize for her story ‘Glisk’. She receives $7,000.
Josephine Rowe is the author of two short story collections and the novel A Loving, Faithful Animal (2016). Her fiction and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Best Australian Stories, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, and elsewhere. She was a recent recipient of a Stegner Fellowship in fiction from Stanford University. Her story ‘Suitable for a Lampshade’ won the Reader’s Choice Award in the 2010 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize.

www.australianbookreview.com.au

Anthony Lawrence, a New South Wales-based writer, was placed second and receives $2,000 for his story ‘Ash’.

Jonathan Tel, a UK-based writer, was placed third and receives $1,000 for his story ‘The Water Calligrapher’s Women’.

All three stories appear in the August 2016 Fiction issue of Australian Book Review. Three other stories were commended: ‘Help Me Harden My Heart’ by Dom Amerena, ‘Window’ by Cate  Kennedy, and ‘Slut Trouble’ by Beejay Silcox. The commended authors each receive $750 and their stories will  be published by ABR.

This year the prestigious ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize (now worth a total of $12,500) attracted  almost 1,400 entries from thirty-eight countries. The judges were Amy Baillieu (Deputy Editor of ABR) and  authors Maxine Beneba Clarke and David Whish-Wilson.

Further information More information about the Jolley Prize and Australian Book Review can be found on the ABR website.

Jolley Prize winner Josephine Rowe is available for interview and comment. Please contact Progressive PR and Publicity on (03) 9696 6417 or arabella@progressivepr.com.au

ABR gratefully acknowledges Mr Ian Dickson’s generous support for the Jolley Prize.

Wednesday 24 August 2016

New Pages

Check out our new pages.

We have included a calendar, another page where our monthly facilitator Matthew Naqvi will offer his writing tips. To get away from critiquing every week, we wanted to include a challenge or exercise that would stretch every member's ability and improve our spontaneity to be creative. Click over and check out this coming week's challenge on our Writing Exercises page.

Saturday 13 August 2016

SD Harvey Short Story Award


The Australian Crime Writers Association has announced the final shortlist for the 2016 S.D. Harvey Short Story Award. The following list that includes a celebrated novelist a prize-winning essayist, and a trio of outstanding writers. 
  • The Adjustment by Honey Brown
  • Sisters in Red by Joshua Kemp
  • The Caretaker by Jemma Tyley-Miller
  • The Hall Chimp by Robbie Arnott
  • Flesh by Sharon O'Brien
These five stories will fight it out for this year’s first prize of $1500 and second prize of $500. The winning story will be published in the upcoming issue of online arts magazine Kill Your Darlings and all the shortlisted authors will receive a year’s online subscription to KYD.
The S.D. Harvey Short Story Award is an annual competition organised by the Australian Crime Writers Association (ACWA). It is part of the prestigious Ned Kelly Awards, celebrating the very best in Australian crime writing.
The award is named after the late writer, journalist and producer Sandra Harvey, who along with her partner in crime writing, Lindsay Simpson, blazed a trail not only for investigative, true crime writing in Australia, but also for women writers in the industry.
Go across to their website for more information, While you're at it, click on the membership site and fill out to join, or just receive their newsletter.

http://www.austcrimewriters.com/content/announcing-2016-sd-harvey-shortlists

Thursday 11 August 2016

This week's stats

13/08/2016

We are getting visitors to our blogsite Wordsmiths, I have copied and pasted some interesting data that is displayed on the administration side of the site.
This map shows the countries our visitor live in, dark green for the most visits and lighter as the source information deletes. So we have had people from the USA France and Germany drop in. Not bad for a little website that has only been up for a month.


Graph of most popular countries among blog viewers


This graph shows how many hits and when our site has been visited.

Graph of Blogger page views

As we want to grow our site and make it relevant we need more posts on writing and ask more people to share on their social media accounts.

Let's make writing great again.

This week's stats

13/08/2016

We are getting visitors to our blogsite Wordsmiths, I have copied and pasted some interesting data that is displayed on the administration side of the site.
This map shows the countries our visitor live in, dark green for the most visits and lighter as the source information deletes. So we have had people from the USA France and Germany drop in. Not bad for a little website that has only been up for a month.


Graph of most popular countries among blog viewers

City of Melton Word Fest is on this month

If you visited the Melton and Caroline Springs libraries in the last few weeks. I hope you picked up programmes for the writing and reading activities, that the City of Melton has scheduled between the 13th and 24th of August.

This is a wonderful initiative by our library staff to bring interesting speakers, writers and illustrators willing to share their journey as writers. As a Wordsmiths of Melton participant, I believe this event will inspire emerging writers to stick with our craft and encourage us to keep pursuing success in the publishing world.

Find more information by copying this link into your browser.

http://www.melton.vic.gov.au/Out-n-About/Events/Write-On.-Read-On

Hope to see you there.

Terry L Probert


Friday 5 August 2016

Hello Fellow Wordsmiths,

Wednesday was ‘Finish Blog Day’ with Matthew and Terry at the helm, and Tracey, Sonia and me watching on and giving comments and very helpful suggestions. 
Both Julee and Kevin were apologies and of course Kristen is still sitting out for a while.

Well, as far as I can see, it’s finished, now all I have to do is try to navigate the thing. I do hope I manage to get it to work for me. I guess I’ll know soon enough.

Okay, after many trials and tribulations, I'm on the site and writing this. I'm not sure if it will work but I'll give it a go.

Well done to both Terry and Matthew for getting things going. 

Les