Our 2013 writing contest: the winners and finalists!

We’re very pleased to announce the results of our 2013 writing contest on the theme of ‘Air’. All winners and finalists are invited to read their entries at our Awards Night on October 15th 2013 at La Fontana Caffe, 101-3701 Hastings Street, Burnaby, BC, starting at 7 pm. For more information and further updates, join us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BurnabyWritersSociety   --- Kelly Dycavinu, BWS President


1st Place:"Closure 1966" , Julia Van Gorder, Vancouver .  Judge’s note: "Powerful and personal, with precise use of language."

2nd Place: "On Thin Air ",  Caroline Wong, Burnaby , Judge’s note: "A poem-story with a potent and semi-erotic cliffhanger."

3rd Place:" Hurricane Watch",  Clarissa P. Green, Vancouver .  Judge’s note: "Evocative language with the absence of sentimentality."

Honourable Mention: " without regret",  Daniela Elza, Vancouver. Judge’s note: "A poet with remarkable powers. More! "

Honourable Mention : " The Space Between Notes",  M.S. Chapman, White Rock. Judge’s note: "A strong fictional voice. More! "

Finalists

"Stop Vancouver ",  Julia Van Gorder, Vancouver;
"Last Sunday in August",  Julia Van Gorder, Vancouver
"Air Travel",  Jonina Kirton, Vancouver
"The Air Within",  Margo Prentice, New Westminster
"Air of Consequence", Anne Helps, White Rock
"Gosling Faith",  Ruth Hill, Chetwynd
"Air: Particulate Count", Alvin G. Ens, Abbotsford
"On Air," Cindy Dayneswood, Gibsons
"The Scent of Laughter," Lorrie Miller, Vancouver
"Under Pressure",  Erin McNair, Laurie Davidson and Lorrie Miller, Vancouver
"Breath of Air",  Jadzia Prenosil, Burnaby
"Air Born",  Sharron Bertchilde, Nanaimo
"Water child",  Sarah Volpatti, North Vancouver
"Air",  Dorothy Podmore, Surrey
"An Air of Authority",  Valerie Fletcher Adolph, Delta
"The Reading",  Caroline Wong, Burnaby
"HUMSUM",  Abigail Mani, Burnaby
"Chord ",  Caroline Wong, Burnaby
"Spring Drive",  Judy Millar, Nanaimo
"God’s Long Finger ",  Lindsay Glauser Kwan, Vancouver
"The Air That I Breathed ",  Helen Carkner, Gibsons
"The Immigrant ",  Connie Wadge, White Rock
"O2",  Janet Kvammen, Burnaby
"An Air of Peace",  Valerie Fletcher Adolph, Delta

This year’s judge, Linda Svendsen, is a producer, screenwriter, fiction writer, and story editor. Her recent novel, Sussex Drive (2012), is a startlingly funny and deeply satisfying satirical novel that makes the Canadian political scene accessible from the female perspective, behind the scenes at the top of the hill. Her story collection Marine Life (1992) was nominated for the LA Times First Novel Award and produced as a feature film. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, O. Henry Prize Stories and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. She is a Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film, and Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

In honour of its 25th Anniversary, subTerrain Magazine is giving away a Whistler Readers and Writer's Festival Weekend Getaway for Two! Prize includes: 2 passes to the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival;
2 nights accommodation at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler; 2 gift certificates to Whistler’s Southside Diner

Subscribe (or Renew) before October 11th and be entered into the draw. You might just get lucky! http://subterrain.ca/subscriptions

Our September 17th Spoken INK guest reader Daniela Elza

Daniela Elza’s Milk Tooth Bane Bone is a book that sweeps across the reader’s consciousness like a bird’s wing. The poems in this book do something rather miraculous: fragmentary yet narrative, grounded yet mythic, they deconstruct and build simultaneously, forge and empty-out meanings and images. The landscapes and leitmotifs (crows, trees, winter, stories) that accompany us through the book work like refrains in a Wagnerian opera to give us a sense of both the transitory and the unchanged. And these crows are mischievous: shape-shifting their way through the paradoxes of language, personal mythology and poetic ecology, through landscapes and histories that, like the crows themselves, refuse to be tamed. These are poems that live wild alongside and within us; poems that suggest a way to place ourselves within our own mythologies, invite us to articulate our own way of being. With an introduction by Aislinn Hunter.

In 2011 Daniela received her doctorate in Philosophy of Education from SFU and launched her first e-Book, The Book of It. Daniela’s debut poetry collection, the weight of dew, was published in 2012 by Mother Tongue Publishing. She lives in Vancouver BC.

Tuesday, September 17 @ 8 p.m. La Fontana Caffe, 101-3701 East Hastings Street (@ Boundary Rd) Open Mic Sign-up @ 7:30 p.m.
Info: bwscafe@gmail.com

Our Fall workshop meetings

Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. 6450 Deer Lake Avenue, Burnaby

7:30 p.m. 2nd Thursday of each month, Studio 104 *** September 26,  October 10,  November 14 Please note change of date for the September meeting to fourth  Thursday,  due to Arts Centre renovations) info@bws.ca   Drop-in visitors always welcome.

Latest news from our members

Excellent news from long-time Burnaby Writers' Society member Ruth Kozak. Researched extensively in Greece with the help of Classical scholars, the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Society of Macedonian Studies (Thessaloniki), the Finnish Institute in Athens and the Norwegian Institute of Athens, with also research undertaken in the Gennadius Library and the British Library, the epic SHADOW OF THE LION , Ruth's  the first historical novel, will be published by MediaAria CDM in Summer 2014.

Debra Purdy Kong's third Casey Holland mystery, Beneath the Bleak New Moon, will be released September 17th. To start the launch, she’ll be at Word on the Street, Sun., Sept. 29th, and participating in a mystery panel in the library,
"The Scene of the Crime" from 2:50 to 3:50 p.m.  More info. about the book can be found at www.debrapurdykong.com or at TouchWood Editions site, http://www.touchwoodeditions.com/display_author.php?contributor_id=2383 Debra wishes to extend a huge thanks to Eileen Kernaghan and the Kyle Centre Writers’ Group for helping with each and every chapter about three years ago. The work finally paid off!

S.D. Gale marketed three short stories in May: “Bagpipes to Freedom” in 0-Dark-Thirty; “A Gardener by Choice” in The Storyteller; and “Spectacular Leo” in ideagems. All three stories were to be released this summer.

Dragon-Rain and Other Stories, a collection of  Eileen Kernaghan's published SF and fantasy short stories, is now available from amazon sites as a kindle e-book.    Black Bon sorcery in a mythical Himalayan kingdom; a mysterious death at a fashionable London dinner-party; a bleak look at near-future medicine; an apocalyptic North America where the only things left to sell are stones. Here are nine tales of dark fantasy, shamanist rituals, the nineteenth century occult, near-future science and dystopic future worlds. The title story, "Dragon-Rain", appeared in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, ninth annual edition.

 Eileen's poem "Night Journey: West Coast" will appear in the forthcoming Tesseracts 17 anthology from Edge Books.

Congratulations to Bernice Lever, whose poem "Not Wanting an Answer" received Honourable Mention on this year's Federation of BC Writers poetry contest. Bernice's poem will appear in the winter issue of the BC Fed magazine.

Now available at  Smashwords  and  at the Amazon.com  Kindle Store :   Starting a Business and keeping it from the Edge, by John Joyce. This hard hitting book on starting and maintaining a business  is a must read for those preparing to run their own business and a good fun read for those who wish they had.

Dorothy Stott’s third chapbook, The Visitant, has just been published by Beret Days Books (The Ontario Poetry Society). The Visitant, a collection of poems, is dedicated to the ghost of Emily Bronte. “These poems are suffused with melancholy and they evoke cryptic images of mysterious, enigmatic visitors who raise many questions before slipping away… We feel the shadowy presence of the supernatural and we are always seeking to grasp and understand this ghostly element that forever escapes our eyes and our search. This collection of poems is a source of inspiration, displaying all the sensible qualities that most of us would like to possess.” ISBN 978-1-897497-78-4 $10.00

Sandy Hunter was recently interviewed  by Colleen Anderson as a "Woman in Horror" author. You can read the interview on Colleen's blogsite. Sandy's first novel , Elanraigh: The Vow, an epic fantasy, was released by Eternal Press in 2012. Also interviewed as a Woman in Horror author on Colleen Anderson's site: Eileen Kernaghan.

Congratulations to Kelly Dycavinu, whose story “Inanna’s Song” won second prize in the fiction category of the Royal City Literary Arts Society’s recent contest.

Bernice Lever's poem "Dance on the Days" is now a song composed and sung by Enrico Renz. You can hear the audio on  www.canauthorsvancouver.org   Bernice took part in a World Poetry event March 9: a   Celebration of Chinese Poetry and Poets, at the Richmond Cultural Centre, and  on March 23, Sat., 10 am to 4:30 pm, will co-host the Writers International Network 2nd Annual Festival, a day of awards, dance, poetry and music, also at the Richmond Cultural Centre, 7000 Minoru Gate, Richmond, BC.   Both are free events. Bernice is reading poems, "In Word and Dance",  April 5 and 6. 2013, in Bellingham Wash. at 2 locations.  Nine poets were chosen from 100  submissions, some for reading and some for the choreographers to develop dances for this annual event, at the Firehouse  Performing Arts Centre.

On April 3 and 20, at Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall, UBC, Vancouver, Bernice will take part with World Poets in  welcoming visiting poets from China and elsewhere. She'll be reading poetry, April 16, Tuesday, 8 pm, at La Fontana Cafe, 3701 East Hastings, for the Burnaby Writers Society, in celebration of National Poetry Month and on April 21, Sunday,  3 pm, at 'Poetic Justice', in Heritage Grill, Columbia Avenue, New Westminster, BC.

Volunteer opportunity

Love books? Want to get involved in the literary scene? Volunteer at the WORD Vancouver festival, a free community event and the largest celebration of literacy and reading in Western Canada. Held on the last weekend of September at Library Square in beautiful downtown Vancouver, our festival promotes books and authors with exhibits, performances, and hands-on activities for a wide range of ages and interests, all for free. It’s a great way to get practical experience and meet like-minded lovers of literature. Contact Alina Wilson at admin3@rebuscreative.com for more information.