THE ELECTRONIC WRITE STUFF

Writing News for the Sunshine State & the Solar System

www.northfloridawriters.org * Oct. 2008

Editor: Howard Denson

________________________________

In This Issue:

Sanibel Island Writers Conference Set for Nov. 6-9

Is Correct Spelling out of Fashion? -- Howard Denson

NFW to Focus on Critiques at Oct. 11 Meeting

Quote from a Writer's Quill - Joseph Joubert

Writers Born This Month - They wrote of a blue guitar, not returning home, Kon-Tiki, the Civil War, and spies.

________________________________

SANIBEL ISLAND WRITERS CONFERENCE SET FOR NOV. 6-9

The Sanibel Island Writers Conference, sponsored by Florida Gulf Coast University, will have Sara Jeter Nasland as its keynote speaker, according to Tom DeMarchi, conference coordinator.

Ms. Nasland is the author of Ahab's Wife, in which she looked at the Melville narrative from the point of view of his wife.

She is Writer in Residence at the University of Louisville, program director of the Spalding University brief-residency MFA in Writing, and current Kentucky Poet Laureate. Recipient of the Harper Lee Award and the Southeastern Library Association Fiction Award, she is cofounder of The Louisville Review and the Fleur-de-Lis Press. She lives in Louisville.

Other presenters will include Lynne Barrett (fiction), Jocleyne Bartkevicius (editor), Eve Bridburg (literary agent), Jim Brock (poet), Ron Carlson (young adult fiction), Camille Cline (editor), John Dufresne (novelist), Beth Ann Fennelly (poet), and many others.

The website for the conference is http://www.fgcu.edu/siwc/.

The conference will be held at BIGARTS on Sanibel Island. With 26 miles of bike paths, world famous sunsets, and an average temperature of 74 degrees F., Sanibel Island is located on Florida's Gulf Coast, just thirty minutes from Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers. Since the first settlers arrived in 1833, Sanibel has attracted such prestigious sightseers and residents as Theodore Roosevelt, Stephen King, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dan Brown, Randy Wayne White, Thomas Edison (who once worked as a night watchman for Sanibel's International Telegraph Company), and Charles and Anne Lindbergh.

During conference downtime, attendees are encouraged to bike, hike, and/or kayak through the J.N. "Ding" Darling Wildlife Refuge - 6,400-acres of mangrove forest, seagrass beds, and cordgrass marshes, and home to over 220 species of birds - or to collect the over 400 varieties of seashells that can be found along Sanibel's 15 miles of public beaches.

Because classes will begin on the morning Nov. 6, the conference leaders recommend that out-of-town attendees arrive on Wednesday, Nov. 5.

NFW TO FOCUS ON CRITIQUES AT OCT. 11 MEETING

Critiquing manuscripts will be front and center at the September meeting of the North Florida Writers. The meeting will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11, in a conference room at the Webb-Wesconnett Branch Library (corner of 103rd Street and Harlow Boulevard).

The Nov. 8 meeting will be held at the Webb-Wesconnett branch. The Dec. 13 meeting will be held at the Historic Grounds Coffee and Books Store, 420 Walnut Street, Green Cove Springs, FL 32043.

________________________________

QUOTE FROM A WRITER'S QUILL

The great drawback in new books is that they prevent our reading the old ones. - Joseph Joubert

WRITERS BORN IN OCTOBER

1--William Beckford (1760?), Ernest Haycox (1899), Tim O'Brien (1946); 2--Wallace Stevens (1870), Graham Greene (1904); 3--Fulke Greville Brooke (1554), George Bancroft (1800), Alain-Fournier (Henri Alban Fournier) (1886), Thomas Wolfe (1900), Gore Vidal (1925), James Herriot (1916), Judith Johnson Sherwin (1936); 4--Jeremias Gotthelf (Albert Bitzius) (1797), Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1837), Alvin Toffler (1928);

5--Louise Fitzhugh (1928), Peter Ackroyd (1949); 6--Bo Hjalmar Bergman (1869), Thor Heyerdahl (1914); 7--Helen McInnes (1907), Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (1934), Thomas Keneally (1935); 8--José de Cadalso y Vázquez (1741), PhilarPte Chasles (1798); 9--Sir Richard Blackmore (1654), Edward William Bok (1863), Bruce Catton (1899);

10--James Clavell (1924), Harold Pinter (1930); 11--Steen Steensen Blicher (1782), Elmore Leonard (1925); 13--Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797), Frank Gilroy (1925), Chris Carter (1957); 14--Katherine Mansfield (1888), E. E. Cummings (1894);

15--Isabella Lucy Bell Bishop (1831), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844), P. G. Wodehouse (1881), Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1917), Mario Puzo (1920), Italo Calvino (1923); 16--Oscar Wilde (1854), Eugene O'Neill (1888); 17--Sir John Bowring (1792), Georg Büchner (1813), Yvor Winters (1900), Nathanael West (1903), Arthur Miller (1915), Jimmy Breslin (1930); 18--Henri Bergson (1859), Barry Gifford (1946), Ntozake Shange (1948), Terry McMillan (1951), Rick Moody (1961); 19--Sir Thomas Browne (1605), John LeCarre (1931);

20--Karl Theodorree (1808), Arthur Rimbaud (1854), Ellery Queen co-author Frederic Dannay (1905), Art Buchwald (1925), Michael McClure (1932); 21--Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772), Ursula K. Le Guin (1929); 22--Ivan Bunin (1870), Doris Lessing (1919), Max Apple (1941); 23--Michael Crichton (1942); 24--Alban Butler (1710), Moss Hart (1904), Denise Levertov (1923);

25--Benjamin Constant (1767), John Berryman (1914), Harold Brodkey (1930), Anne Tyler (1941); 26--Andrei Bely (Boris N. Bugary), (1880), Karin Maria Boye (1900), Beryl Markham (1902), Pat Conroy (1945); 27--Hester Chapone (1727), Dylan Thomas (1914), Sylvia Plath (1932), Fran Lebowitz (1950); 28--Nicholas Brady (1659), Pío Baroja (1872), Evelyn Waugh (1903), John Hollander (1929), Anne Perry (1938); 29--James Boswell (1740);

30--Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821), Ezra Pound (1885), Rudolfo Anaya (1937); 31--Christopher Anstey (1724), John Keats (1795), Dick Francis (1920).

NORTH FLORIDA WRITERS MEETINGS AND CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Every Wednesday: 7:30 p.m.; BARD SOCIETY; Frank Green 234-8383; Email frankgrn@comcast.net

Every Thursday, 6:45 p.m.; FIRST COAST CHRISTIAN WRITERS GROUP; Christ's Church, 6045 Greenland Rd, Rm 204, near I-95 & 9A; Email: Dr.Lorraine@comcast.net

Saturday, Oct. 11, 2 p.m.; NORTH FLORIDA WRITERS; Webb Wesconnett Library; www.northfloridawriters.org

________________________________

MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION FOR N. FLORIDA WRITERS

Membership is $15 for students, $25 for individuals, and $40 for a family. (Make out checks to WRITERS.) Mail your check to WRITERS, c/o Howard Denson, 1511 Pershing Rd., Jacksonville, FL 32205.

Name___________________________________________ _____________

St. address_________________________________ Apt. No. ____________

City ______________________________State _____ Zip ______________

E-mail address: __________________________________ _____________

________________________________