Mary Carroll-Hackett's Blog, page 87

Must Read Monday! Doug Van Gundy: A Life Above Water

 

This week meet Doug Van Gundy, author of A Life Above Water. Doug teaches in both the BA and MFA writing programs at West Virginia Wesleyan College. His poems, essays and reviews have appeared in The Oxford American, Poems & Plays, Ecotone, Appalachian Heritage, Waccamaw and Poetry Salzburg Review. He is currently co-editing an anthology of contemporary writing from West Virginia for WVU Press and working on his second book of poems, tentatively titled, No Dog Inside.

Doug has also has been an elephant keeper, a copywriter, a country radio disk jockey, a letterpress operator, a television game show winner, and is a multi-talented musician. He’s an incredible old-time fiddler (along with playing a kajillion other instruments), performing with Paul Gartner in the duo Born Old.

Buy Doug’s beautiful book!

http://redhen.org/book/?uuid=F6650841-8509-33C3-0C69-129FD872CC95

Praise for A Life Above Water

Doug Van Gundy s poems are pitch-perfect and packed with indelible images, each as striking and distinct as a hawk in a clear blue sky above one of his beloved mountains. This poet has a genius for quick characterization, too; I love his crow-eyed bachelor men/who lived on the hillside and smelled/of fried potatoes and machine oil, for instance. Some of these poems are like whole novels. Doug Van Gundy has captured a culture in this book. –Lee Smith

More about Doug, poetry and music, at his website

http://www.dougvangundy.com/

Learn More About Doug’s Music and Born Old

https://www.facebook.com/bornoldband

http://www.countysales.com/products.php?product=DOUG-VAN-GUNDY-%26-PAUL-GARTNER-%27Born-Old%27

Read More from Doug Online

http://www.connotationpress.com/featured-guest-editor/poetry-october-2009/137-doug-van-gundy-poetry

http://www.storysouth.com/poetry/2008/06/west_virginia_vs_extractive_in.html

http://www.fishousepoems.org/keeper/

http://appalachianheritage.net/author/dougvangundy/

http://www.datelinewheeling.com/blog/2015/10/22/music-and-muse-mountaineer-poet-says-the-two-meld-perfectly

Hear Doug Read

https://soundcloud.com/storyweb/doug-van-gundy-a-beautiful-jar-of-jelly

And Play!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeOj7nLF3_Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnKAOWSO410

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

 

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Prompt<3 A Teeny Tiny Flowery Photo Essay

29 May 2016

Jumped out of the car at an intersection for this one. 

 

Make art about discarded flowers, about what we throw away. 

Very Special Call for Submissions: Consequence Magazine

In honor of and with gratitude to all who have served, continue to serve, and their families, and to those who strive to help us remember, to help us heal, to help us continue to honor the stories and voices of our warriors. 

Thanks to George Kovach, Catherine Parnell, and all of the other dedicated editorial staff at Consequence. c

CONSEQUENCE is an independent, non-profit literary magazine published annually. We publish short fiction, poetry, non-fiction, interviews, visual art, and reviews primarily focused on the culture of war.

Guidelines from their website: 

General submissions are currently OPEN.

Reading period: March 1 – July 1

WRITERS whose work has appeared in the magazine include: Homero Aridjis, Peter Balakian, Sven Birkerts, Kevin Bowen, Martha Collins, Martha Cooley, William Corbett, Anne Germanacos, Mohammad Kazem Kazemi, Phil Klay, Christopher Lydon, Fred Marchant, Askold Melnyczuk, Ed Ochester, Joyce Peseroff, Hilary Plum, Peter Dale Scott, Bob Shacochis, Brian Turner, Afaa Michael Weaver, and Bruce Weigl.

CONSEQUENCE welcomes unsolicited submissions during the reading period between March 1st and July 1st. We do not consider previously published work.

Online Submissions Only.

Submissions must be submitted through our online submissions manager. We no longer accept mailed or emailed submissions.

For fiction and non-fiction: please submit one piece of no more than 5,000 words.

For poetry: please submit up to five poems of any length. Translations are acceptable if the author’s permission has been granted.

Simultaneous submissions are welcome and encouraged, but if your work is accepted elsewhere, please let us know immediately.

Each submission may be accepted for publication in the print edition of CONSEQUENCE and CONSEQUENCE Online.

CONSEQUENCE is an independent, non-profit magazine, and a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.

We currently do not offer compensation for published work.

 

Visit their website to submit now:

http://www.consequencemagazine.org/submit/

Daily Prompt <3 Memorial Day-What Are We Remembering?

28 May 2016

I was 6 in 1969, and the only connection I could make to the war in Viet Nam was that my Uncle David was there. I remember watching footage on our black and white TV, looking for my handsome uncle’s face. I was too young to understand, but I remember the images clearly. 

Make art about your earliest memories of war. 

Friday Call for Submissions Love! Swamp Ape!

Call for Submissions: Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Visual Art, Swamp

Deadline: September 1, 2016

 

“Swamp Ape Review is the new beast in South Florida’s growing body of literature. We are a national online journal (produced by the MFA in Creative Writing at Florida Atlantic University) looking for original work in 5 areas: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, visual art (graphics/photography, multimedia, or video), and swamp—our fifth category for works that defy genre. Submissions will be accepted until September 1st for publication in winter. For more info and the “why” behind our name and nature, visit www.swampapereview.com. ”

Daily Prompt <3 Looking for a Leader?

27 May 2016

So much talk this week in my summer school class on Activism, on how to create real world change, on how to lead, on what makes a leader.  And such a lack of real leadership in any of the people running for president, it hurts my heart. 

Make art about leaders, about leadership. 

 

Daily Prompt <3 Road Angel By the Beans

26 May 2016

Was out in the garden, putting up new stick trellises for those climbing stringbeans my son loves so much, when a woman walking by on our tiny backwoods rural road, called from the street, “That’s just how just how my grandmama used to do it!” 

I laughed, and said, “That’s just where I learned it–from my grandmama!”

She walked over, and we chatted, her telling me her name was Ruth, and she was visiting family down the road. She told me how she always wished she’d kept a garden but raising a house filled with kids by herself and working two jobs most of those years didn’t leave much time for anything else. I told her it sounded like to me she’d tended to her garden magnificently. She tilted her head and asked what I meant. 

Those kids, I said, all grown and making strong good lives. She smiled, patted my shoulder, and said, “You know, I like the thought of it that way.”

I did too. And now me and Ruth aren’t strangers anymore :-) 

Make art about a conversation with a stranger, with a Road Angel

Special Call for Submissions Love :-) Qu :-) And It Pays!

 

Qu: A contemporary literary magazine from Queens University of Charlotte

Now open for submissions until August 31st!

Payment Upon Publication: $100 per prose piece, $50 per poem

Prose submissions (fiction, essays, script excerpts) should be a maximum of 8000 words. Poetry submissions may include up to 3 poems.

Authors retain all rights and copyright to their works. Qu requests one-time, non-exclusive rights to publish your work.

Submit here! 

http://www.qulitmag.com/submit/

Sometimes the Day Is the Poem <3

One of these mornings, you’re gonna rise up singing❤

 

Daily Prompt <3 Feeling the Heat

25 May 2016 

FINALLY!– it’s not raining and the temp’s gonna climb up near 90 today, they say. (Don’t forget to look our for the four-leggeds as the temperature climbs[image error] ) 

Make art about heat :-)