Articles – Page 140 – Philadelphia Stories

An Arty Party: Extraordinary Gifts: Remarkable Women of the Delaware Valley opens at the Cheltenham Center for the Arts.

Moxie: Book and exhibit honors Alcott, Mead, and other local heroine of history

Times Chronicle: Elkins Park woman wins Philadelphia Stories Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize

Forgotten Philadelphia’ Conjures City’s Ever-present History

Publishing Executive Magazine City Spotlight: Philadelphia: Publishing ‘Wit’ It seems fitting, as a scene once centralized and institutional has now become diversified and entrepreneurial—qualities that bode well for the business of publishing in the City of Brotherly Love.

The Metro: Forgotten Philadelphia Art Exhibit Opens at Love Park
Institutions whose cultural import have been obscured by the dust left in progress’s wake are documented in “Forgotten Philadelphia,” an exhibition at the Fairmount Park Welcome Center featuring poems, short stories and visual art inspired by the transformation over time of 15 significant sites.

Lancaster Online
Board member Mitchell Sommers, whose story Bando was included in the Best of Philadelphia Stories: Volume 2, discusses the balance of work and the writing in life in “Lawyers make case for literary pursuits.”

Examiner on Push to Publish
By Joan Hanna

This year’s Push to Publish: Strategies and Techniques to Get Your Work in Print and Online will include keynote speakers, discussion panels, breakout sessions, and a 10 minute meet with editors. Registration and breakfast will be in McShane hall on the lower level next to the bookstore at 9 am. …

Philadelphia Stories on WXPN
Hear Philadelphia Stories read live fom the Kelly Writers House.
Michaela Mijoun introduces the readers.
Robin Parks
Curtis Smith
Scott Glassman
Raima Evans
Marc Schuster

Philadelphia Stories Masthead

Fiction Editor
Mitchell Sommers

Assistant Fiction Editor
Amy Luginbuhl

Poetry Editor
Courtney Bambrick

Assistant Poetry Editor
Nicole Marie Pasquarello

Nonfiction Editor
Julia MacDonnell Chang

Art Editor
Pam McLean-Parker

Production Manager
Derek Carnegie

Web Design
Loic Duros

Contest Coordinator
Nicole Marie Pasquarello

Editorial Assistant
Lena Van

Marketing Assistant
Dom Saunders

Interns (click HERE to learn how to become an intern)

Editorial Board

FICTION
Aimee LaBrie
Brian Ellis
Darrah M. Hewlett
Owen Hamill
Shelley Schenk
Elizabeth Green
Lena Van
Conor Mintzer
Nathan Long
Abigail Reed
Chelsea Covington Maass
Walt Maguire
Leslie McRobbie
Robert Kerbeck
Kathleen Furin
Addison Namnoum

POETRY
Peter Baroth
Deborah Burnham
Blythe Davenport
Liz Rose Dolan
Margot Douahiy
Pat Green
Vernita Hall
Maria James Thiaw
David Kozinski
Ed Krizek
Shira Moolten
Aimee Penna
Thomas Jay Rush
John Shea
Notus Williams

NONFICTION
Deborah Off
Sarah Wecht
Rachel Mamola
Sam Dodge
Conor Mintzer
Andrea Vinci

Board of Directors
Concha Alborg
Alison Hicks
Alex Husted
Mitchell Sommers
Will Woldenberg

PS Junior/Teen
Aileen Bachant, director
Kara Cochran, assistant director
Sharada Krishnamurthy, Lead Editor, PS Teen
Heather Kristian, Lead Editor, PS Junior

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Philadelphia Stories Fiction Workshop with Aimee LaBrie

Philadelphia Stories Fiction Workshop: An 8-week workshop from the area’s popular literary magazine that offers writing tips, assignments, and peer critique.

Moderator: Aimee LaBrie received her MA in writing from DePaul University in 2000 and her MFA in fiction Penn State in 2003. Her collection of short stories, Wonderful Girl, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction in 2007 and was published by the University of North Texas Press.Other stories of hers have been published in Minnesota Review, Pleiades, Quarter After Eight, Iron Horse Literary Review, and numerous other literary journals. Her short story, "Ducklings" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Pleiades. Most recently, she was awarded first prize in Zoetrope’s national short fiction contest.

Fee: $200. Writing sample required (max word count of 2000 words). STUDENTS MUST BE APPROVED BY MS. LABRIE.

Schedule: Mondays, 6-7:30pm. NEXT SESSION: September 10 through October 29, 2012.

Location: Robin’s Moonstone, second floor of 110A S. 13th Street (convenient to parking and just 3 blocks from Suburban Station)

The course: Each week, short weekly writing assignments are due from students. Students will also be asked to read published stories and essays about fiction writing (available online) to facilitate class discussion.

The goal: This class focuses on writing short literary fiction. Students will write two short stories during the 8-week course. Excerpts from novels and genre fiction will not be critiqued. The goal of the workshop is to provide writing discussion and professional development to help experienced writers improve their writing and learn through the peer-critique process. For more information, please email christine@philadelphiastories.org

Making the Most of Your Speed Date

You will have a rare and fun opportunity at Push to Publish: Ten minutes of face time with an agent or editor. We call this a “speed date,” and you will sign up for your date at registration on a first come, first serve basis.

In a speed date, the writer spends ten minutes with an editor or an agent, who provides intensive feedback on one to two pages of the writer’s prose (this is what I see as your strengths and weaknesses based on these one to two pages of work, etc.). The agents are always the most popular choice, but spend your time wisely: if you don’t have a polished, completed manuscript, you may not be ready to meet with an agent. There will be many quality editors at the event, and many editors have gone on to publish writers they meet at the speed date.

Below, please find tips that will help you make the most of this time. While this is primarily for novels, many of these tips can be used to pitch stories and poetry as well.

The Preparation

1. Write a one-page synopsis of your work. If you can’t get it all in one page, then take as many pages as you need for the first pass. Then go over it again, making it fewer pages. Repeat this until you get down to about one page.

2. Now, try to condense the whole thing into a paragraph. This forces you to see what the story is really about. You’ll need this for what many people call the “one-sheet” or “one-page.”

Some things that most folks put into a one sheet: author bio, genre, approximate word-count, content (or summary—this would be that one paragraph you just wrote), market-analysis (you can list similar books in the past five years, authors whose writing style is similar to yours, target audience/likely readers, etc.), availability. Print this out and bring it with you so you have something to show the agent/editor.

3. Next, try to condense your paragraph into one (or two) sentences. This is your elevator pitch (i.e., how you’d pitch your novel if you ran into an agent on an elevator, or have only a few minutes). This is helpful to have for conversations you might have with agents and editors you will meet throughout the day. If they ask for more, then you can give them your one paragraph blurb.

4. Last, look at your summary and pull out bullet items. Bring this bullet list with you for a reference while you talk about your story (so you stay in order and don’t miss any important points).

The Date

Determine which editors/agents you would like to see, and put them in priority order. The appointments will be made at registration on a first-come, first-serve basis, so have a list handy. You may not see your first choice, but there will be plenty of great people to talk to, so come prepared with alternate choices.
Find out what you can about the editors/agents ahead of time. This ensures you are seeing the best person for your work.
Bring your one-sheet, synopsis, and first three chapters.
Tell the editor or agent what you have with you. They usually ask to look at one of those things—sometimes all of them, as you tell them what your book or story is about. Be passionate about what you’ve written.
The agent or editor usually reads or skims your writing sample and can make many helpful comments in the ten-minute time period (usually compliments as well as suggestions).
If they do ask for a proposal, be sure to go to their website for their proposal guidelines. If they don’t have guidelines listed, visit the sites of other agents/editors to see what most of them want, and be sure to include that in the proposal you send out. Don’t let the opportunity pass you by! Send that proposal. They won’t buy it if they never see it.

So, to recap, bring:

One-page synopsis, one-sheet, first three chapters, all printed out and ready to go.
Elevator pitch, memorized
One-paragraph, memorized
One-page synopsis bullet list printed out

Have fun – and good luck with your pitches!

At The Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities

It’s a miracle we survive at all,
I say, as we walk the cases,
wincing at a colon as big as a stove pipe,
scowling at ribs deformed
by corsets, and spines collapsed
into little broken heaps, the horns
and warts and tumors
jutting out of waxen faces,
carbuncles and gouty toes,
a lady whose fat has turned her into soap.

But my brother, being a man, jokes on.
He sees a petrified penis and gasps,
I’ll never look at beef jerky the same way again,
as I giggle and cringe.

Until a whole wall of bloodless
babies in jars breaks over us like a wave,
all stages of fetal development,
followed by the terrible web of maladies;
so many damaged dolls,
each one a lesson in fragility.

He points to the anencephalic ones,
saying they look like trolls,
but then a lonely floater
in its little sea of tears
sends him into silence,
for we could be at the grave
of the little ghost he’s been
tethered to for seventeen years:
his first girl, all tangled in her cord,
born still and cold as snow.
I can’t bring myself
to tell him about the tiny
pearl of a zygote my heart tows.

Eileen Moeller has an M.A. in Poetry from Syracuse University, and many years experience as a Storyteller. Her poems have appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, Feminist Studies, Icarus Rising, Writing Women, and more. She judged the 2004 Milton Dorfman Poetry Contest, and the 2005/2006 Syracuse Association of American Penwomen contests Her work Body In Transit, is online at skinnycatdesign.co.uk/eileen/.

Yonatan’s First Time in Snow

bare feet in the grass, white tee-shirt,

palms up, gathering what fell to earth.

Everybody wanted to see him, see like him,

something for the first time.

Then came the collective

to establish Rule by New.

Rachel drove to the shore in a new car

listening to the Muppets’ Greatest Hits.

James took up T’ai Chi and karate

until he broke his fist on a sewer pipe.

Emily pledged a sorority, put pictures

of 80 new friends on her wall.

Sam drank Maddog

vomited fluorescent green

then picked up smoking.

After the snow Yonatan became

quite alone, old news as everybody was addicted to Newness.

After graduation he spied for the Mossad.

Word on the internet is that he’s now a ranger

somewhere in Arizona, investing and

earning $500.00 per hour for tantric massage.

For the others, The New became passe while

The gods of ordered lives awoke from hibernation.

In the spring they all graduated marrying one another on the same day.

Their kids were all born within a few weeks of each other.

When the kids were adolescents, they fell to a disorder

whose victims think only in rubber ducky ideas.

Squeak squeak. Squeak squeak.

Matt Sutin teaches English at Interboro High School and coaches wrestling just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has been published in Iconoclast, Spokenwar.com, Grogger.org, and has been a featured reader at Heebs in the House, and the Mid Atlantic Poetry Festival. His poetry is also featured in Lines of Sight, a permanent art instillation at Brown University.

Lamplight

Wait. It was late winter and Orion lay close to the horizon,

dim over the pine forest to the east. I put out

my cigarette on the wall and went in.

I would have called my daughter

from the payphone in the corner,

just to check on her,

but I didn’t have a daughter,

or even a wife. I went to the bathroom

and threw up three times.

That was the end of several things.

It was too cold to walk home.

Light stuttered in my glass,

my hands trembled:

fireflies ready to shatter,

to fill the bar with their dust.

The bartender watched me silently.

Maybe, if there was something to take comfort in,

I could remember.

But day came through the pines a blue haze,

edged a road pockmarked with doubt

and doggedly straight.

So I went home.

And spent hours turning through phonebooks,

names smeared black

on fingertips, a straight road, a chasing.

If there was something to take comfort in,

maybe I could remember more than just motion,

two bicycles circling a cul-de-sac,

kicking up leaves, gray sky, blind houses, circling.

Wait. There was a night. If I had a daughter I would have.

I would have. Maybe I could remember.

A cold bar, glass dust

in lamplight, no,

no, a circle of constellations,

filled with names, unwinding.

Michael Castle received a BA in English (emphasis in creative writing) and a BA in Neuroscience at Kenyon College. Shortly afterwards, in 2006, he moved to West Philadelphia, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania.

Landscape

When I was fourteen Pennsylvania rained ice for three days.

Trees collapsed one by one

outside my window, until only a single pine

swayed unsteady in the frost.

Years later and alone, it leans toward the interstate

and a warm, foreign evening.

Through the open door television light scatters

baseball across the empty lawn; two voices speak calmly

and without pause, the dry mumble of summer.

A crow circles

over the slant of the roof,

revolving gently

in the uncertain night.

The voices stop with a click and a rush,

and my brother steps out of the house, a beer in his hand,

shoes scratching in the dirt next to me.

“Rain delay,” he says without turning,

and sits down on the stoop.

A faint shout from the direction of town

shivers in the air, something almost imagined.

Searching, the crow perches on a branch,

shaking itself sharply in the wind,

a single thought coming alive in its mind

and disintegrating slowly.

We find out about things too late, usually.

Somewhere far away

it must be raining.

The long gray of the clouds explains:

a distant pause, unsteady.

Novel Workshop with Elizabeth Mosier: Spring 2011

Where: Trinity Center for Urban Life (French Room), 22nd & Spruce Streets, Philadelphia
When: Saturday, April 16, 9 – 5
Fee: $75 includes all-day workshop and lunch (max. 20 participants); $65 for students, seniors.

Writing a novel requires more than just endurance-it requires using familiar tools in an unfamiliar way to solve narrative problems. Bring your complete, in-progress, or long-abandoned novel to this daylong trouble-shooting workshop. We’ll tackle the mental blocks that keep us fixed instead of finished, and practice new strategies for planning, plotting, and pacing a novel-length work.

You will be asked to submit the first and last pages of your novel draft, plus a 1-page (250-word) synopsis before the workshop. You will be asked to bring a paper or electronic copy of your novel draft to the workshop for your reference during our series of hands-on exercises.

Who should take the workshop?   This workshop will help the writer who has completed the first or second draft of a novel, and who is ready to “re-see” the work in order to find the best, most compelling way to tell the story.

The workshop will teach: 

* How divergent thinking aids the process of revision.

* Using your novel synopsis as a writing tool.

* Establishing authority and fulfilling promises in your opening and closing chapters.

* Clarifying character and conflict.

* Effective plotting of key scenes.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

[img_assist|nid=5771|title=Elizabeth Mosier|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=68]Elizabeth Mosier is the author of the novel, My Life as a Girl (Random House), and numerous short stories and essays published in magazines including Seventeen, Child, and Poets and Writers. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, she teaches writing in a variety of settings, including Bryn Mawr College.

To learn more about registering, please email christine@philadelphiastories.org. NOTE: We are only accepting 20 students for this workshop on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Workshops

FOR ADULTS

WORKSHOPS

Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio with Alison Hicks (Delaware County/Main Line; Center City)

Philadelphia Writers’ Workshop with Rachel Kobin   (Flourtown, PA)

Drexel Storylab for non-matriculating students

Main Line School Night

WRITERS GROUPS & MEETUPS

Philadephia Writers Meetup: Attend a Writers Meetup to review work, trade literary tips, make friends and have fun! All writers — and should-be writers — are welcome.

Main Line Writer’s Coffeehouse: New Leaf Club, Third Sunday of the Month, 12-2

Willow Grove Writer’s Coffeehouse: Willow Grove Barnes & Noble, Last Sunday of the Month, 12-3

FOR YOUTH

Mighty Writers: free writing programs help students (ages 7-17) that develop reading and writing skills.

Philadelphia Stories

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