Writers & Poets of Color: Carl Brandon Society Awards and CavanKerry Press

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The Carl Brandon Society is now taking nominations for their 2008 Parallax and Kindred awards through September 1st.

The Parallax Award is for an outstanding speculative fiction work by a self-identified writer of color and the Kindred Award is for an outstanding speculative fiction work dealing with race and ethnicity. (The same work can be nominated for both awards.) There’s a (growing) list of stories and collections published in 2008 on the Carl Brandon Society wiki for perusal.

Shameless self-promotion: Both “Daughter of Botu” and “A Thread of Silk” (in RMSF) were both originally published in 2008.

To nominate, go here.

Also wanted to passing along a call for poetry via Alas from poets of color by CavanKerry Press that I received from rachel_swirsky:

Decisions about manuscripts received during our Winter 2009 submission period are in the final stage and decisions will be completed soon.

Absent among our finalists are titles by authors of color. We’d like to include a more diverse population of writers – and perhaps you can help.

If you know any writers of color whose work is ready for publication, we’d appreciate your notifying them to submit asap.

Writers must reside in the United States and manuscripts must be in polished state—ready for publication. Writers may submit for one category: New Voices (not yet a published author), Notable Voices or LaurelBooks. Writers should go to www.cavankerrypress.org, for more information and read CKP’s guidelines carefully. We will accept submissions until August 31.

Thanks so much.
Joan

Joan Cusack Handler
CavanKerry Press Ltd.
A not -for-profit literary press serving art and community
www.cavankerrypress.org

The announcement is located here (posted by a white Jewish poet who writes poems about the cultural intersection between him and his Iranian wife, among other things).

Making Coffee on Monday Morning: Fail

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It’s a great cosmic irony that folks who haven’t yet had any coffee are expected make it.

At my day job, whoever’s first into the office (or into the kitchen at least) is the one who makes the coffee. Usually that’s not me, but this morning it was. Spilled water and coffee (grounds and brewed) and scalded myself. Sigh. At least I didn’t electrocute myself or blow a fuse.

Ow.

GA General Assemly Furloughs

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So the House and Senate of the Georgia General Assembly are taking furloughs due to the budget deficit, and hence, the employees of the Office of Legislative Counsel are being required to also take a mandatory one-day-a-month furlough. They’re having a meeting about it to answer questions and whatnot this afternoon at the capitol, but today happens to be my 4×10 day off. Debated whether to go in for the meeting, but I figure it’s not worth the time and gas. I’ll get the lowdown from my co-editors tomorrow.

All in all, it could be worse. A day a month is better than a day a week—which some state employees have had to do—and it’s hella better than being laid off. But the line between black and red for our household budget is sliver-thin, and it’s gonna be hard finding another notch in our already-cutting-off-circulation belt.

The thing is, this is another hard knock exacted by the state in a string of them. They’re also increasing our parking fees from $15 to $40 per month, and as a result, I’m relinquishing my parking spot. I only used it occasionally, during the legislative session and for the occasional doctor’s appointment or when I overslept and needed to drive in to avoid being late—not enough to merit $480 a year—but it was pretty important to have during session. Going to have to figure out how to manage now without a parking space. And they also decreased our health care options, so I’m going to have to switch from my current plan next year. Very annoying as it means I’ll be losing the rheumatologist I adore who pulled me out of a months-long flare-up and has kept me stable for years.

I still love my day job. After spending 11 years as a highly paid but soul-battered cubicle monkey, money is low on my priority list for job satisfaction. And I still have incredible job satisfaction, enough to outweigh the annoying sensation of being reamed. But I really would prefer to forgo the reaming.