Opportunities and announcements for our readers and contributors

 

Fearless Books has put out a call for new poetry submissions for an upcoming anthology, The Light in Ordinary Things.

From their announcement:

We live in a time when old forms are catastrophically breaking down, and new forms arise to take their place. The overheated engine of capitalism has blown a gasket; the politics of thoughtless greed retreats in a hail of shoes, and Western civilization faces the provocative prospect of a simpler life.

While banks and the Big Three beg for bailouts, we here at Fearless Books propose a different cure for cataclysm: poetry that helps us take a new look at the world. Thus we cheerfully announce the launch of the Fearless Poetry Series: two graceful anthologies per year on piercingly relevant topics.

Here is your chance to add your work to a chorus of sane but irreverent songs that will help usher in an illuminated culture. From January 15 through May 30, 2009, we are accepting entries for the first Fearless poetry anthology, The Light in Ordinary Things. You can send us one, two, or three short poems (up to 40 lines each) and/or prose poems (up to 500 words each) on your unique view of ordinary things, places, events, or living beings. The subject matter should be common, but the insights extraordinary…

www.fearlessbooks.com

Also, our contributing writer Faracy Grouse (http://www.faracy.org) is creating an indie movie! Here’s the synopsis:

I want to start filming this April and finish by the end of 2009. 
The only way Madelaine, a final year PhD student, is able to make sense of her life is to maintain her exacting routine. Surviving a turbulent childhood at the hands of a distant mother and drug-addict father who took her from fascist Spain to cold war Russia in search of an ideal life, she defects to America only to find herself drawn back to Spain and into a dysfunctional marriage of her own.
Now in London, she meets Lisboa, a charming but reckless Portuguese sous-chef who forces her to face the past which nearly destroyed her.

For more information, and to make a donation (any amount helps, and you’ll get a copy of a collection of her writings) visit her Fundable site here: https://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2009-03-04.7166812766?email=cedeptula@sbcglobal.net

She’d love people with whom to network, people to spread the word, people to help her out with cost saving/fundraising ideas, people who can donate their time, etc.

We’re considering a Synchronized Chaos benefit auction to support her film – will keep you posted.

Finally – The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Burmese group working to practically help nonviolent political prisoners in the country as well as raise awareness of their situation, has developed a petition for the release of the remaining imprisoned activists.

Please read more about the situation and the organization and consider signing here: http://www.fbppn.net/?page_id=5

The group has created a Facebook page for their cause and the situation in Burma: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=526821601&ref=profile#/group.php?gid=17725816181&ref=mf

Filmmaker, wife and mother Daw Ma Khin Khin Leh has been released…hopefully more will follow!