I was honoured to be chosen as a reader for the Canada Writes creative nonfiction competition for 2013. Over the winter months, I sifted through hundreds of submissions that arrived at my door every few days in fat yellow envelopes. Now, at long last, the shortlist and winner have been announced.
Last week, I talked to Anne Malcolm, host of The Monday Morning After at CKUT Radio in Montreal, about creative nonfiction in general and about being a Canada Writes reader in particular. Even though I have a bit of a phobia of hearing to audio of myself, I took the plunge and sat down to take a listen to the interview and decided it wasn’t so bad.
I recently had a conversation with a friend who had been passed over for a job — leading a creative writing workshop — because she “hadn’t won enough contests.” Eventually, the decision was reversed and my friend, who is a very fine writer and charismatic teacher, got her chance to make a few bucks and gain some experience. But her story — i.e., the fact that she’d been judged on her success rate in the world of writing competitions — made me bristle.
I believe a great many writing competitions stand on very shaky ethical ground. When run by journals, most include a contest submission fee. By paying the submission fee, a writer gets a “free” subscription to the journal for a year. Obviously, what we have here is a veiled subscription drive.
Some time ago, I received a call for submissions that included a stipulation that a minimum “donation” (read: “fee”) had to accompany texts. IF enough money were raised, submissions MIGHT be published in an upcoming anthology (that the prospective writers themselves were funding). But if the writers were bad donors and didn’t give enough money to pay their own way to possible publication, they would be punished: no anthology.
Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this scenario?
Increasingly we hear about writers not being paid for their work. There are boycotts and open letters exposing the exploitative practices of big online publications. It’s bad enough not to be paid for the work you publish, but to pay for the privilege of MAYBE being published? Isn’t that even worse?
I will admit to publishing work for which I’ve been paid peanuts or nothing at all. I do this because I’m building a profile and because I want homes and a life for my work. I also believe in the idea of creating literary community and conversation. I won’t, however, pay for the possibility of publication. In other words, I won’t pay to submit a piece or publish a piece.
We’ve long been warned off agents who require fees to read our work. Shouldn’t the same principle apply for submissions to journals, anthologies, and perhaps even contests?
Tell me what you think. What do you make of fees to submit?
Stranger than Fiction: The Creative Nonfiction Cabaret
An evening of lightning readings by authors both local and from away
With readings by:
Taras Grescoe, Julija Šukys, David Waltner-Toews, Kitty Hoffman, Maria
Turner, Susan Olding, Jane Silcott, Mark Abley, Merrily Weisbord, and
Myrl Coulter
Co-sponsored by the Creative Nonfiction Collective and the QuebecWriters’ Federation
Come for the door prizes (books!); stay for the readings.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Doors open at 6:00 pm. Come for a bite and to socialize before the readings start! $5.00 entrance
Café Mariposa
5434 Côte St-Luc Rd
Montreal, QC
H3X 2C5
(514) 439-3190
I’m so happy to announce that Epistolophilia has won the 2013 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Literature.
Here’s the jury citiation:
HOLOCAUST LITERATURE
Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė
By Julija Šukys Published by University of Nebraska Press
Epistolophilia presents a new type of reading of Holocaust texts. Julija Šukys, a young Montreal-based scholar, tells the story of a genuine heroine of the Holocaust recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous. Time and again Ona Šimaitė would slip into the Vilna ghetto to bring in food, clothes, medicine, money, and counterfeit documents and leave with letters, manuscripts, and even sedated children swathed in sacks. In 1944 she was captured by the Gestapo, tortured, and deported to Dachau.
Julija Šukys sifted through mounds of letters and diaries to paint a portrait of a remarkable life. Šukys injects herself into the book, writing about her more than eight year journey researching and writing the book, discovering Šimaitė and the emotional connection that comes through a link to the past.
The official reception and awards ceremony:
Thursday, June 6, 8 PM | FREE
The Bram and Bluma Appel Salon
at the Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St., Toronto
OMNIBUS 2012-3 CANADIAN AUTHORS SERIES EVENT, MONDAY, APRIL 29, 5 P.M.
GERALD HILL. CASSIE STOCKS. JULIJA ŠUKYS.
UPPER CRUST CAFE, SOUTH EDMONTON. 10909-86 AVE.
Gerald Hill is the author of Fourteen Tractors (NeWest Press, 2009), for which he won the 2009 Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry. He has published four other collections of poetry: My Human Comedy (Coteau Books, 2008), Getting To Know You (Spotted Cow Press, 2003), The ManFrom Saskatchewan (Coteau Press, 2001), and Heartwood (Thistledown Press, 1985). He lives in Regina, where he teaches English and Creative Writing at Luther College at the University of Regina.
MacEwan University grad Cassie Stocks has just been awarded the 2013 Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for her first novel Dance, Gladys,Dance. She lives in Eston, Saskatchewan.
Narrative nonfiction writer and biographer Julija Šukys is the author of Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė (University of Nebraska Press, 2012). Šukys follows the letters and journals of Šimaitė (1894–1970), a Lithuanian librarian who for several years aided Jews in the Vilnius ghetto during German occupation. Eventually, her activities were detected by the Gestapo and Šimaitė was sent to Dachau. Journeying through thousands of letters, scores of diaries, articles, and press clippings, Šukys negotiates with the ghost of Šimaitė, beckoning back to life this quiet and worldly heroine—a giant of Holocaust history (one of Yad Vashem’s honoured “Righteous Among the Nations”). The result is at once a mediated self-portrait and a measured perspective on a remarkable life. It reveals the meaning of life-writing, how women write their lives publicly and privately, and how their words attach them—and us—to life. Šukys is also the author of Silence Is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout (University of Nebraska Press, 2007). She lives in Montreal.
Reading at The Bookworm in Omaha. Photo: Algis Praitis.
Lately, I’ve been away from home a lot. And it’s all been in service of my book, Epistolophilia.
My “book tour” — as my sister-in-law so generously called the series of lectures, conferences and readings that I almost single-handedly organized and raised money for — has, since November, taken me from Toronto to Chicago to NYC, Washington DC, Worcester, Mass., then Missouri, Nebraska, Boston (twice!), and a few different venues here in Montreal.
Along the way, I’ve been greeted with heart-warming generosity and support. I’ve met readers who loved the book and wanted their copies signed, librarians and archivists who thanked me for giving them a hero, survivors and their children, young university students who were sweetly nervous to talk to me, and many colleagues and new friends who gave selflessly of their time to make my visits run smoothly.
Talking to readers and signing books at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Photo: John Nollendorfs.
Highlights included wine and cheese at a little NYC bistro with a French-Litvak documentary film maker, meeting a writer-researcher in Worcester whose book has been helpful to me in my current work, dinner with 7 feminist scholars after a reading at Assumption College, and witnessing the machine that my Nebraska friend Gediminas Murauskas (below) set in motion — namely, a whirlwind series of readings and meetings in Lincoln and Omaha that made me feel like some sort of rock star.
With Gediminas Murauskas at Creighton University, Omaha. Photo: Algis Praitis.
Last of all, there was the frenzied embarrassment of riches that is the AWP Conference — a meeting of 12,000 writers — held in Boston this year. I met essayists I’ve been corresponding with for a while and whose work I love, discovered new (to me) authors and books, listened to stimulating panels about CNF and memoir, and witnessed big-name writers read and talk about their work in a way that was familiar and friendly (Augusten Burroughs, Cheryl Strayed, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heeney, Phillip Lopate, David Shields, Pam Houston, Roxanne Gay…and on and on). There were dinners and lunches to share with writer friends, wine glasses to clink, and much to learn.
Along the way, my son and husband have been forgiving of my absences. We all understand that this is temporary, but that supporting a book and meeting with readers is part of the job of a writer.
At The Bookworm in Omaha. Looking especially tired beside the publicity materials. Photo: Gediminas Murauskas.
So, what did I learn about “touring” a book? Here are seven things, off the top of my head. If I come up with more, I’ll share those in the days to come.
Consider all invitations seriously, even those from smaller and less glamorous places. Readers are readers, and if they are reading your book, be gracious. Don’t be a snob.
Don’t go broke for the tour. I applied for grants to attend conferences and tapped into local funds available to support the arts. Embassies and universities can be good sources of funding. Sometimes all you need to do is ask.
Arrange to have books for selling/signing sent ahead to wherever you are reading. This avoids shlepping 30 pounds of paper onto a plane.
Pace yourself. The process is both exhilarating and exhausting. Don’t underestimate how tiring it is for an introvert to be “on” for several hours. Give yourself time to recover so your mood doesn’t turn nasty.
Try developing 3 or so versions of a talk, so that you can pick the most appropriate one, depending on the venue and audience.
Photographs and other visual materials are very effective at literary talks. Travel with a data stick and arrange technology in advance, but be flexible enough to go without visuals at the last minute in case you hit a technical snag.
Don’t punish those who came. Some of your events will hugely attended and others might be tiny meetings. Do what every writer on a book tour tells you to do: read and speak as if the room were full, even if there are only 7 people present, including you.
Reading at the huge auditorium at Creighton University, Omaha. It was a great turnout. Photo: Algis Praitis.
OK, so as authors we are told constantly that we have to market our own books. The publishing industry, for better or worse, has largely washed its hands of promotion, except for the lucky and most commercial few. The rest of us are largely on our own.
Authors must have a website (check), keep a blog (check), have a Twitter account (yup), and a Facebook page (uh-huh), and use them regularly. Some writers have mailing lists, guest blog, write op eds and so on, all in service of selling more copies. It’s a big job and very time-consuming. If done well, it’s breathtaking to watch. If done clumsily, the result is painful to behold.
Promoting a finished book can take over your life to such an extent that there’s little room left to dream up, research, or write a new one. This seems problematic to me. After all, if we’re not writing, then what’s the point?
So, I’ve been wondering: how much flogging is too much?
It’s a question I’ve been thinking about increasingly as my inbox is clogged again and again by the newsletter (one I never subscribed to) of an author who has made it his full-time job to promote a newish book (actually, it’s over a year old). And each time the newsletter arrives, announcing a new lecture, reading, or reminding me what a good gift the book would make for whatever occasion, I find myself a little more irritated than the last. Annoying readers can’t be a good marketing strategy. The fact is, I own the book and I’ve read it, so why am I being bombarded with pitch after pitch? When is enough enough? And how can an author avoid going over the same old territory again and again?
As part of Canada Reads, Coach House Books posted what I think is good advice on how authors can use social media more effectively than the above-mentioned author has:
Also important to remember: not only are you a human being, but so are your readers. Many of those readers are fellow authors, artists, and all-round smart people. They are not just buyers or cash cows or vehicles for gushing blurbs that pop up on Amazon. They are the reason you rewrite a sentence 12 times and the community for whom you stay in the library until closing. Talk to them. Listen to them. Don’t just bombard them with junk mail.
Runner-up (if applicable) will be considered for publication
Judge: Scott Russell Sanders
Deadline: All submissions must be entered by March 15, 2013
Fourth Genre will seek the best creative nonfiction essay for its ninth annual Fourth Genre Steinberg Essay Prize. Authors of previously unpublished manuscripts are encouraged to enter. All submissions will be read blindly, readers and editors will not see the contestant’s name or cover letter. All manuscripts must be no longer than 6,000 words and previously unpublished. Multiple submissions are accepted. Entry fee of $20 for EACH submission. Winner and runner-up (if applicable) will be announced at the end of April.
Creative Nonfiction and Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability are looking for remarkable true stories that illuminate and present the human side of environmental, economic, ethical, and/or social challenges related to the state of the planet and our future.
We welcome personal essays or stories about extraordinary individuals or communities, and stories about innovative solutions to sustainability. We seek essays on topics that range from global to local, from “big” (e.g., Resilience after natural disasters; New technology solutions vs. common sense; Energy harvesting) to “small” (e.g., Personal decisions about consumption; Reuse, recycle, up-cycle, bicycle?; Green, clean—what does it mean?; What can we learn from past generations?). Whatever the subject, we want to hear about it in an essay that blends facts and research with narrative—employing scenes, descriptions, etc.
Your essay can channel Henry David Thoreau or Henry Ford, Rachel Carson or (a literary) Rush Limbaugh; but all essays must tell true stories and be factual and scientifically accurate.*
All essays submitted will be considered for publication in a special “Human Face of Sustainability” issue of Creative Nonfiction magazine. One writer will be awarded the $10,000 Walton Sustainability Solutions Best Creative Nonfiction Essay Award.
The prize recipient will be invited to a special launch event hosted by Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability.
Maisonneuve Magazine is published out of Montreal and “has been described as a new New Yorker for a younger generation, or as Harper’s meets Vice, or as Vanity Fair without the vanity.” The quarterly offers “a diverse range of commentary across the arts, sciences, daily and social life.”
When the publication asked its contributors to share their favourite reads of the year, Crystal Chan chose Epistolophiliaby yours truly. Here’s what she says about it:
