Ottawa - The City of Ottawa’s 14th annual 55 + Short Story Contest invites submissions of original, unpublished short stories or memoirs of 2000 words or less by Ottawa residents 55 years or older.

Eight entrants will be named to the 2011 Winners Circle, sharing recognition and prize money of $400. They will be recognized at An Afternoon of Readings on Wednesday April 27, 2011 from 1 to 4 p.m. at the
Heron Seniors’ Centre, 1480 Heron Road.

One of the winning stories will be selected for publication in the spring issue of Forever Young newspaper. Though contestants may submit multiple entries, they will only be eligible to win one prize.

An entry fee of $6.25 per story is applicable. Deadline for submissions is Tuesday, March 15, 2011.

This contest is co-sponsored by the Colonel By Retirement Residence and the Forever Young newspaper.

For full contest details, pick up a brochure at any City of Ottawa Client Service Centre or call the Heron Seniors' Centre at 613-247-4808. ext.2.

Emerging photo artists Jonathan Hobin is seeking and experienced arts grant writer to assist with an upcoming application.
The details of the compensation are negotiable.
Interested parties should respond as soon as possible as the deadline for the application is fast approaching. If you know of a grant writer than please forward their information on or forward the e-mail for Jonathan Hobin to the writer.
Thank you.
Please contact Jonathan Hobin directly jon@jhobin.com
Jonathan Hobin is an award winning artist who's recent series "In The Playroom" has garnered him international attention. The estimated number of viewers around the world who have seen the series "In The Playroom" is now estimated in the tens of millions.

3D SCARY Horror Comic Jam!

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010
Time: 7:00 PM - 10:00pm
Location: Shanghai Restaurant (651 Somerset St. W.)
Cost: free, materials provided

The days are growing short, the nights long and .. what's that sound you heard? Was it a were-Corgi? An apocalyptic Zombie out hunting, in a world where water is more precious than life? Come and find out! Warm up at the Shanghai with some other creative types and get your Horror-Friction on! Eat the hottest thing on the menu and draw some smokin' scary critters with nice, almost-non bitey people.

In partnership with SAW Gallery and Pink Triangle Services (PTS), the Trans Arts Collective is presenting the Queer Youth Comics Project (QYCP). The QYCP is a French and English workshop series teaching LGBTTQ youth how to write and draw comics for self-expression in a supportive environment. This is an innovative initiative to establish more arts programming for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, two-spirited and queer youth in the Ottawa/Outaouais region between the ages of 16 and 25 and their allies.
The last workshop will be a community panel discussion on queer youth open to the public. Discussions will be generated from the workshop participants’ comics. All members of the public are invented to attend to learn more about queer youth. We hope to continue the community dialogue on LGBTTQ youth with an exhibition at the Shenkman Arts Centre in January 2010.
Workshop Dates:
Tuesday, September 14, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
Tuesday, September 26, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
Tuesday, October 12, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
Tuesday, October 24, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
Tuesday, November 9, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
*French and English workshops will be at the same time but at different locations except for the final workshop. The November 9 workshops will be at Club SAW.
English Workshop Location:
Club SAW at SAW Gallery
67 Nicholas Street
Ottawa, ON K1N 7B9
French Workshop Location:
Pink Triangle Services (PTS)
251 Bank St, Suite 301
Ottawa, ON
K2P 1X3
Workshop fee is $100 per workshop participant.
Donations to the project are welcome. Business and community sponsorships are available. Volunteers are needed.
For more information, please contact:
Trans Arts Collective
queeryouthcomics@gmail.com
or
PTS
pinktriangle@bell.net
(613) 563-4818
For QYCP updates, please visit www.facebook.com/qyouthcomics or www.vecroyale.com.

On Tuesday, August 10th, Tree will host Hot Ottawa Voices, where three local writers will be showcased at the Ottawa Arts Court. Performing will be Cameron Anstee, Christine McNair and Gillian Wallace. These poets are selected because they are doing interesting and creative things in the Ottawa poetry community. They should be on your radar to create more of a buzz in the near future, and chapbooks will be for sale at the reading.

Preceding the reading from 6:45-7:45, Claudia Radmore will lead her first of four workshops on contemporary poetry and how everything is connected: the beauty of juxtaposition, Japanese forms and grabbing inspiration. The evening commences with an open mic at 8pm, which is the second-last chance you have to enter Tree's Origami Crane open mic competition.

All entries in Tree's Origami Crane open mic competition must be read at a Tree open mic session no later than August 24, 2010. The video must be recorded and posted to Tree's YouTube account. Printed entries can be no more than one page in length (double-sided, 8.5”x11”) and no less than 12-point type. Readers must also submit one self-photograph electronically. There will be two winners announced in September 2010: one for best poem and the other for best performance of a poem. The winners will also be featured in the first issue of Tree Leaves following the announcement. For more information, please visit the website.

As mentioned before, Ayaan Hirsi Ali will be in Ottawa on June 10, as part of the Ottawa International Writers Festival. The event coincides with the publication of her third book, "Nomad," which is primarily a charting of her alienation from the Muslim faith she grew up in. The Globe and Mail's reviewer, Theodore Dalrymple, is, on the whole, very positive and notes that she states her case "with both modesty and great eloquence." His sole caveat is that "the Enlightenment ideal that she espouses is rather too simple as an answer to the problems of human existence."

The latest issue of Brick magazine contains a series of three essays on the passing of Allan King, the versatile Canadian filmmaker most known for his powerful documentaries on social issues such as race, poverty, domestic abuse, and death. (Here is an insightful youtube clip incorporating an interview with King and footage from some of his films. It also has Orson Welles, smoking a cigar and saying that movie directing is "the only profession in the world where you can be incompetent and go on being successful for thirty years with nobody ever discovering.")

And Prairie Fire magazine contains an interview with Austin Clarke, the author of the Giller Prize-winning The Polished Hoe, in which he discusses race, immigration, and the concept of "home."

The New Quarterly's latest issue -- No. 114, "To List is Human" -- is guest edited by Diane Schoemperlen, and contains, among other things, a charming story by Julie Paul, "The Black Forest."

The esteemed New Brunswick journal The Fiddlehead celebrates its 65th anniversary with stories by Deborah-Anne Tunney and Julie Curwin, and poems by Emily Carr and charles c. smith.

And finally, a note on Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil, which, while it was lauded in the Globe and Mail as "ingenious," the New Yorker has, in a mini-review, derided Martel for making "a series of baffling choices" in his attempt to create thoughtful art out of the Holocaust. Sounds like the only way to decide which one is more accurate is to read it yourself.

Friday

Visit arts&architecture for our next show, “Forests of Lost Dreams,” a collection of textured black & white photographs by Michael Van der Tol. Join us for the vernissage Friday, April 9th from 7 pm – 10 pm for refreshments and to meet the artist.  The exhibition will be on display from April 7 – April 18.  This will be Michael’s second show at arts&architecture; in February 2009, Michael exhibited “Vecchia Struttura,” a stunning collection of textured black & white photographs of Italy. 1181 Bank Street

La Petite Mort Gallery presents...
ONE NIGHT ONLY Exhibit
REMI THERIAULT, "POLAROIDS / INSTANT STORIES."
Vernissage Friday April 9, 2010 / 7 - 10pm
306 Cumberland

Saturday

The Writer’s Room
At The Ottawa School of Speech & Drama
294 Picton Ave. Ottawa (Westboro)
Saturday, April 10, 7:00 p.m.
You are invited to a special evening of readings by some of Ottawa’s best writers of creative non-fiction: Denise Chong, Charlotte Gray, Phil Jenkins, and Kerry Pither. The event is presented by the Ottawa School of Speech & Drama.

In an exciting effort to cultivate new perspectives on the media arts landscape, Vague Terrain (Toronto) and Artengine (Ottawa) are collaborating on a residency for an emerging critic or cultural journalist from the Ottawa-Gatineau area. For one year the selected participant will pen a monthly cross-post to the Vague Terrain and Artengine blogs. The residency kicks off on May 6th with a paid trip to the 2010 Elektra Festival in Montréal to post reviews and more from one of North America's premiere digital culture events. Applicants must be based in the Ottawa-Gatineau area, and are requested to send a resume and letter describing their interest in the electronic and media arts as well as what they would bring to the respective online publications. You may also submit links to previous on-line writings.  

The successful applicant will receive a $1,200.00 stipend; one trip (Ottawa-Montreal) including travel, accomodation and per diem during the festival; and one festival pass to all Elektra events. The resident will also receive workshops from the Ottawa Art Gallery during their 2011 critical writing series Articulation.

Applicants must be available for travel to Montréal from May 5th to 9th, 2010. 
Please submit letters and CV in PDF form to artistic@artengine.ca. The deadline for submission is Monday April 5th. The successful applicant will be notified by April 15th, 2010.
For questions or further information please contact Ryan Stec at Artengine.
Ryan Stec
Artistic Director 613-686-1941
artistic@artengine.ca
----

About Artengine
artengine.ca

Artengine is non-profit artist-run center that foster democratic and innovative approach to creative expression with technology. Based in Ottawa-Gatineau, Artengine runs a modular media and electronics laboratory, produces the biennial Electric Fields festival and operates an artist-run server providing on-line tools to artists and cultural organizations. 

There were lots of in character, consistent, noteworthy things that happened in last night's episode, "The Empire Strikes Jack," but I'm still hung up on two things: Elizabeth MotherChuckin' Fisher and the scenes for next week. First things first:

Elizabeth Fisher, Please Die for Real

Chuck learns of Jack, Elizabeth, and Doug the Lawyer's plot when security shows up to forcibly remove him (and his purple housecoat) from Empire. By the time Elizabeth arrives (wobbling unsteadily on her pins because, I don't know, she doesn't know how to move quickly in heels or she's morning drunk), Chuck's dressed and angry, but he gets to be disappointed as well when Elizabeth assures him that she's behind the eviction. Betrayed, Chuck informs Blair, Nate, and Serena that Empire is lost, but he's still holding out hope Jack is blackmailing Elizabeth. Turns out not so: Elizabeth loves Jack so much that she was willing to play her role in the elaborate ruse to wrest Empire from Chuck, only now she maybe feels a bit bad about that because maybe she likes Chuck. I'm not entirely sure because the actress playing Elizabeth really isn't on par with everyone else on the show. The devastation on Ed Westwick's exquisitely expressive face made the scene work anyway (also good: his pea coat. That thing was rockin'). In their third and final scene, Elizabeth tells Chuck that she signed over the Empire to Jack for real and is now fleeing the country to get away from the man she loved so much that she came back from the dead to ruin her son's life in myriad new ways. Chuck heartbreakingly begs his mother to stay for him, so she tells him that she's not even his mother. Sadly, we don't have long to cheer that confirmation before a final phone call between Jack and Elizabeth reveals that yes, she really is Chuck's mom, and she just decided to lie to him some more because she's a truly terrible human being. Anyway, she's off to find herself or some such bullshit.

American author/actress/socialite/designer Gloria Vanderbilt is establishing a literary prize for Canadian short-story authors. The prize is dedicated in the memory of her son Carter V. Cooper, who committed suicide in 1988. So, she's responsible for real life hottie Anderson Cooper, fictionally related to hottie Nate Archibald, and giving to the literary community in Canada? Gloria Vanderbilt is some kind of magic.

On Tuesday, February 23, Tree will host two writers at the Ottawa Arts Court. Local poet / writer and Archibald Lampman award-winner Stephen Brockwell will perform some of his work, followed by Stuart Ross reading from his first collection of stories in over a decade, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog. The evening will begin at 8 p.m., and preceding the reading from 6:45-7:45 Terry Ann Carter will host her first of a series of four workshops for emerging writers.

Stephen Brockwell currently lives in Ottawa but has spent a large part of his life in Montreal and other equally exhilarating places. His Fruitfly Geographic won the 2005 Archibald Lampman Award for best book of poetry by an Ottawa resident. He runs his own IT consulting business from home, and he is the author of several books including The Wire in Fences, The Cometology (ECW Press, 2001), and The Real Made Up (ECW Press, 2007). He has written reviews and articles for The Danforth Review, Rubicon and Books in Canada. Recent work of his has appeared in Arc, Prairie Fire, the Fiddlehead, the Antigonish Review, and Queen St Quarterly.

Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad's office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto's Yonge Street wearing signs like "Writer Going To Hell: Buy My Books," selling over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks. A tireless literary press activist, he is the co-founder of the Toronto Small Press Book Fair and now a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective, Poetry Editor at Mansfield Press, and Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine. Stuart has edited several small literary magazines including Mondo Hunkamooga: A Journal of Small Press Stuff, Syd & Shirley, Who Torched Rancho Diablo? and Peter O'Toole: A Magazine of One-Line Poems. He is the author of two collaborative novels, a previous collection of stories, and six full-length poetry books. He has also published a collection of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (Anvil Press), and edited the anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence (The Mercury Press). Stuart has taught writing workshops across Canada. He lives in Toronto. In spring 2009, Freehand Books released his first short-story collection in more than a decade, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog. In spring 2011, ECW Press will release his first novel, Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew.