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| Jane Events | | AWP Conference February 29-March 3, 2012
Sept. 20-22, 2012 Annual Retreat St. Augustine, FL
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| Greetings!
This year we've had the honor of announcing the winners of two contests, once again retreated in the mild climes of St. Augustine, connected with authors for Talk Shoe BookChats about their publications and their thoughts on writing, and published our own works like JSPF's chapbook Bridges and Borders: voices of immigrant women, Susanna Lang's Two by Two, and Georgia Ann Banks-Martin's Rhapsody for Lessons Learned or Remembered. Equally exciting, Jane's have stepped up to the plate signing contracts: This year Anne Martin Fletcher agented her memoir Groundbreaker which tells of her experience as one of the first women to graduate from the United States Air Force Academy and Christine Swanberg's The Alleluia Tree which will be released by Puddin'head Press in January. 2011 has been a rich and rewarding year.
Look for JSPF at the AWP Conference in Chicago February 29-March 3rd. Christine Swanberg, Georgia Ann Martin Banks have already promised to join us at Jane's table for old fashioned autographing sessions.
We had so much fun this year (see photos and memories on our website), you must save September 20-22, 2012 for Jane's next annual retreat in St. Augustine, Florida. After Thursday night's Reception, well have more inspiring workshops and a few surprises on Friday and Saturday. Sunday your board will hold it's annual meeting. Hope we'll see you there! Our upcoming anthology will continue the Bridges and Borders theme. Our contest winners will constitute the acorn from which this oak will grow. Watch your email for the upcoming submission call.
Another event to watch for: after the new year, we will be sending out questionnaires about the new online critique circles. We'd like you to tell us what you want. The new circles will meet at regular intervals for a prescribed length of time. At the end of that period, each group will decide what to do next. In the meantime, our Publishing Poets circle is open for members. Contact us for information.
Jane's Board wishes you the happiest of holidays and asks what can we do to support your bid for publication.
Keep writing!
Judy
Secretary |
Jane Stories Press Foundation
2011 Nonfiction Prize
First Place ($200) went to Bonnie J. Morris' Israel: Devouring the Darling Plagues. Dr. Morris is a women's history professor at George Washington University and the author of eight books, including three Lambda Literary Award finalists--most recently for the teaching memoir Revenge of the Women's Studies Professor. Her next book, due out in spring is Women's History for Beginners. She will be lecturing on an Olivia Cruise in June. Read Israel: Devouring the Darling Plagues at Jane's website and check out Bonnie's website.
Second Place ($50) went to Sheryl Clough's Shaped by Cedar. Ms. Clough of Clinton, Washington holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She taught literature and composition at UAF and Seattle's Highline College, and taught three summer terms for Alaska Native youth in the Upward Bound and Della Keats programs in Alaska. She is widely published in journals and magazines, with credits in poetry, creative nonfiction, essays, interviews and travel writing; and is a Founders Circle member of Soundings Review and 2010 winner of the William Stafford award from Washington Poets Association. Read Shaped by Cedar at our website and follow Sheryl's blog at Blogspot.
Nancy Penrose's Translating Lebanon took Third Place ($25). Ms Penrose of Seattle, Washington writes to explore the territories where cultures converge. Her writing has appeared in publications that include Memoir (and), Passager, Transitions Abroad, Marco Polo Arts Magazine, and Carpe Articulum Literary Review, and in essay collections published by Travelers' Tales. Read Translating Lebanon at our website and check Nancy's her website.
Our deepest thanks go to final judge Tara Masih author of Where the Dog Star Never Glows, a collection of short stories, and editor of the Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Fiction. Ms. Masih has served on the advisory board for the Robert Frost Foundation, and judges the annual Soul-Making Literary Competition's Intercultural Essay Prize sponsored by the San Francisco branch of the National League of American Pen Women. Ms. Masih will edit a compilation of prizewinning essays from this category of the APW competition to be published by Wyatt-MacKenzie in 2012. Ms Masih's website.
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Jane's Stories Retreat
September 20-23, 2012
After Thursday night's Reception, we'll have many inspiring workshops and a few surprises on Friday and Saturday. Sunday your board will hold it's annual meeting. Hope we'll see you there! You can watch See Jane Write or Jane's website for further announcements.
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 | | Diana Abu Jaber. |
Book Chats
In 2011, at TalkShoe.com, we conducted Book Chats: with Diane Abu Jaber author of Birds in Paradise and Georgian Ann Banks Martin, author of Rhapsody for Lesson's Learned or Remembered. You can find a review of Ms Abu Jaber's book at NPR online. We apologize for postponing our final BookChat of the year with Angie Chou, author of Quiet As they Come, which follows a family from war torn Vietnam to San Francisco. We hope to reschedule soon. Watch for more next year.Born in Vietnam, Angie Chau has lived in Vietnam, Malaysia, Italy, Spain, Kauai, and in Southern and Northern California. She earned a BA in Southeast Asian Culture and Political Economy (ISF) fro
 | | Angie Chau. |
m the University of California, Berkeley and a Maste r's degree in English with a Creative Writing emphasis from the University of California, Davis, where she was the fiction editor for The Greenbelt Review. She has been awarded a Hedgebrook Residency and a Macondo Foundation Fellowship. In 2009 she won the UC Davis Maurice Prize in Fiction. Look for Linda Mowry's review of Lesson's Learned or Remembered below. You can learn more about Ms Chau and her writing on her website.
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Quiet as They Come by Angie Chou
a review by
Linda Mowry
Each short story in this collectio
n is
powerful but because they all feature members of the same extended fam
ily the reader gets to know the characters more deeply. The family are South
Vietnamese who left when Saigon fell to the communists. They are trying to rebuild their lives in California.
Chou's writing is vivid, pulling the reader into every scene. The characters are real, not stereotypes, and we feel their discouragements, fears, longings, thrills and absurdities as they negotiate cultural misunderstandings, racial discrimination and coming of age within two disparate cultures.
Chou is as effective with what she implies about this family of survivors as with what she tells us explicitly. We must, in the end, reflect on the tragedies that are war's legacy. Those who suffered do not triumph over their trials, but manage to go on, with varying degrees of success, in spite of them.
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