Welcome to WritingRaw
WritingRaw is a literary ezine dedicated to new and emerging writers.
Our goal at WritingRaw is simple - to serve the literary community with the opportunity to have their work online and out in the world. In this world of disappearing literary magazines, WritingRaw is providing the blank pages for writers to fill.
To view someone's writing, click on the link and a pdf version of the piece will open in your browser. Read it, comment on it... but, most important - ENJOY IT.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
All works posted on this site are copyrighted by the author. If a piece is sold, please let us know so we can all celebrate together with an announcement on WritingRaw. We would also like to stress that the author of a given piece is the sole creator. If there are grammatical or spelling mistakes, that is the author and not WritingRaw. Our purpose is not to edit or change any given piece - thus, the Raw aspect of the site. Thank you for your understanding.
July 15, 2010
New material on 1st & 15th of every month
An email book review with Ditch and Weeb
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens, Part 1
__________
Profiled 7 Question
Author Interview
Profiled Author
Profiled Poets
Featured Short Story
__________
Assorted:
Fiction:
Bi-Monthly Serials:
Poetry:
Art:
July 1, 2010
Fiction:
Bi-Monthly Serials:
Poetry:
Art:
Ditch Weeb Rib
Writers' Week unveiled details of an exciting €30,000 prize fund for their many writing competitions. With over sixteen choices of competitions to choose from novel, poetry, short story, play, journalism, storytelling and children's there is an opportunity for everyone to net a prize. Most notable of the competitions is the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award with a prize of €15,000 for a work of fiction making it the most valuable in the Irish literary calendar. Other writing competitions include The Bryan MacMahon Short Story, Duais Foras Na Gaeilge, the Eamon Keane Play and the Kerry County Council Writing for Youth. Writers' Week is taking place from Wednesday 2nd June to Sunday 6th June 2010.
Full details of the 2010 Literary Workshops and Competitions
can be found on www.writersweek.ie or CLICK HERE to read the Press Release
The Writing Forum has been on-line since 1999 and showcases a selection of today's finest writers of poetry and other genres. Ted L. Glines is the coordinator of the website. The webmaster, Marcia Miller-Twiford, is an internationally published writer and the author of "Reach for the Moon" a collection of poems and short stories. Membership is free and each member has their own graphically enhanced showcase. We feature a Forum for the member's use, a Poet of the Month and a Poet of the Year. We welcome poets of any level of expertise, published or not, and also those on another website. Exposure for the writer's works is our mission.. Please pay us a visit; you'll like what you see. We look forward to serving you. CLICK HERE for more information.
Profiled Poems
A Writer Is…
by Jennifer Lynn Brooks-Petrosky
A writer is…
A saint and sinner.
A writer is…
A loser and winner.
A writer is…
A troubled mind.
A writer is…
Never blind.
A writer is…
A body in pain.
A writer is…
A mind insane!
A writer is…
Love and hate.
A writer is…
Give and take.
A writer is…
Full of heartache.
A writer is…
What they make.
A writer is…
Is full of bait.
A writer is…
An angel of grace.
A writer is…
A tired face.
A writer is…
A demon within!
A writer is…
A soul with a pen.
A writer is…
Everything.
A writer is…
Nothing at all.
A writer is...
Able to lift you up.
A writer is…
Able to make you fall.
A writer is…
Uncensored!
A writer is…
Raw!
A writer is capable of anything, anything at all.
© 2010 Jennifer Lynn Brooks-Petrosky
Bittersweet Memories
by Jennifer Lynn Brooks-Petrosky
I still smell your cologne.
I still feel the spark of your lips.
Oh, how I wish it were easier
To forget all of those memories I miss.
The sound of your laughter still echoes,
Your whisper still tickles my ear.
Oh no, here comes another memory,
The feel of your hand wiping away my tears.
I never thought we'd end up this way.
Enemies instead of friends, when will it end?
I can't give up the memories we made,
How I wish it were still yesterday.
It ended before it really began.
Who knows what might have been?
I won't trade these memories for a thing.
They're our secret and we promised to keep it.
I still hear the ghost of your heartbeat.
Oh and remember the time we fell asleep
Holding each other in your backseat?
Oh, the passion and the heat!
But the flame went out too soon.
Now, we're both alone, wondering what to do?
We'll never find another us as long as we live.
Why didn't we fight harder?
We had so much to give
But our love wasn't in the stars.
I remember the last kiss in your car,
I knew it was goodbye.
But we'll always have these bittersweet memories
And they'll never die.
© 2010 Jennifer Lynn Brooks-Petrosky
One Class Society
by Jennifer Lynn Brooks-Petrosky
Delay the hate till it dissipates
Love something as long as it takes
Speak even if your voice shakes.
Don't suppress your abilities
Use your wits, have a positive mentality.
Knowledge is the best utility.
Don't forget civility hasn't died.
You're not inferior don't be afraid to cry.
Living like a criminal is no kind of life.
Murder by a stranger is no way to die.
If only society could give up the tragedy.
Let go of the pain and rivalry.
We could all be a better type of people,
In a one class society.
© 2010 Jennifer Lynn Brooks-Petrosky
Memoirs Of An
Adult Teenager
by Jennifer Lynn Brooks-Petrosky
The Creative Writer's Workshop - established 1991
Residential Writing Retreats & Online LIVE Writing Workshops with Irene Graham using
right-brain/left-brain learning techniques and exercises
*Markree Castle, Sligo, Ireland - Mon 24 to Thurs 27 May 2010
*Aran Island of Inis Mór, Galway, Ireland - Mon 6 to Fri 10 Sept 2010
For Full Details visit our Website: www.TheCreativeWritersWorkshop.com
The New School is a legendary, progressive university in New York City comprising eight schools bound by a common, unusual intent: to prepare and inspire its 10,200 undergraduate and graduate students to bring actual, positive change to the world. From its Greenwich Village campus, The New School launches economists and actors, fashion designers and urban planners, dancers and anthropologists, orchestra conductors, filmmakers, political scientists, organizational experts, jazz musicians, scholars, psychologists, historians, journalists, and above all, world citizens-individuals whose ideas and innovations forge new paths of progress in the arts, design, humanities, public policy, and the social sciences. In addition to its 82 graduate and undergraduate degree-granting programs, the university offers certificate programs and more than 650 continuing education courses to more than 6,400 adult learners every year.
The Evolution of Literature
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Shelter Island Press
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Words From Rib
A Collection of Word Art, Poetry and Short Stories.
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Flash Fiction
The River
The sky is above me, swollen, grey and unforgiving. Cold rain splashes my face and carves a river down my face. I am crying, hot tears mixed with cold rain. My cardigan is torn and hangs from one arm. My left foot is asleep and I wonder how it can sleep with all this going on. I blink through the water at the boys face. He is screaming at me, his spit landing on my already wet face. I know he is yelling at me, but I can't seem to hear anything except a roaring sound in my ears. I'm nowhere near the train tracks though. I can feel the sharp pebbles under my back. My jeans lay on the ground, all scrunched up and getting wet. As I lay there, I wonder when he will be finished; I should have been home ages ago. I try to speak, to ask him to stop, but my words come out all weird. Like I am trying to speak with a mouthful of rocks. I explore my mouth with my tongue and find that my teeth are ragged, and I can taste blood. It must have been from where he hit me. I tried to hit back but he is much bigger than me.
The storm is getting worse. I can see the sky getting darker and the little river beside me seems to be growing bigger. Now I remember, I went for a walk to the river. I had my poetry book with me and I wanted to write about the river and the fish. I wonder where my book went. I feel a heavy weight lift from my body and I turned my head to look at the boy. He is staring at me, he has snot running from his nose and he wipes it on his sleeve. He seems upset and I wonder why he is upset, I'm the one who is hurt. He picks up my jeans and my book and throws them in the river. Why did you do that, I try to yell. My teeth cut my tongue and I taste blood again. He walks back to me and grabs my arm. He starts to drag me toward the river. No! I'll drown! I feel each rock as my body is dragged over them. My cardigan catches on a rock and the wool snags and begins to unravel.
The boy is grunting from dragging me so far. I can feel the slimy mud sucking at my stomach. It's cold and I gasp from the shock. Freezing brown water fills my mouth and I cough and try to spit it out. My head keeps going underwater and I begin to thrash as panic sets in. He's taking me further out into the water and I can't feel the bottom anymore. He turns to look at me and he mouths the word sorry. I feel his hands in my hair grabbing fistfuls as he pushes my head underwater. The roaring in my ears grows louder like a swarm of angry bees as I feebly try to lift my head so I can breathe.
I open my eyes underwater. The brown, swirling current is slowly turning dark, like someone is turning down the lights. I feel the boys hands let go of my hair, but it doesn't matter anymore. I no longer need to breathe. As I am swept away in the fading light, I see a fish pass in front of my eyes.
© 2010 Kirsty Ferguson
_____
The Bird
Out of the sun, over the river, and into a war the bird flew, to light on a tree branch in the middle of an orchard, in the midst of a firefight.
He was an iridescent green and very blue, and his coal black eyes surveyed the pitched battle. Apple blossoms drifted, swooned and fell in the air between the "clack-clack" of the AKs and the "pock-pock-pock" of the M4s. The smell of gunpowder was heavy and ceaseless, until the bird took light.
A roiling silence echoed through the valley. The hardened men behind the southeast facing mud wall lowered their rifles. The men who were passed down a Kalashnikov as a birthright, the men who fought and died without a care, stopped fighting to stare at a bird flown into their midst.
From far overhead, out of the sun, and beyond the river, a C-130 gunship rained metal down on the southeast facing mud wall and all who dwelt there. It shredded and salted the earth with its forbearer's blood, those that stood transfixed at the sight of the bird, transfixed even as death was fast upon them.
It's of the bird I dream. The very blue and iridescent green bird, which, battle over, looked upon all with disdain, living and dying alike, and took wing to fly back over the river and on into the sun.
© 2010 Stephen Williams
Enjoy a visit to Canada’s best new site for
writers, where you’ll discover loads of
creative inspiration, interesting
information and some really great stories.
Read the WritingRaw 7
Question Interviews of
Authors
TOWNSVILLE POETRY PRIZE
Category: Young Adult Theme: FREEDOM
First prize $200 :: Second Prize $ 150
Judged by acclaimed Queensland poet Julie Beveridge
Closing Date: 31 August 2010
For any further details contact us on witsnq@gmail.com or visit us @ www.witsnq.blogspot.com
The Stony Thursday Book
Call for Poetry Submissions
The Stony Thursday Book is calling for submissions from local, national and international poets for the next issue which will be published in Limerick, Ireland, as part of Cuisle, Limerick City International Poetry Festival* in October 2010. The Stony Thursday Book was founded by Limerick poets John Liddy and Jim Burke in 1975, and has also been edited by Mark Whelan, Kevin Byrne, Patrick Bourke and Knute Skinner and Thomas McCarthy. This year the editor will be Mark Whelan.
The Stony Thursday Book is one of the longest-running literary journals in Ireland and celebrated its 30th Anniversary Edition in 2005. Poetry submissions are now being accepted for issue No. 9 which will be published in October 2010.
Closing date for submissions is August 13th 2010.
How to submit: Send no more than 6 poems; When submitting poems, write your name and address on each page.
Send poems to: The Arts Service, Limerick City Council, City Hall, Merchant’s Quay, Limerick
Please mark your envelope : The Stony Thursday Book
Or by email : artsoffice@limerickcity.ie
Further information from: The Arts Service, Limerick City Council
Telephone : 061 407363 or 061 407421
*Cuisle, Limerick City International Poetry Festival will take place in Limerick from 13th – 16th October and is funded by The Arts Council, Limerick City Council and Shannon Development
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Memoirs Of An Adult Teenager
by Jennifer Lynn Brooks-Petrosky
Jennifer Lynn Brooks-Petrosky is currently working on a book of poetry
aimed at teens and young adults as well as her first novel. Some of her
favorite poets are Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Frost.
Euphoric Ink is a playwriting consultancy, offering support to playwrights at every stage of the creative writing process, from courses, to script reading, to script development. Creative Director Ola Animashawun, formerly head of the new writers programme at the Royal Court Theatre, has over 15 years experience of delivering playwriting courses to some of the UK's most exciting new writers.
Open to anyone aged 18+, Euphoric Ink's Fast Track Introduction to Playwriting is condensed weekend workshop tailored to suit time-limited beginner playwrights, introducing everything you need to know about the craft of script writing in just two days. No experience is necessary and writers will have the opportunity to ask questions about the new writing industry.
Running 4 times per year, the next Fast Track Introduction to Playwriting is Sat 11th September - Sun 13th September 2010 at the Toynbee Studios, London. For more details: please visit: http://euphoricink.co.uk/playwriting_workshops