"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

Posts tagged ‘prompts’

Daily Prompt Catch-Up! Heat, and Travel, and the Child You Were

 

18 August 2016

Gettin that August blast of summer heat!

“I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer.”~Violette Leduc

Make art about relentless heat.

august heat

19 August 2016
So I stood in my yard today and watched a truck hauling a trailer lose control just long enough to smash my mailbox to smithereens.19 August 2016

Make art about witnessing destruction.

Mailbox

20 August 2016

Visiting with family and looking through some newly discovered old family photographs, including some I’d never seen of that wild lil girl I was 🙂

Make art about yourself as a child.

me and a tree

21 August 2016

My sons helped me shuck, cut, and can six dozen ears of corn today. It’s a messy job, but now the house smells like caramel corn, and we have yummy summer in a jar for those cold winter months.

Make art about a task that’s hard, but worth it.

corn

22 August 2016

I’m headed out later this week for a spiritual retreat and a couple of road trip visits with family. Excited, but fretting over getting all my stuff ready.

Make art about preparing to travel.

cat suitcase

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops

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Some MidWeek Call for Submissions Love <3 Foliate Oak

Foliate Oak Seeks Strangely Beautiful Work

Deadline: October 1, 2016

 

Foliate Oak Literary Magazine wants your best writing, art, and photography. We are seeking submissions from contributors who we have not previously published. Please read our guidelines before submitting:www.foliateoak.com/submit.html.

From their guidelines:

“We love previously unpublished quirky writing that makes sense, preferably flash fiction (less than 1000 words). We are eager to read short creative nonfiction also. We rarely accept submissions that have over 2700 words. We enjoy poems that we understand, preferably not rhyming poems, unless you make the rhyme so fascinating we’ll wonder why we ever said anything about avoiding rhymes. Give us something fresh, unexpected, and will make us say, “Wow!” We’re not interested in homophobic, religious rants, or pornographic, violent stories. 

Please:  No genre (sci-fi, fantasy, fan fiction).”

Website: http://www.foliateoak.com/

More on their Guidelines and Submission here!

 

Category:

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

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Daily Prompt Love <3 Talk Poverty

17 August 2016 

US Poverty Rates as of 2014

For more information, visit Talk Poverty

Overall Poverty Rate: 14.8%

Percentage of people who fell below the poverty line—$23,834 for a family of four—in 2014

Twice the Poverty Level: 33.4%

Percent of people who fell below twice the poverty line—$47,668 for a family of four—in 2014

Half the Poverty Level: 6.6%

Percent of people who fell below half the poverty line—$11,917 for a family of four—in 2014

Child Poverty Rate: 21.1%

Percentage of children under age 18 who fell below the poverty line in 2014

African American Poverty Rate: 26.2%

Percentage of African Americans who fell below the poverty line in 2014

Hispanic Poverty Rate: 23.6%

Percentage of Hispanics who fell below the poverty line in 2014

White Poverty Rate: 10.1%

Percentage of non-Hispanic Whites who fell below the poverty line in 2014

Native American Poverty Rate: 28.3%

Percentage of Native Americans who fell below the poverty line in 2014

People with Disabilities Poverty Rate: 28.5%

Percentage of people with disabilities who fell below the poverty line in 2014

Make art about poverty. 

poverty ghandi

 

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, Food, freedom, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt <3 Facing the Past in Order to Heal

16 August 2016

Many nations with atrocities in their past—Germany, Rwanda, South Africa—prominently recognize their painful history with memorials, museums, and monuments. This kind of trutful recognition, acknowledgement, helps with healing.

We have yet to do that in the United States. As Jessica Leber writes in the linked article below, “Even today, the nation is largely silent about one of its historical periods of shame: the thousands of lynchings that terrorized southern blacks right up until the Civil Rights era.”

We can do this, y’all. We can be brave enough to face our own nightmares. We have to, if we are, as a nation, going to heal and come together. 

“The Equal Justice Initiative, an Alabama organization led by civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, has, for the last few years, been working to place historical markers at lynching sites all around the country. At TED’s conference this week, the group showed a sneak preview of plans for a new national memorial to the victims of lynching that they hope to break ground on some time this year in Montgomery, Alabama.

“In America, we’re not free. We are burdened by a history of racial inequality and injustice. It compromises us. It constrains us,” says Stevenson. “We have to create a new relationship with this history.”

Make art about facing, acknowledging, being accountable for, hard truths about the past.

______________________________________________________________

Read here about a new building project designed to break this national silence.

This Stunning National Memorial Would Recognize America’s Legacy of Lynchings

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Love! <3 Mountains, and Mystery, and Music–Oh My! :-)

 

13 August 2016

Headed off to wild and wonderful West Virginia for a reading. Driving through these amazing Appalachian mountains always fills me with such awe.

Make art about the mysteries felt in mountains.

WV aug 2016

14 August 2016

Road Angel named Bay, a very large beautiful young man working as a cashier in a roadside stop, his smile like a bright bright beacon, caught me doing a lil dance in the aisle to the BeeGees piping in overhead. He grinned and immediately started dancing too 😀 So we finished out Stayin Alive while I paid 🙂

Make art about dancing with strangers. 🙂

dancing with strangers

15 August 2016

Feeling this this morning, the music.

“Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song/in my own breath”~Philip Levine

Make art about the music you hear, in anything, in everything.

music in everything

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, book tour, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Music, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Love! <3 Cooking and What Woke You :-)

 

11 August 2016

Spent all day canning and preserving food. Always takes me back into the company of all those over time who did this before me, especially the women who taught me, as a child, to can and put up food for the winter.

Make art about food as heritage.

child cooking

12 August 2016

Was abruptly awakened by a crow at the window, informing me—loudly–that the suet cages needed filling 🙂

Make art about being awakened suddenly.

crow

Category:

2016 Prompts, animals, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, Food, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Love <3 What's in the Water

10 August 2016

Woke up hearing this song. One of my favorites. 

Make art about where God is. Or about casting out a line into the darkness. 

 

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Music, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Important Call for Submissions Love <3 Imagining Peace <3 New Madrid

Seeking Submissions for Winter 2017 Theme Issue, “Imagining Peace”

Deadline: October 15, 2016

 “We are dedicating the Winter 2017 issue of New Madrid to the theme of “Imagining Peace.” As George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.” We are looking for work in all literary genres that speaks to this arduousness and that defines peace not just as the absence of war, but as something dynamic in its own right. Possible categories of interest include: writing by peace activists and refugees, testimonies about immigration or international crises, travel writing, translations, and much more. An in-depth explanation can be found on our website. We will be accepting submissions from August 15 through October 15, 2016.”
Visit their website: www.newmadridjournal.org

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Call for Submissions, Creativity, Dreams, Editing, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, litmags, Love, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, publishing, Writing, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Catch-Up <3 Sometimes the Prompt Is All About What You Believe

 

6 August 2016

Time with my daughter, son-in-law, and that miraculous GrandPerson. Looking into my grandson’s eyes, I can see eternity ❤

Make art about what you see in a child’s eyes.

0

7 August 2016

Love coming home to find tomatoes ripening to red, okra reaching fingers to the sky, even those last cucumbers still making their climb up the trellis 🙂

Deep within each one of us lies a garden.~Julie Moir Messervy

Make art about the garden that lies within you.

heart as a garden

8 August 2016

Had the chance today to spend time with my sister and a beautiful cousin I haven’t seen in years. So good for my heart!

Make art about extended family.

Crickett and Sherrie and me

9 August 2016

Thinking on this today.

Make art about the power of belief.

gita belief

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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Daily Prompt Love <3 Sometimes the Prompt is an Ice Cream Memory, or a Soft Sparkle in the Dark

 

2 August 2016

Bought my great-nephew his own ice cream maker and together we made his first homemade ice cream. He declared it was “the best ever!” 

Make art about an ice cream memory. 

IMG_5662

 

3 August 2016

Had a great conversation with Road Angel Casey, who left her job at Duke University to start a small organic farm, selling vegetables and flowers, nut butters and preserves from a roadside stand.

Make art about taking the risk to grow a dream.

 

 

4 August 2016

A woman at a gas station came running toward me, smiling and waving and yelling, “Donna! Donna! I haven’t seen you in so long!” I smiled, shaking my head, waiting for her to realize that I wasn’t Donna after all. As she reached me, her face fell, and she looked so embarraassed, and I said, “I’m sorry.” She laughed and said, “No, I’m sorry. I could’ve sworn–” She laughed. I said, “I’m Mary, but I bet you could find Donna, if you looked. Have you tried Facebook?” I told her about finding my friend Lynne again after many years, and how blessed we both felt. She said, “I haven’t looked for her, but I think I will.” She left smiling, and I finished pumping my gas, climbing back into my car, wishing, for just a second, I had been Donna, this friend who brought such a smile to the woman’s face.

Make art about mistaken identity. Or about finding that wonderful friend again.

unmask

5 August 2016

Dreamt I was in a crowded park handing out sparklers. So many sparklers, so many people. Before too long, the park was shimmering with light and color.

Make art about ways of sharing Light.

sparklers-3

Category:

2016 Prompts, Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Dreams, Family, fiction, Food, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing, Writing Coaching & Workshops, Writing Prompts

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