Museum seeks submissions for Waterston Desert Writing Prize, student essays
ktvz.com – Thursday January 7, 2021
The High Desert Museum is now accepting submissions for the 2021 Waterston Desert Writing Prize.
The Prize honors literary nonfiction that illustrates artistic excellence, sensitivity to place, and desert literacy with the desert as both subject and setting. Emerging, mid-career and established nonfiction writers are invited to apply.
To learn more about the Waterston Desert Writing Prize and how to submit an entry, visit highdesertmuseum.org/waterston-prize. Submissions will be accepted through May 1, 2021.
Inspired by author and poet Ellen Waterston’s love of the High Desert, a region that has been her muse for more than 30 years, the Prize launched in 2014 and annually recognizes the vital role deserts play worldwide in the ecosystem and human narrative. The Prize is named in honor of actor Sam Waterston, who provided the seed money for the endowment that helps fund the award.
Announcing the Winner of the 2020 QueryLetter.com Writing Contest
queryletter.com – Sunday January 3, 2021
We at QueryLetter.com love a good blurb that compels us to read the book. Capturing people’s attention in as few words as possible is the name of the game.
A few months ago, we launched a writing contest that is all about book blurbs. The basis of the competition is simple: Write a blurb about a completely made-up, nonexistent book that would make people want to read the story. The person with the best blurb would win $500.
Announcing the 2021 National Magazine Awards Categories & Call for Entries
newswire.ca – Tuesday December 22, 2020
TORONTO, Dec. 21, 2020 /CNW/ - The National Media Awards Foundation is thrilled to announce the call for entries and to unveil the lineup of categories for the 44th annual National Magazine Awards. The lineup includes 29 categories and two special, prestigious awards: Magazine Grand Prix and the Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement.
The Foundation is also pleased to introduce an exciting, cross-programming initiative. National Magazine Awards participants are invited to submit their work to a series of seven unique categories, and these entries will compete among those submitted to the Digital Publishing Awards (DPA) and National Magazine Awards: B2B (NMA) programs. A single panel of judges will evaluate all entries, with winners announced across all three programs.
Kick 2020 goodbye: Enter our haiku writing contest
cleveland.com – Thursday December 10, 2020
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Thanksgiving is gone, the holidays are around the corner, and New Year’s – New Year’s! – is coming soon.
Face it: 2021 cannot get here fast enough.
The year was barely under way when ‘Wuhan’ was added to our geographic lexicon as coronavirus spread its tentacles across the globe. The virus brought illness, deaths, cancellations, shelter-at-home orders and squabbling politicians. It’s going to remain with us for a while, but we can get in one last shot before the year is out.
Please, Give Us the Bad Sex Writing
thecut.com – Thursday December 10, 2020
Every year since 1993, the industrious editors at the British magazine the Literary Review have sat down with steaming cuppas and pored over some of the most wretched sex writing in fiction from the past year, seeking out the “most outstandingly awful scene of sexual description.” And then, once they’ve identified the most appalling passage — which, in the past, have included the phrase “a coil of excrement” and used the word “cum” seven times — they bestow the writer responsible for it the honorable Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
While all the passages that the editors consider — which they deliver in the form of a shortlist — unfailingly inspire revulsion, every year we look forward to learning what men think sex is. But this year, we will be denied this rich source of both disgust and joy: The magazine has called off the prize.
Welbeck acquires mental health publisher Trigger
thebookseller.com – Thursday December 10, 2020
Welbeck Publishing Group has become the majority owner of the mental health and wellbeing publisher, Trigger Publishing.
Welbeck said it will build on Trigger’s founder, Adam Shaw’s vision "to enhance the footprint in mental health publishing" across all channels and on a worldwide basis.
As part of the deal, Jo Lal, publisher of Trigger, and Lyndsey Mayhew, sales and marketing lead, will move across to Welbeck.
Helen Sword devises a new writing tool to sharpen your prose
indiaeducationdiary.in – Friday December 4, 2020
Helen, an internationally acclaimed expert on writing in all genres, lectures in English in the Faculty of Arts and is an affiliate of the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation in the Faculty of Education. She is a scholar and a poet whose passion is helping others improve their writing, especially academic writing.
Originally from Southern California, she has lived in New Zealand for nearly 20 years with her Kiwi husband, Dr Richard Sorrenson. Her popular book The Writer’s Diet was published by Auckland University Press in 2015 and is supplemented by a website (writersdiet.com) that she says attracts around 100,000 visitors a year from all over the world. Through the website, writers can paste their text into an analysis tool that determines whether their prose would benefit from tightening up.
PRH Purchase of S&S Draws Objections
publishersweekly.com – Tuesday December 1, 2020
Following the announcement that Penguin Random House parent company Bertelsmann won the bidding war for Simon & Schuster with a $2.2 billion offer, members of the book business and related organizations have begun to weigh in.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Authors Guild laid out its opposition to the proposed deal. The sale "would mean that the combined publishing house would account for approximately 50% of all trade books published, creating a huge imbalance in the U.S. publishing industry," the Guild said. (Penguin Random House's global CEO, Markus Dohle, told PW that he believes PRH's publishing market share is about 14.2% and S&S's 4.2%, including self-publishing; others have estimated the combined companies' market share would amount to roughly one third of the U.S. book market.)
Penguin Random House to Buy Simon & Schuster for $2.175 Billion
lunch.publishersmarketplace.com – Wednesday November 25, 2020
ViacomCBS announced Wednesday morning that it has a definitive agreement to sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House for $2.175 billion in cash, “from existing liquid funds.” The transaction is expected to close in 2021, with S&S ceo Jonathan Karp telling staff that will “likely” happen “in the second half of 2021 at the earliest.” It is subject to regulatory approvals — primarily in the US — and competing bidders such as HarperCollins parent News Corp. have already declared they believe “it will clearly be a serious antitrust issue.” Bertelsmann has already indicated it does not expect approval issues. (Internal PRH documents on “messaging” with industry partners about the deal acknowledges “rumors” they “will face antitrust challenges because of our size” and asserts “these are not grounded in fact and we assume may be perpetuated by competitors.”) The agreement includes a termination fee in the event the acquisition fails to win approval.
CBC launches Breakthrough Writers' Programme
thebookseller.com – Wednesday November 25, 2020
The Curtis Brown Creative Writing School is launching a Breakthrough Writers’ Programme, which features fully funded courses, mentoring and scholarships for underrepresented writers.
The programme – which is intended to run for a minimum of three years – aims to seek out writers and deliver teaching and industry advice, through interaction with successful authors, agents and publishers.
The programme of courses and mentoring is fully funded by Curtis Brown Group and its literary agents. Opportunities are targeted to address specific barriers to entry and will commence in February 2021.
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