"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Archive for February, 2016

Monday Must Read! Tasha Cotter: Girl in the Cave

tasha cotterThis week meet Tasha Cotter, the author of three poetry collections, including Some Churches (Gold Wake Press, 2013), That Bird Your Heart (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and Girl in the Cave (Tree Light Books, 2016). Winner of the 2015 Delphi Poetry Series, her work has appeared in journals such as Contrary Magazine, NANO fiction, and Booth. In 2015 she was named runner-up in the Carnegie Center’s Next Great Writer contest. A contributor to Women in Clothes (Blue Rider Press, 2014), The Poets on Growth Anthology (Math Paper Press, 2015), and the 2017 Poet’s Market (Writer’s Digest Books), she makes her home in Lexington, Kentucky where she works in higher education.

Buy Tasha’s books!

http://www.amazon.com/Tasha-Cotter/e/B00AO7JBX6

Read More From Tasha Online:

Superstition Review:

https://superstitionreview.asu.edu/

Interim Magazine:

http://interim.squarespace.com/

storySouth:

http://www.storysouth.com/2015/09/the-passing-of-everyone-else.html

Hear Tasha Read!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt8936wYw-g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzbeoTpAQEE

Happy Reading, Y’all!

xo

Mary

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, poetry, Writing

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Great Places To Find Calls For Submissions

Two great lists for writers 🙂 

The wonderful and inimitable poet and unparalleled literary citizen Allison Joseph hosts one of the best resources at her Creative Writing Opportunities group on Yahoo (CRWROPPS for short) Check it out! 

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/crwropps-b/info

Another good one: Places For Writers 🙂

http://www.placesforwriters.com/

Send that beautiful work out, y’all! 

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Call for Submissions, Creativity, Dreams, Editing, Friday Call for Submissions, litmags, publishing, Writing

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Sometimes the Prompt Leads to Clarity

Daily Prompt

Make art about choosing where you focus. 

91418-Focus-On-The-Journey-Not-The-Destination

 

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2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Gratitude, Love, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Sometimes the Prompt Opens Us Up

Daily Prompt
 
Harvard Launches Free Online Class To Promote Religious Literacy
 
Make art about tolerance.
 

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2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Gratitude, Love, One Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Friday Call For Submissions Love <3 Uproot

UPROOT

Uproot is a literary journal housed at the University of Illinois Springfield whose main interest lies in place–more specifically, moving from place to place. We’re interested in geological and emotional estrangement, displacement, alienation, longing, and all of the other contradictory feelings associated with moving to a new/old location. We want to read and share literature that challenges notions of genre, work that pulls you up by the roots and plants you somewhere else, somewhere unexpected.

General Submission Guidelines:
We are especially interested in hybrid works, including flash fiction, prose poetry, and the lyric essay. Our only limitation is that submissions fall under 5,000 words and contain no more than 6 individual works.
Please submit work as either .doc/.docx file or PDF file as attachments.
We do not accept work that has been copied and pasted into the body of an email.
Please submit a brief 60 word bio written in the 3rd person.
Please send only original, unpublished work.
We do accept simultaneous submissions.
If your work has been published elsewhere please let us know so we can retract your submission.
We do not accept multiple submissions. We will only accept one submission per person per submission window.

Current submission window for next issue is 2/5/16-3/5/16.
Please send submissions to uprootmagATgmailDOTcom

UPROOT Website: https://uprootmag.wordpress.com/

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Call for Submissions, Creativity, Editing, fiction, Friday Call for Submissions, litmags, nonfiction, poetry, publishing, Writing

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Sometimes You Have To Give the Prompt Away

Daily Prompt 

“I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.”~Kahlil Gibran

Just wrote an email to a famous person on behalf of a former student, not at the student’s request, but just because i believe the student’s amazing and if nothing else, I can put the kid’s name in front of someone, And yeah it’s a totally idealistic shot in the dark, but what the hey? Lifetime mantra: The worst they can do is tell me No, right? And if they do, then I’m no worse off than I was before I asked. 🙂 

Survival tip #1 for me? When the moment feels darkest, do something good and loving for someone else. That’s what brings the Light ❤

Make art about healing through generosity. 

giving

 

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Gratitude, Love, One Love, Writing, Writing Prompts

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Sometimes the Prompt Sets You Free

Daily Prompt
 
“I am in love, hence free to live by heart”~Vera Pavlova
 
Make art about freedom.
free heart
 

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2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Gratitude, Love, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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What Makes Our Writing Community So Beautiful! MockingHeart Review

Thanks and Love to that angel Clare L. Martin for helping to celebrate Trailer Park Oracle over at her beautiful journal MockingHeart Review!

Generosity and sacred hearts like Clare’s are what make our community of writers such a blessing ❤

I tell my students, “Community doesn’t just happen. We have to take care of each other.”

If you haven’t yet, please visit and support MockingHeart Review!

Spread the Love, y’all! ❤

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, book tour, Books, Creativity, Family, Gratitude, Love, One Love, publishing, Writing

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Trailer Park Oracle! So Excited! My newest book released!

Special delivery today!

 FullSizeRender (86)

Thanks to Karen Kelsay Davies and Aldrich Press for giving these crazy little poems a home ❤ Thanks to Amy Tudor, Doug Van Gundy, and Julie Brooks Barbour, for the time and lovely words they offered about this odd little book, and special eternal BIG LOVE and gratitude to my former student artist angel baby extraordinaire Aaron Persh for the unbelievably beautiful cover art! 

Trailer Park Oracle now available on Amazon, y’all! Get it here! 
_______________

This is a book that peers from the edges of wild places: from the flickerings of a French film to the heady thrills of train trestles, from the doorways of long-abandoned houses to the quiet of the vigils at the hospital bed. With a voice both gentle and fierce, Carroll-Hackett’s poems are unafraid to see us as the aching creatures we are, to ask the hard questions of language and loss, not even flinching as they reveal the wonder and pain of our very world like the title poem’s Oracle, “calling them as they played, no cushioning of the blow.”

— Amy Tudor, author of A Book of Birds and Studies in Extinction

The needs that haunt our lives also haunt Mary Carroll-Hackett’s newest collection. In Trailer Park Oracle, there is a need for food and love, and to find the true self. But Carroll-Hackett also reminds us that among all of the shining things in this world, we might sometimes forget who we are. “So you repeat, some mantra you think you’re making, until it all just becomes shaking.” Through the rich narrative of this collection, we are reminded of the path back to ourselves, how “the seed knew, at last, its own light.”

–Julie Brooks Barbour, author of Small Chimes

These poems are anchored in love – stubborn, earth-bound, unrelenting love and the generosity that it engenders. And while Carroll-Hackett is NOT the oracle of the title, she is a diviner nevertheless, looking through the quotidian – bread & blankets, Ferris wheels & automotive transmissions, dead deer and starving bears – for clues to the mysterious nature of our human hearts.

–Doug Van Gundy, author of A Life Above Water 

 

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, book tour, Books, Creativity, Dreams, Gratitude, Love, poetry, publishing, Writing

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Sometimes the Day IS the Poem

❤ ❤ ❤

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, Gratitude, Love, Music, One Love

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