Boomshakalaka, Boomshakalaka Here We Go...
LITFRIENDS Newsletter#1
This is the online version of our newsletter from Jack Walker Press, Amy Lou Jenkins, and FirstPerson Writing
LITFRIENDS*, I’m convinced, more than ever, that this divisive world needs your words and stories. So, I’ve retired from college teaching, and I’m here to support your literature–your words and stories. We need to nudge the world in a better direction.
You once signed up for emails through an Amy Lou Jenkins workshop, Jack Walker Press, or AmyLouJenkins.com contact. And that is how you ended up receiving this email. Please give me time to get my footing as I take on this new venture to support stories and voices. Stories, I believe, can shift the world. By the way, Jane Goodall believes in the power of story to change the world too! Hear her on the subject→.
I’m developing courses and workshops to support your true storytelling. Our primary focus is narrative nonfiction, memoir, essay, opinion, reviews, and mixed-genre work. We will also be publishing another anthology after our courses and workshops are launched and beta tested. Let’s achieve our writing goals and set even grander goals.
–Amy Lou Jenkins
Share Your #WriterNews on our FB page. Go there.
1. #WriterNews (Subscribers can list their news on our FB page and we promote it in our newsletter and website. ) Share the news widely so we can support each other.
- Sarah Capdeville won the 2022 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize. The University of New Mexico Press will publish her manuscript, ‘Aligning the Glacier’s Ghost’ in the spring of 2024. She also receives a $1,000 honorarium.
- Dawn Coggers’ new memoir ‘Womb to Tomb to Womb’ is published by Austin Macauley Publisher in London. It is available in paperback, audiobook, and eBook, from amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and others. So excited for Dawn and thanks for the shout-out in the book to moi.
2. #CallsForSubmissions
These Markets Want Your Work
- Solstice Magazine; Awards $500 prizes in many genres, uses high-quality judges, and charges a submission fee. Deadline. June 1, 2023. Details.
- The Upper New Review is a new lit mag, now open for submissions in multiple genres. (Hint, new mags are more likely to look at your work) Guidelines.
- PEN America’s PEN/Jean Stein Grants for Literary Oral History offers a Cash Prize: $15,000 with no submission fee in genres of Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction. Deadline: June 1, 2023, Details.
3. #WritingArticles +
- Worried about how your family will react if/when you write a memoir? Do they remember things differently? Don’t want to hurt anyone, but want to tell the truth? Read: What if Your Family Doesn't Want you to Write your Memoir?
- Four great minutes from the late and wise Barry Lopez on storytelling.
4. #BookReview
‘Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside, ‘ by Nick Offerman, Dutton, 2021, 352 pages.
Ralph Waldo Emerson may have a cheeky younger brother–167 years younger. Nick Offerman has enlarged the American canon of walking essays as he hikes, farms, and road trips across the country in an Airstream trailer. These “walking” essays explore history, science, relationships, wilderness, agrarianism, and family dynamics. He doesn’t skirt divisive subjects. He writes with the thoughtful analysis of a reader, thinker, and dry humorist. Read the full review.
End Notes
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Thanks to Sly & The Family Stone–‘ I Want to Take You Higher’ for the inspirational word Boomshakalaka! Love the energy in that word--makes me want to go write something bold.
Thanks for reading our first LITFRIENDS* newsletter from AmyLouJenkins.com and JackWalkerPress.com.
*Literary Insights to Fuel Revolutionary Expressions, Narratives, and Discourse
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