CHESS- Call for very Short Stories

OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
CHESSSTORY playing cards.
Stories of fifty (50) words or less for inclusion in
CHESSSTORY, a limited edition set of cards designed and
printed by Louffa Press. Each card will have a chess piece on
one side, and a very, very short story on the other. The cards
are meant to function in sets of playable chess pieces for a
standard chess board. Preference will be given to tight, lucid
stories that paint a vivid picture with brevity and punch,
something like an injection of hyper-Calvino. The stories
don’t have to be about chess - they could use chess as an
unseen influence: a character who strategizes like a pawn; a
bus that pauses briefly by a streetcorner game of dominoes.
Also welcome are stories that relate to the game of chess
itself, or even games and strategy in a more general, social,
anthropological or imaginary sense - opposites, race issues,
adversity, etc. There is no limit, but quality is a must.
Thirty-two stories will be accepted, exactly one story per
chess piece, so send your best work. The art for the pieces
will be silkscreened and the stories letterpressed on artisan
paper. Card sets will be numbered and signed.
THE DEADLINE is January 31st, 2011. SUBMIT UP
TO THREE STORIES. Best of luck! Send your stories
to david@louffapress.com. In the subject line, write
CHESSSTORY, and the word count.

Calling all Writers

Calling all authors, 'zine makers, comic-book writers, diarists, poets and storytellers: The Brooklyn Art Library  wants your words!

The Fiction Project is an opportunity to tell stories in a different way by fusing text and visual art. After traveling across the country, the Fiction Project will enter into the Brooklyn Art Library's narrative collection, archiving your stories to share them with the public.

Anyone – from anywhere in the world – can be a part of the project. To participate and receive a journal that will travel with the 2011 tour, start by choosing a theme and ordering a book on the website http://arthousecoop.com/projects/fiction/features

Books will tour the following cities:

Brooklyn, NY Austin, TX San Francisco, CA Portland, ME Atlanta, GA Chicago, IL Seattle, WA Winter Park, FL

Sign up by:

March 31st, 2011

Return book by:

March 1st, 2011

to go on entire tour

June 1st, 2011

to go on second leg of tour

Tour starts:

March, 2011

 

Seeking the Sunshine Coast

More wonderful cards have been added to the Flickr site. I've been busy sewing cards together to be exhibited at the NeoGeography showcase on Thusday at 6.00 at Cooroy Library. Come along. Here's one of my favourites from the latest bunch. There are some really interesting cards there now and it's getting very hard to chose favourites.

See all the cards on the Flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seekingthesunshinecoast/

SMELLS LIKE ZINES!!!!

Get your zine fix locally! Welcome news for zinesters in the sunny (or is it rainy?) state. Queensland now has its very own zine distro! Get yours on there shelves NOW! 

http://smellslikezines.com/

Seeking the Sunshine Coast - I Love Librerys

Postcards have suddenly started pouring in from kids all over the coast. I love this one from Hannah Clarke. Says just how I felt when I was a child and the library was the place where I found everything I wanted.

Underwater

I'm working on a new media installation for the NeoGeography event on November 4th, using some very beautiful images by Jan Brown taken on reefs under the water off the Sunshine Coast. I'm manipulating those images a lot for the installation, but have also just finished making a more conventional book to accompany that installation - published on Blurb here:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1634693?ce=blurb_ew&utm_source=widget

Kids Stories, Videos and a Book. Well Done Guys.

The first of the stories from Sue Davis' storytelling workshops is published as a book on Blurb:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1619782
Really enjoyed this one by Noah and Jackson!
 And you can see the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AMsY5zJZvI

The second story is published as a video on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVyto2kJgQ0



Congratulations Chavon and Riley - it's a cool video.

Zines and Chapbooks Workshop - Cooroy Sept. 12

It was a different sort of group to the first workshop at Coorory library yesterday. They were less into cut and paste and construction and more  into content and writing. The result was some amazing zines, but a lot of chaos when it came to book construction.

What fun it is to see people sit down and write like that. To just pick up a pen or pencil or sit at a computer and  the words flow.It was also fun to have two sisters in the class who worked collaboratively on a great little book about a tree and the cycle of life. It was one of my favourites from the day.

I'll be posting some images of the zines here and on our ISSUU site soon.

More Postcards - Favourite of the Week

This is the second cool postcard we have had from Leigh, Russ, Lowana and Stevie. Thanks guys. Someone in the family  is a great drawer. Their cards are about their love of the laid back beach lifestyle of the Sunshine Coast. You can read what they say, and see more of the cards on the Flickr site HERE. So far beach, surf, sand and sea are hands down favourites as the things we think identify the Sunshine Coast.

More Zines on Issuu - Surf Rage plus more

More zines from the August workshop have been added to the Issuu site, including a cool zine about surf rage. Find them HERE.

Our Zines are now on Issuu

Some of the zines from the August workshop are now up on our Issuu site. You can read them HERE.
I'll be putting the rest up in batches over the next week. Some great zines there!

More Postcards - Seeking the Sunshine Coast

The postcards are starting to roll in, some from as far away as Indonesia.
So far the northern end of the coast is over represented, and there's a heavy emphasis on sand, sea, beach and........good food! Sunshine Coast - land of endless holiday and indulgence?

This card has so much to say, and in such a creative way, it's one of our favourites, and we've included some detail shots on the Flickr site so none of the text is lost.
See all the new cards on Seeking the Sunshine Coast Flickr

New Additions to Sunshine Coast Stories

There's a heap of great new postcard stories on the Sunshine Coast Placestories site.  Looks like Sue's workshops are really successful.

I've also done a little story on our local community radio station 101.3 FM- check it out HERE.

Seeking the Sunshine Coast

I've just uploaded a heap more postcards to our Fickr site.Some of them are funny, some just have something to say and some are quite beautiful. There are some with original artworks, including two with etchings. The  card below is from Celeste  Brignac, a Louisiana-born photographer who now lives at Sunshine Beach. Celeste has sent us a selection of images of Sunshine Beach taken with a pinhole camera. You can read about her work here. 

Seeking the Sunshine Coast is a postcard project. We invite you to send us a postcard telling us about the Sunshine Coast. Send to PO Box 40 Noosa Heads, Queensland, Australia 4567.

Place Stories for Kids

Sue Davis has been out at Cooroy Library again introducing more people to the possibilities of telling their stories with PlaceStories, this time with kids workshops. These are just some of the cute characters that have come out of the first workshop. We can't wait to see their stories added to the Sunshine Coast Stories project in PlaceStories

Slam Poetry on Audioboo

Listen to Sunshine Coast poet Danksta Downunder reciting his poetry on our audioboo site. Danksta is a performance poet who will represent the Sunshine Coast in the Australian Poetry Slam 10 in Brisbane in September. Good luck to him! Danksta is helping us to explore the many ways poetry might be published out side the conventional anthology.
http://audioboo.fm/SCRAPS

Zines Workshop- Cooroy Library August 7th 2010

Zines are quirky, personal, cheeky, easy to make publications that allow anyone to have a say, publish and distribute their work. There's a great tradition of poking fun, laughter, satire, underground ideas and getting away from the constraints of society and expectations. Anything goes with zines, and that was certainly the case at our workshop in Cooroy library where 14 of us spent the day making a BIG mess in the brand new, pristine library meeting rooms. Some   braved the computer room to use  technology to set up a publication, but it seemed more fun to just use scissors and paste. The zines from the workshop will be up on our issuu site soon, and will be shown in the NeoGeography exhibition at Cooroy precinct in November.

Place Stories Workshops - Cooroy Library August 2010

As part of the NeoGeography project, Sue Davis, a lectuer and professional learning consultant at Central Queensland University,  has been holding workshops and encouraging Sunshine Coast communities to become part of the Place Stories project, which is an on-line community where people can upload and share stories with text, music, images and sounds. Stories are created on your own PC using the free PlaceStories software. They combine images, text, audio, narration. When published and uploaded , a story is given a map location in Google maps.

The stories and postcards from Sue Davis's NeoGeography workshop can be found here on the Sunshine Coast Stories project in Place Stories. We are also using Place Stories to experiment with instructions and publishing poetry at our Alternative Publishing project in Place Stories.

 

SCRAPS - Sunshine Coast Regional Publishing Service

SCRAPS is our local alternative publishing project on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. We are working with the local community in a series of free workshops in digital storytelling and making zines and chapbooks, as well as encouraging local organisations and individuals to have a go at publishing their work.
 You can find find out about the SCRAPS workshops on our website, and if you are a Sunshine Coast writer or community organisation  interested  in getting involved please contact us.

Neogeography, the Sunshsine Coast, the 3 C's and More.

Alternative Publishing is part of the NeoGeography project on the beautiful Sunshine Coast, in sunny Queensland, Australia (except this year it has rained a lot). The website and blog are maintained by Australian artist Judy Barrass but there are four other very fine artists involved in the project. They are sound artist Leah Barclay, author Steven Lang, cyberdramatist and all round inspirational  storyteller Sue Davis, and indigenous artist Lyndon Davis. Our aim is to have a lot of fun and we are aided and abetted by our project support person, Megan Marks and a lot of other very creative and inspiring people. More on this later.

Alternative Publishing  is about exploring all the ways people have available  to them to publish their ideas, sounds, poetry, words, writing and stories. We aim to support and encourage people on the Sunshine Coast to make their voices known but we also want to establish a worldwide community of people interested in exploring  ways people can  make themselves heard by publishing. Please join us. Follow us on Twitter or this blog for ongoing notices of our journey of discovery.

Here's the intro to the NeoGeo project from the Queensland Writers Centre site.


"NeoGeoGraphy is a project which brings together creative practice and new technologies to capture the community’s connection with where they live.It is a project of the Sunshine Coast Regional Council and Queensland Writers Centre with funding support from Arts Queensland and the Australia Council. NeoGeoGraphy falls under the 3C's Project, or Three Communities, led by Queensland Writers Centre and in partnership with regional councils. Over three years, the Sunshine Coast, Rockhampton and Bundaberg will use digital media and writing to explore environmental themes and regional identity.On the Sunshine Coast, NeoGeoGraphy will ask creative thinkers to explore and document how the Sunshine Coast community defines itself through place, interaction and time. The project is open to all forms of creative practice and thinking, with an emphasis on innovation."

If we haven't put you to sleep already, with all these projects within projects, you might like to read about the background to NeoGeo, which is Jock McQueeny's 3 C's concept.

Welcome to Alternative Publishing Blogspot

Welcome to our blogspot. Follow us to get the up to date news on workshops, templates, information on where, how, and why to use cheap and simple self publishing to get your ideas out there.