Old Thoughts for New

It's remarkable how slowly the week between Christmas and New Year's goes by.  Then, on the mark of Twelve, time resumes its clipped pace and here we are at the weekend of the first week of the new year.

I'm beginning this year with a double dose of energy. The quiet introspective holiday restored me in so many ways.  I'm grateful to my family for giving me this down time-- a true gift.
In the past week, I have been writing a lot, which always makes me feel "with it," because "without it" can make me very cranky and I feel like have gremlins aching to get into some mischief. Better to be occupied with creative work than entertaining the imp of the perverse.

Thus far, I have written 5 new poems and have had 2 acceptances for the New Year, which were sent in the middle of the night on New Year's Day and received an hour later.  Poems that went halfway around the world to the middle of their day and back to the beginning of mine. Amazing, right? 

Yesterday (1/4/2013), in the high winds, I ventured out to start my first residency of the year and drop off a batch of student plays for the 2 Pages/2 Voices competition at Writers & Books.
  
Here's the call for submissions:

Writers & Books and Geva Theatre Center Seek Submissions for 2 Pages/2 Voices

Each year, in January, Writers & Books and Geva Theatre Center collaborate to present 2 Pages/2 Voices, an evening of short short plays written by area writers and read by area actors.
Each play must be no more than two pages in length and contain no more than two characters. The only other stipulation for this year's submissions is that at some point in the the play the word "border" must be included.
The dates for this year's event are:
Deadline for submissions: Tuesday, January 8, 2013 (Submissions can be hand-delivered or mailed to Writers & Books, 740 University Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607.
Performance of plays: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 at the Writers & Books Performance Space.


This competition is such fun.  I love going to the reading of the winning work.  Advice: if you go to the reading, get there early because the room fills up FAST.

 Next up at Writers & Books is the first Genesee Reading Series of the Year.  This reading
will feature two writers, Anne Panning and James Whorton who read at St. John Fisher  College in the Fall.  If you missed their readings in the Fall, you may want to make a point of
going to  this reading. Here are the details:

Genesee Reading Series
Tues., Jan. 8
$3 W&B members / $6 general public, 7:30 p.m., at W&B.
Hosted by Wanda Schubmehl

For the first Genesee Reading Series of 2013, we import two writers of fiction, essay, and memoir from SUNY Brockport, Anne Panning and James Whorton.

Anne Panning’s novel, Butter, was published in October 2012 by Switchgrass Books. Her short story collection, Super America, won the 2006 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and was selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice. She has also published a book of short stories, The Price of Eggs, as well as short fiction and nonfiction in places such as Beloit Fiction Journal, Bellingham Review, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, The Florida Review, Passages North, Black Warrior Review, The Greensboro Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Kalliope, Quarterly West, The Kenyon Review, The Laurel Review, Five Points, The Hawaii Review, Cimarron Review, West Branch and Brevity. Four of her essays have received notable citations in The Best American Essays series. She is currently at work on a memoir, Dragonfly Notes: A Memoir of Motherhood and Loss. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children, and teaches creative writing at SUNY Brockport.

James Whorton is a former Mississippian and former Tennessean who now is happy to live in Rochester with his wife (Kate Whorton, who runs the Genesee Pottery on Monroe Ave) and two daughters. He's published three novels--Angela Sloan, Frankland, and  Approximately Heaven. His short stories and nonfiction have appeared in Oxford American, Mississippi Review, Sewanee Review, American Book Review, and The Washington Post. He is an associate editor at blipmagazine.net, and is Associate Professor and Associate Chair of the English Department at SUNY Brockport.