More business:

Ted Rankin reviewed the critiques for the conference and said they were all positive. Some were asking for a complete two days of workshops.
Treasurer Bryan Freeman was absent so there was no financial report.
Jean Pamplin suggested sharing the NETWO brochures with the Mt. Pleasant Chamber of Commerce to put in its office.
Gay Ingram is still working on the Directory and needs input from all the members of NETWO.
Galand suggested a book project for the future conferences using the short stories that had been submitted for the contest and the critiques from the judge and binding both in a booklet to be available for around $11.00 for writers to buy to help improve their writing projects. Jean Pamplin suggested using the three top stories and making a packet. Jim Callan even suggested cutting the number of stories and bringing the cost down to $5.00. Galand Nuchols decided to continue to research this idea and bring her findings to another meeting.
Georgia Henson is unable to get out of bed. Keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

New Business:

Skip Hughes is going to develop a roster to get people more involved. He suggested having a program chairman and a membership secretary.
Gay will have contact information on the website for NETWO.
Executive meeting will be before the June meeting which will be at Applebee’s in Mt. Pleasant. Jim Callan made the motion and Galand seconded the motion.

A date for next year’s conference will be made but first other writers’ conferences will be checked.
A new slate of officers will be elected in June.
Please send in writings to be used in the newsletter.
Gay Ingram announced she had copies of her latest book, Twist of Fate” for $18.00. Her book signing at an antique shop in Mineola last weekend went well.

Stories read:

Bill Carl read a humorous piece, one page;

Skip Hughes read Act One of his opera noting that he had a poem accepted for publication in the “Light Quarterly”;

Jim Callan read his first chapter, Over My Dead Body;

Mrs. Moore read an essay of her memoirs, “Hanging in Arkansas” (ask her about the spread-lines – Ted had an interesting story in relation to the subject;

Jerry Clark read a piece entitled “Surviving Breast Cancer.”

Meeting adjourned. @

NEW MEMBERS

The following (though they have been members for some months now) were inadvertently omitted from the list in last month’s newsletter:

Pattie Ball

Shirley Moore

I extend my sincere apology for the oversight, ladies. @

“Those people who think they can do something and those who think they can’t are both right.”

…Henry Ford

BITS AND PIECES

Sherry Allen has undergone multiple back surgeries in recent months and is presently still in rehab. An update on her condition will be in next month’s newsletter. In the meantime, please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

Also, please remember Georgia Henson in your prayers. Georgia has been a mainstay of NETWO’s since its beginning days, and she is sorely missed.

Photo by Janice Glass

Barbara and Bill Carl were participants in an Author Meet and Greet booksigning at Silver Ink Books on Saturday, May 15^th in DeQueen, Arkansas. @

FLARF – Is it Becoming Acceptable?

An article in the Wall Street Journal on May 25, 2010, has the sub-headline “Google Inspired Verse Gains Respect.” This experi-mental poetry movement got its start in 2001 when poet Gary Sullivan submitted the worst poem he could write to the International Library of Poetry (which no longer exists). He passed it on to a group of poet friends who, in turn, submitted their own terrible poems. The group then adopted the technique poet Drew Gardner used – searching the internet for random terms and creating poems from the results.

While Flarf is no longer restricted to Google searches, it retains an anything-goes style, and has appeared in highly respected poetry publications. One critic terms it “bad poetry written by people who know how to write poetry. @

MAKING A WEB SITE AND BLOG

By Galand Nuchols

Our 2010 conference was outstanding and inspired me to come home, glue myself to a chair in front of the computer, and start writing. Alas, I couldn’t find the glue and other needs called. BUT, I did take Rusty Shelton’s advice to heart and started working on a personal website and a blog. In the beginning I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with a blog, but Rusty said I needed one, so I commenced to build one. He also said I needed a platform. I wasn’t totally sure what that was either, but I knew it wasn’t made of wood and something Tom could build for me.

Three harrowing, hair-pulling, revising and more revising weeks later I had what I thought was a suitable website and blog. The only thing missing was the part of a blog where your readers (platform??) could make comments. Thanks be for smart children who can come to our rescue.

Our daughter couldn’t make it for Mother’s Day but came a week later. One look at my blog and she tells me I need to be in a different spot. Two hours, not days or weeks, “hours” later she has me set up with a blog.

I tweaked it a bit more and sent out a call for help to brothers, sisters, son, and daughter-in-law for suggested changes and help finding errors. Within hours I learn the website address doesn’t work. I investigate and find I’ve left out a period. Then son finds two spelling errors. Spell check failed me. Sister finds several buttons on different pages that are misbehaving. I try to fix the spelling errors on the blog, but they won’t budge. They appear to be carved in stone. A couple of days later I stumble on the fixit page and manage to make those corrections. And I fixed the buttons, I think.

Saturday I go to Pizza Inn for fellowship and support. I throw out a call for help and advice. Jim takes the time to study my website and blog. He sends me a page of

suggestions and ends with the encourage-ment that he liked the website for the most part. Thanks for friends like Jim and our entire NETWO support group. If we don’t have friends to help us find our errors, we are condemned to keep making them. I sat down and rewrote several paragraphs. It is much better now.

If you have the time and interest, you might check out my new website and blog. Here they are: galandnuchols.com and galandnuchols.blogspot.com. Comments and corrections are welcome.

Hope all of you have a nice summer and get a story or two or three down on paper. All you have to do is dismantle the doorbell, lock the door, kill the phones, haul in a three-months’ supply of food, tell everyone at church, bridge club, the fitness center, etc. that you are going to Europe for the summer, then sit down and write. Easy, isn’t it? @

CONTEST

The 7^th Annual Gival Press Short Story Award

Deadline: August 8, 2010 (postmarked)

Guidelines: Submissions of a previously unpublished original short story in English must be approximately 5,000 to 15,000 words of high literary quality, typed, double spaced on one side of the paper only, with word count in the upper left hand side of the first page, along with the title. The author’s name should not appear on the numbered pages of the ms which should be clipped together. Author should keep a copy of the submission as it will not be returned.

Author Identification: Submit name, address, telephone number, email address on a separate page, along with the title of the short story submitted.

A short bio should also be included.

If the short story wins, the author must make the manuscript available to Gival Press on an IBM-compatible disk or CD in Rich Test Format (RTF)—this refers to how one saves the document on one’s computer disk.

Reading fee: $25.00 by check or money order for each short story submitted. Payable to: Gival Press, LLC.

Please note that Gival Press can also accept the entry fee by major credit card; however, we only take credit card information by phone: (703.351-0079).

Mail to:

Robert L. Giron, Editor

Gival Press Short Story Award

Gival Press, LLC

P. O. Box 3812

Arlington, VA 22303.

Notification of the Winner: Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) for notification of the winner or visit our website: (http://www.givalpress.com)

where the winner and finalists will be announced.

Prize: Author will receive $1,000.00 and the winning story will be published on the Gival Press website and in a future anthology of short stories.

Judging: Short stories will be judged anonymously and the decision of the judge will be final. The winner for the previous award will be the judge for the following year. t

MARKET

THE OXFORD AMERICAN

The Oxford American is a quarterly national magazine out of Conway, Arkansas, dedicated to featuring the very best in Southern writing while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South.

Billed as “The Southern Magazine of Good Writing,” it has won two National Magazine awards and other high honors since it began publication in 1992. The magazine has featured the original work of such literary powerhouses as Charles Portis, Roy Blount, Jr., ZZ Packer, Donald Harington, Donna Tartt, Ernest J. Gaines, and many other distinguished authors, while also discovering and launching the most promising writers in the region. The magazine has also published previously unseen work by such Southern masters as William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, James Agee, Zora Neale Hurston, James Dickey, Carson McCullers, to name just a handful.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The editors at The Oxford American are constantly searching for well-written, substantive new material. We request, however, that before submitting work, writers make themselves familiar with the spirit and aim of the magazine. It is discouraging to the editors to receive manuscripts from writers who clearly do not know much about the magazine.

We do not accept faxed or e-mailed submissions.
The Oxford American will consider only manuscripts that are from and/or about the South and that are clearly typed and double-spaced.
A self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) with the correct postage must accompany all manuscripts. A SASE is needed for any kind of response, even if the writer does not want the material returned.
The pay scale for accepted material varies.
Payment is issued within thirty days of publication.
The Oxford American does not agree to pay expenses associated with the completion of a work unless an agreement has been reached between the editor and writer before the expenses are incurred.
We require an express acknowledgment if a manuscript is a simultaneous submission.
The Oxford American does not publish work that has been published elsewhere, including the Internet.
A good photocopy of the manuscript, rather than the original, should be sent. The Oxford American is not responsible for lost manuscripts.
Response time varies, but during our most hectic periods may take more than 16 weeks.
Poetry submissions should be three to five poems, of any length. Like fiction and nonfiction submissions, these should be from or about the South.
We do not publish pornography, society gossip, or poems about cats.

Please send all manuscripts to:

THE OXFORD AMERICAN

201 Donaghey Avenue

Main 107

Conway, AR 72035

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