Watch for contest and event information in:
UTNE- Sept/October magazine and online
A View From the Loft July/Aug/Sept Online
Submissions 2009
A time and place for solitude: writing below the surface.
Spend the day in Red Wing with us...
10:30AM to 11:30PM-- 'Writing Below the Surface' seminar with Cynthia Loveland
11:30 to 2:00 PM-- Remembering Carol-- Lunch- Free Time to Sight See
Carol Bly Short Story Contest
Selected Short Story Readings
2 PM to 3 PM
3PM to 4 PM Announcement of Winner(s)
Reception
Falconer Wine (Red Wing) and Poplar Hills Dairy (Scandia) Cheese Tasting
October 17, 2009
10:30 AM to 4:30PM
Book Fair All Day
Anderson Center, Red Wing Minnesota
Sponsored by Writers Rising Up
writersrisingup@yahoo.com
Short Story Submission Rules
- Submissions accepted April 2009 to October 1st 2009
- Entry Fee: $5.00 (only one entry per writer)
- Prize- $200.00
- Theme related to place, inner struggles and relationships
- Must be original unpublished work of 2500 words
- Typed and paginated white standard computer paper, double spaced
- Include name, address, phone, email on separate piece of paper only
- Mail to: 16526 West 78th St #163, Eden Prairie, MN 55346
- No Short Stories will be returned. Do not include self addressed stamped envelope
- Winner or winners to be published online at www.writersrisingup.org (Writer owns all rights to work)
- Short Story Prize- $200.00 (May be split if more than one winner.)
Submissions, 2009
Reading Chapbook Celebration 2009
Digging to the Roots Poetic Workshops 2008-9
Paul Gruchow Essay Contest 2008
2008 Essay Contest Winners
2007 Essay Contest Winners
EARTH DAY April 22, 2009
Can we know or love what we can't name?
It's not the list of birds you make
It's not the week-end camping trip
It's not a hobby
"A healthy relationship is ongoing, persistent and resilient, despite boredom, disappointments, adversities, infidelities. It is defined by dalliness, a dailliness described in two dimensions--
as a labor and as a need."
"Grass Roots, The Universe of Home"
Paul Gruchow
Name what you know and love about nature in a SPOKEN WORD essay of no more than 2,000 words.
Send Word Docs of your essay to writersrisingupblog@yahoo.com
- Only one entry per writer
- Past Winners may participate
- Work must be original and unpublished
- Submissions from Feb 1st to EARTH DAY, April 22, 2009
Open an account at YOUTUBE and upload a spoken word video of your essay. Send us the URL to your video in an email. Video can not exceed 10 min. Please check YOUTUBE guidelines.
We will select by quality of written work and total presentation.
Selected videos will be posted at www.writersrisingup.org
Contact us at writersrisingupblog@yahoo.com
Reading Chapbook Celebration scheduled for 2009-
- Workshops and Submissions to culminate in a Chapbook published by Red Dragonfly Press.
- $75.00 per person per workshop includes gate fee and celebration.
- Workshop series: $300.00 includes gate fee and celebration
Please
Indicate dates of workshop sessions and send and make out checks to:
Classes
Minnesota Landscape Arboretum
3675 Arboretum Drive
Chaska, MN 55318
Chapbook Submission Process-
For consideration in a Chapbook published by Red Dragonfly Press you may submit poems on typed, white paper, contact information and writer's name on separate piece of paper. This is the submission process for those not attending the workshops. Please send $5.00 per poem reading fee. (workshop attendees are not required to pay to submit work, which they can submit any time before the deadline. However, they must identify the workshop(s) they attended.) The best poems will be selected for publication in a Chapbook published by Red Dragonfly Press. Please send only original unpublished work; author retains all rights but waives recompense. Poems will be selected by the publisher. Proceeds from the Chapbook will go to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and Writers Rising Up.
Send work and make out checks to:
Writers Rising Up
16526 W. 78th St. #163
Eden Prairie, MN 55346
Submissions January 1, 2008 to Deadline for poems-February 21, 2009
All submissions will be considered. Poems that are not accepted will be shredded.
Do not send a SASE.
Digging to the Roots: Poetic Form and the Natural World-
Cosponsored by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and Writers Rising Up- Follow the wheel of the year with us in this four-workshop series May, Aug, Oct -2008 February- 2009. Each season, writers will meet to read classic and contemporary poems and do creative exercises, focusing on a different poetic form each time--odes and elegies; villanelles and sestinas; dramatic monologues; and sonnet—and exploring that form’s metaphoric equivalent in the arboretum: ephemerals, perennials, invasive species, and seeds. After having come full circle, poems grown over the year together will be chosen for a Chapbook published by Red Dragonfly Press. Part of each workshop will be spent journaling outdoors; please wear weather appropriate clothing and bring a journal and favorite pen. Chapbook submission and workshop information at www.writersrisingup.org
With Scott King, editor of Red Dragonfly Press, and Larry Gavin, Red Dragonfly Press poet
Scott King grew up just east of the North Dakota / Minnesota border in Pelican Rapids. He is founder and editor of Red Dragonfly Press. He is author of one book of poems, Leftover Ordinary (Thistlewords Press,2006) and a number of letterpress printed editions. He has translated books by the Persian poet Fereydoun Faryad and the Greek poet Yannis Ritsos. He lives in Northfield, Minnesota.
Workshop Dates
Saturday- May 31, 2008- 9:30AM-12:30PM
Saturday- August 16, 2008- 9:30AM-12:30PM
Saturday- October 4, 2008- 9:30AM-12:30PM
Saturday- February 21, 2009- 9:30AM -12:30PM
Paul Gruchow Essay Contest
Paul's Biography- Click Here
Paul Gruchow is the author of seven volumes of essays, including the Necessity of Empty Places; Grass Roots: The Universe of Home; and Boundary Waters: Grace of the Wild all published by Milkweed Editions. Paul's work has appeared in many anthologies including: The Best American Essays. Paul has won numerous awards, including two Minnesota Book Awards, the Flannagan Prize and the Critics Choice Award of the San Francisco Review of Books. He has taught at St Olaf College and Concordia College and has occupied the Gamaliel Chair of Peace and Justice at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He was the Keller-Edlestein Minnesota Writer of Distinction at the University of Minnesota.
2008 Submission Information:
4th Annual Paul Gruchow Essay Contest -To Love the World: Writing about World, Community & Environment
Submission Fee $5.00 Submission Deadline- April 8, 2008
Paul Gruchow Essay Contest Reception and Reading
With Joe and Nancy Paddock
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Fireplace Room or old Tea Room (both rooms booked)
2 to 5pm
Cosponsored by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and Writers Rising Up
Admission- $5.00 plus $7.00 gate fee for non-Arboretum members
Deadline April 8, 2008
Schedule-Reception
Paul Gruchow Essay Contest Award Announcement
Readings by Winners
Readings by Joe and Nancy; Stories about Paul
Nancy Paddock
TRUST THE WILD HEART -Red Dragonfly Press
Joe Paddock
A SORT OF HONEY - Red Dragonfly Press
BOARS' DANCE - Holy Cow!
HANDFUL OF THUNDER - Anvil Press
Paul Gruchow
Grass Roots: The Universe of Home- Milkweed Editions
The Necessity of Empty Places- Milkweed Editions
2008 Essay Guidelines-
- 3,000 words or less
- One essay only per person
- 8 x 11 white paper, typed, paginated
- Name and contact information on separate piece of paper
- Previous Winners Not Eligible
- $400 Cash Prize, first publication on web site, author owns all rights.
- No essays will be returned; they will be shredded.
- Only original work to be submitted
- Must fill out right to publish authorization form below and send in
- Submission $5.00 USA currency only
Writers Rising Up retains the right to split the prize between deserving submissions.
*The contest is in English only and is open to all who live on our shared planet
Send to: Writers Rising Up
16526 W. 78th St #163, Eden Prairie, MN 55346
Submissions must be accompanied by right to publish authorization form:
http://writersrisingup.org/Permission to Publish.pdf
Send in signed form along with essay submission.
For more information contact: writersrisingupblog@yahoo.com
2008 Essay Contest Winners
The $400 prize money will be split among the five winners.
This year we had 100 entries and for the first time many came from outside of MN including OH, WI, Ill, WA, OR, AZ, PA, CA, NE.
The five winners and one Honorable Mention were from :
Five winners from Stillwater, MN,-- Chicago, Ill,--- Rochester, MN, ---Mazeppa, MN and Rochester, MN.--- and one Honorable Mention from Pepin, WI.
"To love the world: Leonardo's Green Dream" by Donal Heffernan of Stillwater; Milissa Link of Minneapolis, "Gone Wild;" Patricia Monaghan of Chicago, "The Memory of Glaciers;" Coleen Johnston of Mazeppa, MN, "By the Notebook;" Virgina Wright Peterson's "The Natural and Unnatural History of Marion Township;" and Dana Hoeschen of Pepin, WI wins Honorable Mention for her essay entitled "Liminal: situated at a sensory threshold, barely perceptible."
Essays, bios and photos to be posted soon.
Thanks to all for submitting.
Patricia Monaghan is the author of four books of poetry, most recently "Homefront," on the effect of war on families; and of several books of nonfiction including "The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog," an ecospiritual journey around Ireland. She is associate professor of interdisciplinary studies at DePaul University in Chicago and Senior Fellow of the Black Earth Institute, a progressive think-tank dedicated to reconnecting arts, spirituality, and the environment. She was awarded a Pushcart Prize in 2004 and the Phoenix Award for environmental poetry in 2003.
2008 Winning Essay, Click Here
Donal Heffernan is a writer and poet, international lawyer, and university professor. His work has been published in books, literary journals, and magazines. . His novel Lakota Windows about the new tribal Americas is expected to be published next year. He lives in rural Stillwater.
2008 Winning Essay, Click Here
Coleen Johnston's poem "In Spring" appeared in Speakeasy (Summer 2005), and her poetry has been featured in the Art and Poetry Collaboration of Crossings at Carnegie since 2002. Her essay "Walking Brule" won honorable mention in the 2005 Minnesota Literature Essay Contest. She is the author of four books, Garage Sale Decorator: A Pennypincher's Shopping and Decorating Guide (Betterway Publications, 1989) and The Founders, The Guardians and The Inheritors, a historical fiction trilogy (St. Martin's Press 1993-94).
Johnston holds a B.S. in English from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. She lives near Mazeppa, Minnesota, with husband Bruce, and is currently editing the memoir of two years in her woodland garden.
2008 Winning Essay, Click Here
Milissa Link is a writer and yoga teacher who explores the nature of consciousness through personal narrative. Milissa is the author of a memoir, Dog Ma. Her creative nonfiction has received accolades from literary organizations including Norcroft, The Loft and Minnesota Literature. Milissa is the director of Tree of Life Yoga in Minneapolis. She lives near the Mississippi River with her husband Brien and their terrier Dewey.
2008 Winning Essay, Click Here
Virginia M. Wright-Peterson has written extensively about her native Minnesota homeland and places abroad. Her co-winning essay, "The Natural and Unnatural History of Marion Township, is part of "Finding Ourselves in Empty Places," a collection of essays that trace her journey through the Midwest with her young daughter in the wake of her husband's death from leukemia.
When she isn't writing, she is teaching English and Humanities at Rochester Community and Technical College, growing native plants in her small greenhouse, walking with her three canine companions, and biking and reading with her daughter, or traveling. Recent adventures have taken her to Iraq with the Red Cross, to the Peruvian Amazon, and to Algiers as a Fulbright Scholar.
2008 Winning Essay, Click Here
Honorable Mention Winner: Dana Hoeschen - Pepin, Wisconsin
2008 Honorable Mention Essay, Click Here
2007 Essay Contest Winners
Sue Leaf of Center City, Minnesota won the 2007 Paul Gruchow Essay Contest with her essay To Love the World. Honorable Mention went to Coleen L. Johnston of Mazeppa, MN for her essay Foreigner.
Sue Leaf of Center City, MN won the 2007 contest with her essay entitled, “To Love The World.”, and co-won the 2006 contest with her essay: “Everlasting Fire.”
Sue Leaf has a PH.D in zoology and has taught biology and environmental science at Cambridge Community College in Minnesota. She was awarded a McKnight Individual Artist Grant in 1998. Her writing has been published in Minnesota Monthly, Utne Reader, Architecture Minnesota and Minnesota Conservation Volunteer. She is the author of Potato City (Borealis Books, 2004). She lives in Center City, Minnesota on the shores of Pioneer Lake.
2007 Winning Essay, Click Here
2006 Co-Winning Essay, Click Here
Mark Herwig of White Bear Lake, MN won with his essay entitled: “Observations of White Bear Lake: “The Veil, “Lights Out,” “Emulsified,” Moonrise over Manitou.”
Herwig has been an avid volunteer, professional conservationists and writer most of his life. His other life-long pursuits include bird watching, canoeing, gardening, and relief woodcarving wildlife scenes. He is the father of a grown son and daughter. Herwig is editor of Pheasants Forever Journal for Pheasants Forever, The Habitat Organization.
2006 Co- Winning Essay, Click Here
