The Electronic Write Stuff
Writing News for the Sunshine State & the Solar System

In this issue:

Book Island Festival To Feature Novelists, Poets, Nonfiction Authors, Agents, Editors

Karen Harvey to Speak to NFW Oct. 8

Phyllis McEwen as Zora Neale Hurston Oct. 10 at FCCJ’s North Campus Auditorium

Quotes from a Writer’s Quill – G. K. Chesterton

Writers Born in October
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BOOK ISLAND FESTIVAL TO FEATURE NOVELISTS, POETS, NONFICTION AUTHORS, AGENTS, EDITORS


The Amelia Book Island Festival, going on now until Sunday, Oct. 2, is featuring novelists, poets, nonfiction authors, agents, and editors.

Earlier today, at the Betty Cook Nassau Center of FCCJ, novelist Steve Berry discussed The Third Secret. On Friday, at 11 at the Yulee Center, there will be a free talk involving David Liss, author of A Conspiracy of Paper, A Spectacle of Corruption, and other novels.

On Friday, at 10 a.m. in the auditorium at North Campus, novelist Brian Corrigan (The Poet of Loch Ness) will discuss the autobiography of a novel in the auditorium.

Interested persons may order tickets by phone at 904.491.8176 by leaving their name and number. Tickets are on sale in Fernandina Beach at Books Plus, the First Coast Community Bank, the Golf Club of Amelia Island, the Amelia Community Theatre. Tickets for Friday and Saturday Festival Days may also be purchased at the door. Luncheon tickets will not be sold the day of the event.

Any questions should be e-mailed to tickets@bookisland.org or calls should be made to 904.321.0645.

The Saturday program will let attendees choose among five workshops/panels. Slight changes have been made in the schedule, but generally the Festival offers the following:

From 9 to 9:50, Terri Ridgell (Operation Stiletto) and Nicole Kelby (Whale Season) will speak on "Loving the Off Beat" (i.e., quirky people and humor).

Steve Berry will speak about "Plotting is the Key."

"Lessons from the Casinos" will have James Swain (Sucker Bet) tell about what readers don't know about gambling.

Elizabeth Thomas (If Red Could Talk) will discuss "Performance Poetry--and the Poetry Slam."

A panel on the perspectives of editors and publishers will feature Frank Gromling (Ocean Publishing), Karen Wyed (Echelon), Carolyn Newman (River City), and Jim Gilbert (River City).

From 10 to 10:50, Quang Pham (A Sense of Duty) will discuss nonfiction, while Susan Vreeland (Girl in Hyacinth Blue) gives an author talk.

Kathryn Wall (Resurrection Road) and Terry Lewis (Conflict of Interest) will discuss "Strong Characters, Narrative and Action."

Susan Carol McCarthy (True Fires) and Ben Green (Before His Time) will speak on "Old Crimes with Long Shadows," fiction and nonfiction based on racial conflicts and unsolved slayings.

Brian Corrigan, winner of the novel contest of the Florida First Coast Writers' Festival, and Wayne Greenhaw (The Long Journey) will talk about "Story and Sense of Place."

Autographing and bookselling will take place from 11 to 11:50 a.m. and again from 1:30 to 2 p.m., while a lunch with authors will be from noon to 1:30 at the Recreation Center on Atlantic Avenue.

From 2 to 2:50 p.m., the following workshops will be held: "The Language of Poetry," with Dorothy Fletcher (Zen Fishing and Other Southern Pleasures) and Nola Perez (In the Season of Tropical Depression); "The Writer's Path: How Novelists Go from Inspiration to Published Book," with Charles Martin (Wrapped in Rain) and Darlene Eaton; "Scandals in Paradise: Con Artists, Crime, and Exotic Places," with Bob Morris (Jamaica Me Dead) and James Swain; "True Stories: Creating a Compelling, Satisfying Nonfiction Book," with Wayne Greenhaw (The Thunder of Angels) and Quang X. Pham; "Words and Music: Writers Inspired by the World of Entertainment," with Rich Everitt (Falling Stars) and Carl T. Smith (Nothin' Left to Lose).

From 3 to 3:50 p.m., attendees may choose to attend workshops dealing with nature, politics, Florida and travel, etc. "The World Around Us," with Bille Belleville (River of Lakes) and Nancy Robson (Course of the Waterman) will focus on how nature writing converges with adventure and environmental writing in nonfiction, novels, and films. David Liss will tell about "Writing the Political Novel in an Age of Apathy." Diane Roberts (Dream State) and Herb Hiller (Highway A1A—Florida at the Edge) will tell why there's more than meets the eye in "You Know You're in Florida When?". "Writing for Young Readers" will be the topic for Adrian Fogelin (Sister Spider Tells All) and Pamela Mueller (Hello, Goodbye, I Love You). In "Working with Agents and Editors," attendees will hear advice from Mark Tavani (Random House), Joe Veltre (Artists Literary Group), Steve Berry, and Bob Morris (Bahamarama).

The final workshops on Saturday will be from 4 to 4:50 p.m. "Weaving Unforgettable Fiction" will feature advice from Brian Corrigan and Nicole Kelby, while "Creating a Mystery Series that Keeps Readers Hooked" will provide advice from Carl T. Smith and Kathryn Wall (Judas Island). In "Women's Fiction," Ellyn Bache (Safe Passage) and Terri Ridgell will explain why it isn't what you may have thought. Carol Beck will talk on "Learning to Explore Intuition," and Mark Rentz (Megaladon) will tell about hunting for ancient creatures in "Fossil Tales and Shark Teeth."

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PHYLLIS McEWEN AS ZORA NEALE HURSTON

OCT. 10 AT FCCJ’S NORTH CAMPUS AUDITORIUM

      The late Zora Neale Hurston will “walk and talk” among us, sort of, when performance artist, poet, and librarian Phyllis McEwen portrays the famed Floridian writer, folklorist, and anthropologist. 

      The performance will be at 11 a.m., Monday, Oct. 10, in the FCCJ North Campus auditorium (4501 Capper Rd., Jax 32218).

      When the Florida Humanities Council asked her to create a one-woman performance piece about Hurston in 1990, McEwen chose to highlight Hurston during the height of her literary career, circa 1938.

      The previous year, Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God was released.  It is a story of love and heartbreak, struggle and triumph. In 1938, Hurston finished Tell My Horse, a collection of folklore gathered from her visits to the Florida Everglades, Georgia’s Sea Islands, New Orleans and Haiti. 

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QUOTE FROM A WRITER’S QUILL

 Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

-- G. K. Chesterton


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), Philarète 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).

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CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Meetings of NFW are held on the second Saturday of the month at 2 p.m. on the Kent Campus of Florida Community College of Jacksonville. We generally meet in F128B (auditorium conference room).

You may receive feedback from specific individuals by mailing the manuscript and return postage to the above address.



Oct. 8: Karen Harvey, Ghosts of St. Augustine

Nov. 12: Critiques only

Dec. 10: Lillian Brown, Banned in Boston



Past speakers have included novelists Jack Hunter, David Poyer, Page Edwards, Ruth Coe Chambers, William Kerr, Tom Lashley; poets, William Slaughter, Mary Baron, Mary Sue Koeppel, Dorothy Fletcher, George Gilpatrick; columnists Vic Smith, Tom Ivines, and Robert Blade; editors Buford Brinlee and Nan Ramey; agent Debbie Fine; magazine editor Sara Summers; medical writers Elizabeth Tate and Michael Pranzatelli; oral historian Robert Gentry; plus many others.

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"WE ASPIRE TO CREATE

WITH WORDS."



The Write Staff

Carrol Wolverton, President (carrolwolve@hotmail.com)

Richard Levine, Vice President (richie@rocketmail.com)

Joyce Davidson, Secretary (Davent2005@comcast.net)

Howard Denson, Treasurer and newsletter editor

(hdenson@fccj.edu)

Joel Young, Public Relations (joshua7786@aol.com)

Doris Cass, Hospitality (ostie46@aol.com)



Presidents Emeritus:

Frank Green, Dan Murphy, Howard Denson,

Nate Tolar, Joyce Davidson,

Margaret Gloag (haggisgal@juno.com),

Richard Levine, Bob Alexander, JoAnn Harter Murray



Newsletter address

The Write Stuff

FCCJ Kent, Box 109

3939 Roosevelt Blvd.

Jacksonville, FL 32205



Homepage address

http://www.northfloridawriters.org

Homepage editor – Richard Levine



Submissions to the newsletter should generally be about writing or publishing. If possible, please submit manuscripts via e-mail.

We pay in copies to the contributors, with modest compensation for postage and copying.



MEMBERSHIP IN THE NFW



If you are writing a story or poem, you will need some expert feedback -- the sort that you will receive at a meeting of the North Florida Writers.

You won't profit from automatic praise that a close friend or relative might give or jealous criticism from others who may feel threatened by your writing.

The NFW specializes in CONSTRUCTIVE feedback that will enable your manuscript to stand on its own two feet and demand that it be accepted by an editor or agent. Hence, you need the NFW.

The North Florida Writers is a writer's best friend because we help members to rid manuscripts of defects and to identify when a work is exciting and captivating.

Membership is $15 for students, $25 for individuals, and $40 for a family. (Make out checks to WRITERS.)

Is your membership current? If you are receiving a paper version (sent to those without e-mail), you may check the mailing label to see if your dues are current. If it says "0104" next to your last name, your membership expired in January 2004. You do not have to pay back dues to activate your members, so, if you last paid in 1992 or 2002, don't worry about the months you were inactive.

Won't you join today?



The following is an application. Mail your check to WRITERS, Box 109, FCCJ Kent, 3939 Roosevelt Blvd., Jacksonville, FL 32205.

Name___________________________________________

St. address____________________________________

Apt. No. ______________________________________

City ________________State _____ Zip __________

E-mail address(es) ___________________________________

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HOW DOES CRITIQUING WORK?



When you attend a meeting of the North Florida Writers, you eventually discover that NO ONE has ever died while his or her manuscript was being read and critiqued. You may be ready to face the ordeal yourself. . .or, reading this, you may wonder what exactly takes place during a critiquing.



First, you pitch your manuscript into a stack with others' works-in-progress. Then one of the NFW members hands out each piece to volunteer readers, taking care NOT to give you back your own manuscript to read.



Second, as the reading begins, each author is instructed NOT to identify himself or herself and especially NOT to explain or defend the work. The writer may never have heard the piece read aloud by another's voice, so the writer needs to focus on the sound of his or her sentences.



Third, at the finish of each selection, the NFW members try to offer constructive advice about how to make the story better.



If a section was confusing or boring, that information may be helpful to the author.

The NFW will listen to 10 pages (double-spaced) of prose (usually a short story or a chapter).

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