Monday miscellany: call for winter short stories for charity; the Odyssey workshop announces winter classes; and the Piedmont Laureate Program seeks candidates for its short fiction award

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Monday miscellany: call for winter short stories for charity; the Odyssey workshop announces winter classes; and the Piedmont Laureate Program seeks candidates for its short fiction award

Posted on 2013-11-11 at 19:15 by montsamu

Monday, November 11, 2013: Here I’m just going to put out three unrelated things that I’ve been meaning to write about but just haven’t found the time or space to do so.

  1. TRIANGLE RADIO READING SERVICE ISSUES CALL FOR LOCAL WRITERS WINTER STORIES

First, and this one’s a long, long time in coming, with a hat tip to Pete Wood for sending along this call for stories, on behalf of Triangle Radio Reading Service:

Triangle Radio Reading Service is planning a "Local Writers' Christmas/Winter Stories" program. Our readers are all volunteers; our listeners are all print-and-visually-impaired. Stories must be twenty minutes or less and "for some reason appropriate to be read on or about December 25." Multiple one-hour episodes with be recorded and aired one or more times on-and-around December 25. Writers must be willing to allow stories to be read this year and in the future.Send stories to (or address questions to) [email protected]. Learn more about the service at trianglereadingservice.org.
I know there's quite a few local folks with stories of this nature, so if anyone's interested, please contact Kurt at TRRS. I did send some of my own questions to Kurt on 5/28 about deadlines and also previously podcast stories and he promptly got back to me, at which time I promptly neglected to do anything further with them:
Kurt said:

Addressing your questions:

  1.  Deadlines:  I can start collecting stories now and can continue to collect until the end of November.  At that point, I should be “calling it” and determining just how many stories we have, thereby establishing how many shows I can put together.

  2.  Previously recorded stories:  Yes!  It would certainly save time and trouble on this end.  I listened to the link you sent, however, and I would want to ask permission to edit some of the “extraneous” information before inserting such a story into one of our shows. We normally just have the reader’s name and that of the author. Information to share with potential contributors: We will be broadcasting each show that I “cobble-together” one or more times during the month of December. They will also be available in podcast. And we do re-broadcast holiday programs in following years. Examples of previous Christmas Story programs (note that these are not “local originals”):

Other podcasts of ours are here:  http://www.ibiblio.org/trrs/

I know I'm planning to beg Tina Connolly to lend her reading of my own Bad Elf for this, which I hope there's still time to squeeze in.

2. ODYSSEY WRITING WORKSHOPS CHARITABLE TRUST ANNOUNCES WINTER 2014 ONLINE CLASSES

Second, the folks at the Odyssey Writing Workshop wrote to announce their Winter 2014 online classes, adding that "Odyssey's winter 2014 courses focus on key issues for writers". Here they are in brief: More information about Odyssey's online classes can be found here:  http://www.sff.net/odyssey/online.html or by emailing [email protected].
  1. PIEDMONT LAUREATE PROGRAM SEEKS CANDIDATES FOR ITS SHORT FICTION AWARD

Lastly, the NC Laureate folks wrote to let me know that “The Piedmont Laureate program is accepting applications from writers of short fiction to serve as the 2014 Piedmont Laureate. Would you be kind enough to help us spread the word? Authors must be residents of Wake, Alamance, Durham or Orange counties. The selected Piedmont Laureate will serve from March 1 to December 31, 2014. Laureate activities include presenting readings and workshops, encouraging creative writing and promoting literature at public events. Typical appearances last between twenty minutes and one hour. Honorarium: $6,500. Application Deadline: January 9, 2014.

Guidelines and Application: http://piedmontlaureate.com/guidelinesapplication.html

Piedmont Laureate website: www.piedmontlaureate.com

For more information, please contact Belva Parker, arts program director for the Office of Raleigh Arts, at 919-996-3610 or [email protected].

I know John Claude Bemis has enjoyed his turn as the Piedmont Laureate for Children’s Fiction; here’s hoping that the area gets a fantastic representative among its collection of fantastic short fiction writers for this posting.

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