Write Night!
@
Bookman's Cafe
AZ Authors Literary Contest
AZ Authors Association Literary Contest and Awards
***Entry Form***
Unpublished Published
Poems Fiction
Short Stories/Essays/Narrative Nonfiction
Novel, Novella Juvenile/Young Adult
Childrens Picture Book
Oldie but Goldie
One Grand Prize of $300
Three First Prizes of $150
Three Second Prizes of $75
Three Third Prizes of $50
Three Fourth Prizes of $25
Eight Best-of-Category Prizes
Unpublished Poetry and Short Story Best of Category will be
Nominated for the Pushcart Prize
All winners will be featured in the 2024 Arizona Authors Literary Magazine. Since it began in 1978, the Arizona Literary Magazine has launched the careers of many authors.
Northern AZ Book Festival
March 31-April 2 of 2023
Creating Effective Critique Groups Workshop
Sunday, April 2, 2023
11 to Noon
Flagstaff Coconino County Public Library
300 West Aspen Avenue
A Panel Presentation/Q&A
with
Barbara Shovers and C. Alex Smith
(FWC Co-Founders)
- How to Form a Group
- Group Models & Guidelines
(928)779-6368 for more information
Book Fest Highlights:
Friday, March 31
3pm: Author Meet and Greet
Downtown Flagstaff Public Library
Saturday, April 1
10am-5pm: Booths & Readings All Day!
Heritage Square
2pm: Spoken Word & Slam Poetry: Roundtable & Preformance
Downtown Flagstaff Public Library
3pm: Literary Editing & Publishing Panel featuring Local Presses
Liminal @ Flagstaff
3pm: Hands-on Bookmaking by Wasted Ink Zine Distro
Heritage Square
5pm: Literary Editing & Publishing Panel featuring Local Presses
Liminal @ Flagstaff
7pm: Sedona Poetry Slam featuring Mary D. Fisher
Theater, Sedona
7pm: Explore Translation
What is your relationship to the land you live on? Share a brief response to be added to a multilingual, community poem hosted by Thousand Languages Project. Responses collected by March 15th will be presented during the Explore Translation with Thousand Languages Panel.
Luminal, Flagstaff
8:30pm: That Needs Work: Humor Writing
Hosted by NAU MFA students
TBD
Sunday, April 2
11am: Create Effective Critique Groups
Hosted by Flagstaff Writers Connection
Downtown Flagstaff Public Library
1pm: Youth Poetry Council
For Younger Writers (14-24 years)
Late for the Train, Flagstaff
Announcing the Deep Editing Series
The Deep Editing Series is Back
Do you have a completed or nearly completed first draft manuscript?
Congratulations!
You're Amazing
Two hundred million Americans (81%) say they want to write a novel or screenplay. But only 10% actually do.
After I finished my first manuscript, I tried to edit it on my own. I moved or changes some of the words, but it didn't feel like the story was getting any better. So I started going to webinars and reading books until ten years later when I finally developed a method for revisions.
In 2019 I gave a year long series of workshops on revision. Since then, many people asked me to repeat the series. But we were in the middle of a pandemic that presented us with something we’d never seen before—Long Covid.
For 2023, I decided to commit the live presentations to video, so I can share them with you safely.
I am offering two ways to enjoy these presentations.
On Your Own each workshop comes with
- on a private website
- several videos you can view when it’s convenient for you
- handouts
- writing exercises.
With a Cohort of Other Writers on my schedule. This option includes
- the private website
- videos
- handouts
- writing exercises. But you also get
- three Ask Me Anything (AMA) internet meetings to go over writing exercises and to meet other writers
We’ll take a top down approach so you don’t waste your time editing words on an entire chapter you end up deleting from the project.
Title
Description
Pre-editing
Everything you need to do BEFORE you dig in to the real editing. Computer programs and apps you might want to consider
- Class starts 1/9/23
- AMA 1/16/23 11:00-12:30pm
- AMA 1/21/23 1:00-2:30 pm
- AMA 1/28/23 10:30 am-12:00 pm
Focusing the Story
Making your MS more manageable and focused by cutting the excess. Writing your synopsis
- Class Starts 2/6/23
- AMA 2/9/23 5:30-7:00 pm
- AMA 2/18/23 1:00-2:30 pm
- AMA 2/25/23 10:30 am-12:00 pm
Series
Working with “series” (motifs), themes, different story structures.
Scenes
Working with scenes/sequels, special scenes, making a ”character driven” scene, linking scenes.
POV
Choosing a POV and a Narrative Distance, causality, and Motivational-Reaction Units.
Tension
Conflict, emotion, pacing, suspense.
Dialogue
Dialogue, attribution, compression.
Setting
All six senses, visceral response, active vs. static, mood.
Action
Movement, goals, body language, subtext.
Thought
Internal monologue, back story, exposition.
Color Analysis
Margie Lawson’s Color analysis, originality, white space
Voice
Darlings, rhetorical devices
Final Polish
Word Searches, backloading, tight writing, cadence, MS conventions, submission
Questions:
C@CAlexSmith.com
(928)779-6368
C. Alex Smith started her writing career as a political blogger on the Daily Kos in 2008. She was invited to be one of three editors on a well-researched weekly blog concerning economics, politics, environmental concerns, medicine, and science. There, she cultivated far left celebrities to guest post on the blog including Robin Upton (host of Unwelcome Guests), Gar Alperovitz (author of Beyond Capitalism), Roger Rothenberger (author of Beyond Plutocracy), and Prof. Richard D. Wolff (Economic Update, The New School in NY). She was also instrumental in getting the blog reposted on several political news sites and maintained the blogs social media presence.
She moved on in 2014 to being the host of Spec Fix Pix, a podcast for fans of Sci Fi, Fantasy and Horror.
After moving back to Arizona in 2018, she became a co-founder of Flagstaff Writers Connection. She continues to work for FWC to maintain their internet presence, host the local Critique Circle and Publishing Club, and to provide occasional workshops and courses on writing and the publishing industry.
Since 2008 she has been writing science fiction and alternate history. She has five complete manuscripts and three partial manuscripts. Two of her manuscripts took second place at the Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest.
Open Submission to Mimbres Press!!
We are so sorry, but we have to
CANCEL OUR SMALL PRESS SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITY
We apologize for any inconvenience.
Free Zoom Webinar & Open Submission
10/15/22
2-3 pm on
with
The Managing Director of
Publishing Demystified
The publishing industry has never been more accessible. That is both good and bad news. With the floodgates open, the role of author, publisher, editor, agent, and publicist have become blurred. And we are inundated with conflicting information and challenges. Yet, more books are being produced and consumed through more platforms than ever before.
Join industry expert Jared Kuritz, as he offers key insights on the state of the publishing industry, the publishing process, and Mimbres Press, with a Q&A to follow. He will also be giving instruction on how to submit your work to Mimbres.
As an academic press, we are a traditional publisher. However, in addition to academic works, Mimbres Press welcomes agented and unagented submissions in the following genres:
- literary fiction
- creative non-fiction
- essays
- memoir
- poetry
- children’s books
- historical fiction
- academic books
We are particularly interested in academic and commercial work with a strong social message, including but not limited to works of history, reportage, biography, anthropology, culture, human rights, and the natural world.
Here are a few things that make Mimbres Press unique:
- We welcome agented and unagented submissions.
- We welcome submissions from both new and previously published authors.
- We pride ourselves on a personalized approach, so you will hear back from us promptly.
- We offer above industry standard royalties.
- We are NOT a vanity publisher and publishing with us costs you nothing!
Mimbres Press is named after the Mimbres people, whose culture thrived between 825 and 1450 CE. The Mimbres people lived in the Mimbres Valley in southern New Mexico, although their territories extended to parts of Arizona in the West and the Rio Grande in the Southeast. The culture is now known particularly for its pottery, which was the inspiration for our logo designed by artist Paul Hotvedt.
Book Release Celebration for "To Travel Well, Travel Light"
Published!
Book Release Celebration
for
Long Time FWC Author
Rev. Mary Coday Edwards
on
Sept. 28, 5:30 to 7 pm
Join Her At18 N. San Francisco St.Flagstaff, AZLight refreshments will be served.
"I served a god that didn’t exist …"
To Travel Well, Travel Light is a story of the joys and pitfalls of living and working abroad for many years with children in tow. Mary, her husband Mike, and their two young sons moved to Peshawar, Pakistan, to help their Afghan friends rebuild their country after the Soviet departure in 1992. A USAID program brought educated young Afghan men to the Midwest to instruct them in public administration. Mary and Mike befriended them through a community friendship program, and these mujahideen persuaded this adventurous family to move to Peshawar.
Mary worked for an Afghan NGO as a consultant for construction projects inside Afghanistan, and Mike administered the Afghan Eye Hospital. Their older and outgoing son finished high school in Peshawar through a university distance-learning program and in the process learned to hang glide, met young people from all over the world, and grew fluent in the Pashtu language. Their younger son learned British English and had to be reminded by his parents that in the US, an eraser is not called a “rubber.”
The cover shows Mary in a chador. She wore that in public to protect her Afghan refugee friends from ultra-conservative Muslims who would punish Muslims who were suspected of consorting with loose Western women. She didn’t know it at the time of their move, but she was also wrapped in the chador of patriarchal, conservative Christianity, a religion that served a nonexistent male god that kept adult women as children. This family lived and worked abroad for 20 years, time enough for Mary to experience how her resistance to this religion found affirmation in wisdom ancient and modern and to rebuild her values with soul-driven goals.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Before becoming an internationally published author, Mary Coday Edwards was a project manager on multi-million dollar construction projects in the US and continued in this field when her family moved to Peshawar, Pakistan, where she was a consultant for post-conflict reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. A trailing spouse, she traveled the world with her family through her husband’s employment with CBM, a nonprofit headquartered in Germany. Her writing skills landed her jobs with international, English daily print newspapers, The Jakarta Post and The News, in Indonesia and Mexico, respectively. With her MA in Environmental Studies from Boston University, her articles and op-ed pieces on local and global environmental issues were published internationally.
The many countries she has lived in—Pakistan, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mexico—provided her with the opportunities to pursue spirituality as expressed through the various worldviews she encountered. Mary took post-graduate studies in theological ethics from the University of South Africa, focusing on Ecological Justice: how to keep both the human species and the natural environment flourishing. Upon returning to the US after living abroad for almost twenty years, she became a nonsectarian spiritual growth facilitator and ordained minister through People House, a center for spiritual and personal growth based in Denver, Colorado. She’s been a regular blogger for People House for six years.
Mary spends her free time pulling invasive weeds from their small plot of shortgrass prairie land in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she lives with her husband and is within easy driving distance to their two adult sons and their families.
Compelling Openings Course
on
the First Page
A Uniquely Formatted Online Course to Create a Compelling Opening
What to Expect:
- Starting 9/14, participants have 12 days to watch instructional videos and do exercises via a private webpage. Participants spruce up or create a dynamic opening for a book, memoir, or short story of up to 300 words.
- By 9/25, opening pages are submitted to C@CAlexSmith.com who will anonymously distribute them to participants via a link.
- By 10/4, participants review other writers’ openings and answer three questions:
- Does it make you want to turn the page and keep reading?
- What hooked you?
- What would have been an even stronger hook?
- Instructor emails summary of participant feedback to each writer prior to 10/9.
- On 10/9, group meets on Zoom from 1-3 p.m. to review and discuss feedback received.
FREE!
Registration Due by 9/14
Limited to 15 participants
Questions:
C@CAlexSmith.com
(928)779-6368
C. Alex Smith started her writing career as a political blogger on the Daily Kos in 2008. She was invited to be one of three editors on a well-researched weekly blog concerning economics, politics, environmental concerns, medicine, and science. There, she cultivated far left celebrities to guest post on the blog including Robin Upton (host of Unwelcome Guests), Gar Alperovitz (author of Beyond Capitalism), Roger Rothenberger (author of Beyond Plutocracy), and Prof. Richard D. Wolff (Economic Update, The New School in NY). She was also instrumental in getting the blog reposted on several political news sites and maintained the blogs social media presence.
She moved on in 2014 to being the host of Spec Fix Pix, a podcast for fans of Sci Fi, Fantasy and Horror.
After moving back to Arizona in 2018, she became a co-founder of Flagstaff Writers Connection. She continues to work for FWC to maintain their internet presence, host the local Critique Circle and Publishing Club, and to provide occasional workshops and courses on writing and the publishing industry.
Since 2008 she has been writing science fiction and alternate history. She has five complete manuscripts and three partial manuscripts. Two of her manuscripts took second place at the Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest.
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