Sandy Crimmins Prize for Poetry

Hello out there! Remember me?

I’m still writing furiously, but keeping things under wraps in hopes of being published means my creative well is drained by the time I get around to blogging. So it goes.

I’m popping in to encourage you to submit your previously unpublished poetry to the annual Sandy Crimmins Poetry Contest, run by yours truly.

Now get out there and write some fabulous poetry.

Details here: http://www.philadelphiastories.org/poetry-contest/

xoxo,

Nicole Marie

 

The Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry: Celebrating Risk and Invention in Poetry

Philadelphia Stories hosts the annual “Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize” to celebrate poets of all backgrounds, experience, and styles.  Thanks to the generous support of Sandy’s family, we are proud to offer the following contest prizes:

● The first-place winning poet will receive a $1,000 cash award for an individual poem, an invitation to an awards event in the Philadelphia area and publication in the Spring issue.
● Three runners up will receive $100 cash awards for individual poems as well as publication in our Spring issue.
● The winning poet and runners up are invited to submit chapbooks to be considered for publication by PS Books. 

● All submitted poems may be selected by the editors for publication in our Spring issue.

 

This year’s judge is Lamont B. Steptoe–poet, publisher, photographer, and Vietnam veteran. 

Open to all poets residing in the U.S

Deadline: November 15, 2016.

$12 reading fee includes a year’s subscription to Philadelphia Stories (4 issues)

Visit PhiladelphiaStories.org for more information and to submit!

The Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry: Open for Submissions!

Calling all poets!

As most of you know by now I work for Philadelphia Stories, a literary publication that “has been serving the writing, reading, and art community of the Greater Delaware Valley since 2004.”

Our annual poetry contest, The Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry, is now open for submissions! The deadline is November 15th; first place includes a $1,000 cash award, an invitation to an awards event in Philadelphia, and publication in our Spring 2016 issue!

So pull out all your best work and click here to submit!

Please like, share, submit, and otherwise social-media the crap out of this post. I’d truly appreciate it!

xoxo

Yeah Write #184

Hey guys! I was lucky enough to win Crowd Favorite this week over at Yeah Write for my poem, “I held on for dear life“! Please click here to read what the editors had to say about my piece, and to read some other fantastic pieces of fiction! The challenges are always fun and a great way to get your creative juices flowing – I suggest everyone consider entering! A new challenge runs each week!

The Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry

ATTENTION ALL POETS!!

(http://funnytoo.com/poems-are-hard/)

Hello, friends!

As some of you may know, I am Contest Coordinator and – just recently – Assistant Poetry Editor for non-profit literary magazine Philadelphia Stories! I come to you in hopes you will submit to this year’s Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry.

Here’s a little info about Sandy (and a bit about the contest, too!):

Sandy Crimmins’ poem “Spring” appeared in the first issue of Philadelphia Stories in 2004 and she performed at our launch party. She served on the Philadelphia Stories board from 2005 to 2007. In the ten years since we debuted, Sandy’s voice and vision have fundamentally shaped Philadelphia Stories.  Sandy was a poet who performed with musicians, dancers, and fire-eaters, and one of her proudest accomplishments was celebrating the work of her vibrant poetry community. In this spirit, Philadelphia Stories hosts the annual “Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize” to celebrate poets of all backgrounds, experience, and styles.

Thanks to the generous support of Sandy’s family, we are proud to offer the following contest prizes:

● The first-place winning poet will receive a $1,000 cash award for an individual poem, an invitation to an awards event in Philadelphia and publication in the Spring issue.
● Three runners up will receive $100 cash awards for individual poems as well as publication in our Spring issue.
● The winning poet and runners up are invited to submit chapbooks to be considered for publication by PS Books.
● All submitted poems may be selected by the editors for publication in our Spring issue.

(All information courtesy of http://www.philadelphiastories.org)

There is a $12 reading fee for every submission, and the deadline is approaching fast! Get yours in by November 15, 2014. All entrants will receive a complimentary one-year subscription to Philadelphia Stories, and there is some seriously good stuff in every issue.

For more information on submission guidelines, please click here.

Or if you’re ready and rearing to go, click HERE to submit!!

And even if you don’t plan to submit…I’d be eternally grateful if you could share this post with every corner of the internet. Tell your mother, tell your brother, tell all your poet friends. We’d really appreciate it.

xoxo,

Nicole Marie

 

When Laziness Attacks

You know how you start something and you get all passionate about it and other people start to get all into it too and then all of a sudden you start sucking at life and lose focus on that thing you totally enjoy but continue to think about doing it all the time, yet you stop doing it and instead do other things and get all depressed that you’re not doing that one thing you totally enjoy?

Oh, that’s stupid? Yeah, I know. I suck.

BUT – there is something very, very epic in the works that has aided in tearing me away from my blogging practically altogether lately. Okay, so maybe it isn’t really an excuse, but it definitely takes up a nice chunk of my time…and I can’t wait to share it with you guys. In the meantime, here’s some random happenings/not really happenings:

1.) I started a blog post about something I feel pretty strongly about, and it’s currently sitting in my Drafts folder. I hope to have it published by tomorrow. It’s a good one, I think.

2.) My birthday is May 31st! Presents and well wishes are accepted.

3.) I am once again exhausted and dreading another 5 AM shift tomorrow.

4.) I plan on working on a short story to enter in another contest; the deadline? My birfday!

5.) A customer told another bartender he wanted to “rip [his] face off” the other day. It was great.

6.) It’s been sticky hot in Jersey the past few days. Like stifling, body odor hot. Like the trash truck smells like corpses when it rides by and the end of the street has that wavy, sizzling heat thing kinda hot. Blegh.

7.) I love you all and I hope you haven’t turned your backs on me because I’m an unmotivated mofo. HELP!

xoxo,

Nicole

Calling All Poets!!

Hello all! Just a friendly reminder that The 2012 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry will be closing its doors on submissions at midnight tonight!! One lucky poet will receive a $1,000 cash award, an invitation to an awards event in Philadelphia in Spring 2013 and publication in the Spring 2013 issue.

The second place winning poet will receive a $250 cash award and publication in the Spring 2013 issue.

I’m in charge of this gig, and believe me when I say this is an amazing publication run by some seriously amazing people, and I’m lucky to be involved in it all.

Reading fees are $10 for up to five pages of poetry (that could be five one-page poems, or one five-page poem); click here for the rest of the submission guidelines and, of course, to SUBMIT!

And please, share this with as many fellow writers/poets/bloggers as you can before midnight – Philadelphia Stories (and myself) would greatly appreciate it.

[About Sandy Crimmins]
Sandy Crimmins served on the Philadelphia Stories board from 2005
to 2007. Sandy was a poet who performed with musicians, dancers and
fire-eaters at bars, bookstores and festivals.  After earning a master’s
in fine arts from the University of Ohio, Sandy moved to New York and
became a stage manager for several theaters, and, in 1985, married
Joseph Sullivan. Four years later, she earned a master’s in nonprofit
management from the University of Detroit. She, her husband and their
two sons moved to West Mount Airy in 1989, and she began to write poetry
and fiction focused on family issues. Her short stories and poems were
published in a variety of journals, and her book, String Theory, was published by Plan B Press.

The Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry 2012

For the past 3 years I have had the honor of serving as Contest Coordinator for the Philadelphia Stories Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction, reading some seriously awesome work; but the best part has always been the look of awe on the winning author’s face as they float around the room for hours at a dinner in their honor, shaking hands and taking photos and smiling until their face hurts.

So obviously I was excited when just a few weeks ago I was asked to also run this year’s Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry contest.

So I won’t keep on blabbin’. The deadline for submissions has been extended to November 15th, and I strongly encourage all lovers of poetry to send in lots and lots of submissions! (Ahem, Edward and Ms. Hastywords! Submit one together and split the prize – or submit your own! I don’t care! Just do iiiiit!!!!! Jim, you should too!)

And to all of the other extremely talented writers I follow: do it. I look forward to reading your submissions. 🙂

Click here for guidelines – and to submit!

 

“It is astounding, how many selves we have.”

So last week, I attended the Philadelphia Stories dinner celebrating our 2012 winner of the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction! Winning author Adam Schwartz gave an amazing speech that brought quite a few of us to tears. He was so humble, so overwhelmed with gratitude and emotion. Now that is the ultimate rewarding experience for a writer. He talked of how we work our behinds off in solitude, maybe showing our work to a family member or a friend. But for a group of strangers to recognize your work, celebrate it, and throw a dinner in your honor where we hand you a fat check and talk about how great you are for 3 hours?

Yeah, I can only hope I’m in his shoes some day. The choked up part came when he tried to do something as simple as thank his wife for all of those hours he was allowed to “go off and tinker with his story”. He paused for quite a while, gathering himself, and when he started again he wondered out loud why he couldn’t get out a few simple words. The best part was during his moment of silence, when his wife – who was seated somewhere in front of Joe and I – leaned over to a friend and whispered, “this happened at the wedding too”. About 30 seconds later, when Adam started again, he said “this happened at the wedding too”. That’s when I got all teary eyed. The next morning at Push to Publish (where I had the pleasure of spending most of the day talking with Adam about our writing, our jobs, etc.), we agreed it must have been the idea of sharing such a personal emotion with a crowd of people. That was it.

Now seriously, click here to read Adam’s kick-ass short story, “The Rest of the World”.  What a wonderful guy, and (obviously) an extremely talented writer.

Push To Publish 

As I said I’d be doing in my previous post, I whipped out my little pink notebook and spent a lot of time scrawling things down all Saturday afternoon. After bagels and coffee, we gathered into the auditorium on the always beautiful Rosemont College campus (I really suggest looking at pictures of this place, it’s like a mini Hogwarts), to hear keynote speaker (and this year’s final judge to choose Adam’s story) Kevin McIlvoy get us all revved up for the day with an opening speech. I scribbled furiously while this man talked about things I never even imagined. For 30 years he has studied language, recording the voices of men and women 70+ and obsessing over each recording, considering how “several streams pour into each other to make the voice that has developed over the course of a long life”. Kevin said “an old voice has more moments of emptiness that are full”. He made my brain hurt in the best way ever. While I always thought I paid close attention to the way each of my characters speak, McIlvoy pulled me up to a whole other level of thought as a writer of dialogue.

Kevin continued into something I understood immediately: “It’s astounding, how many selves we have. Writing exposes our most secret selves.” As writers, we’re all a little Bipolar, a little Schizophrenic, aren’t we? Morbid, romantic, hilarious, thoughtful. There’s things we can write down or type out that we would never allow out into the world in any other way. It’s a therapeutic release of sorts.

Things got weird again (but in a crazy genius sort of way) when McIlvoy started with the bird calls, and even invited us to join in. But, it served its purpose. He compared the call and song of the Common Yellowthroat to the way a person does something called “think-sounding” (following the sound of one’s thought to the next thought). He spoke of “rhythmic syn-crony” and all sorts of other things that sounded lovely, even if I had to give them a little extra thought. This man certainly has an iron grip on language and voice.

Kevin ended his speech with something every one of us understood as we nodded our heads in agreement: “We are engaged in writing as an act of faith….It takes stamina and courage…We are here because we are believers…[The] artist life is questionable as a career…Be attentive to all [writing] offers you. It will bring more of you to the world.” 

I bought this. Go buy this.

Then came the speed dates. That agent I met with last year that I was hoping to meet with again this year? Yeah, writers tore through her signup sheet like wildfire. So I sadly signed my name under the open times of a few others I was hoping to meet with, and decided I’d have to awkwardly corner her somewhere on campus before the day’s end. But on a positive note, I think my speed dates were all a roaring success! I shoved my Honorable Mention-winning short story, “Sirens Underwater” into the faces of three published writers. Alison Hicks gave me a few very nice compliments, and told me if Glimmer Train gave it a thumbs up, then it has a home somewhere. She then rattled off about ten literary journals I could try, and I struggled to write them all down before my hand cramped up. I thanked her, and moved on to a very nice chick from Apiary, and finally the bad-ass and wonderful Aimee LaBrie, who ran the 8-week writing course I took last winter. We talked, mostly about my story and a little about life in general. She scrawled several helpful notes and comments and question marks on the edges of every paper and I had to be kicked out so the next writer could meet with her.

Then there was lunch. Then workshops about selling genre fiction, the pros and cons of e-publishing, and a Q&A with agents and editors. And somewhere in there, I was able to corner agent lady without too much awkwardness, and she handed me a fresh business card and told me to query her. Score! 

Watch this and you can totally see my head at 0:30 as Aimee pours over my story (with agent lady in the background!).

Happy Friday, everyone! It’s rainy here in Jersey and I tripped up the stairs this morning.

P.S.

Remember that cute little house Joe and I looked at?

Guess who isn’t a property virgin anymore?! Soon, I will write to you via my own bad-ass writing hideaway.

Oh, and this one’s for Le Clown:

Guess who wore her shiny boots?

Speaking of motivation….

What are the chances?

On my birthday – the 31st of May – I entered a short story contest for new writers put together by Glimmer Train Press, a pretty well-known and prestigious publication.

I’ve been checking the site rather religiously, each time I log in seeing that excruciating “In-Progress” still next to my story’s title. But my most recent check-in was different….

Although they teased me – I nearly stopped breathing – with the word “Finalist” now sitting cozily in that little box, I immediately checked my email to find that I’d received a virtual high-five, the thumbs up of the literary world, a pat on the back from a respected publication, the first step in awesomeness for any new writer….
My short story, “Sirens Underwater”, has received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s 2012 Short Story Contest for New Writers.

Wait… What’s that sound?

Oh yeah, it’s me kicking myself in the ass. Let’s do this.

Go here to see my name in print, you know you wanna. 🙂

Click to access May2012SSA-HM.pdf