Tag Archives: PAWA Inc.

07/30/2011: PAWA Workshop: How to Submit Your Work for Publication

PAWA WORKSHOP with Barbara Jane Reyes: How to Submit Your Work for Publication

Bayanihan Center, Mission Street @ 6th, San Francisco.

Saturday, July 30th, starting promptly @ 10 am

Registration: Sliding Scale ($25-35 for students with valid student ID; $35-50 general).

Please make checks payable to:
Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc.
P.O. Box 31928
San Francisco, CA 94131-0928

Include “07/30/2011 workshop” on the memo line.

Paypal option is here: http://www.pawainc.com/julyworkshop.html.

What to Bring: yourselves, your questions, your current submissions packets, your current submissions calls resources.

Who Should Attend: Aspiring and emerging writers with limited or no experience with the submissions process, or writers with some submissions experience, who would like to refine or clarify their own current processes.

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Poetic Industrial Complex: Promotion and Submitting For Publication

I have been posting calls for submissions like mad, over at the new and improved PAWA blog, and have been a little surprised at the non-response to them. I know; just because I’m not hearing any feedback does not mean folks are being unresponsive. It’s just that I have been trying to gauge community interest in submitting work for publication.

Here is what befuddles me: There’s so much dialogue over our invisibility and non-presence on bookstore shelves and on course syllabi, coupled with reticence to put work out there in a major way. As well, there’s so much interest in self-promotion, in being recognized, so much desire to be given props and praise for being poets and writers, coupled with reticence to put work out there in a major way.

What gives, with the contradictions? I am interested in untangling that, and giving substance to the picture of “poets and writers,” and the necessary work to make it so.

As my friend and fellow author Sunny Vergara has recently blogged, it’s loaded, “self-promotion,” and the term, “shameless self-promotion.” Submitting work is part of the work of self-promotion. With every cover letter we write to accompany every submissions packet we send out, we engage in self-promotion. We’re submitting to the possibility that our work is good and/or interesting enough to warrant publication in a potentially competitive field. He’s listed some truths, which I believe are important to arrive at on our own schedules, after going through our own processes:

  1. You cannot sit on your ass and hope to be discovered.
  2. You cannot sit on your ass and hope to be invited to speak.
  3. You cannot sit on your ass and hope to be published.

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07/30/2011: PAWA Workshop on How to Submit Your Work for Publication

OK! So I’ve got a space reserved, a date, and a time, and now just have to get materials together.

What: PAWA Workshop with Barbara Jane Reyes: How to Submit Your Work for Publication

Where: Bayanihan Center, Mission Street @ 6th, San Francisco.

When: Saturday, July 30th, starting promptly @ 10 am.

Registration: Sliding Scale ($25-35 for students with valid student ID; $35-50 general). Please make checks payable to:

Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc.
P.O. Box 31928
San Francisco, CA 94131-0928
Include “07/30/2011 workshop” on the memo line.

Paypal option is here: http://www.pawainc.com/julyworkshop.html.

What to Bring: yourselves, your questions, your current submissions packets, your current submissions calls resources.

Who Should Attend: Aspiring and emerging writers with limited or no experience with the submissions process, or writers with some submissions experience, who would like to refine or clarify their own current processes.

For more information, please email: pawa@pawainc.com.

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LIT: Love for Language, Word, and Narrative

Recent semi-public criticism about the work we’ve been doing with/for PAWA had gotten me a little bit insecure. Were we doing enough to forward arts other than the literary, for the Filipino American artist community? This is one thing we discussed at yesterday’s PAWA board meeting, and I’m glad to have had the space to do this. I asked whether we ought to be more actively involving artists is other various disciplines, to come into PAWA and curate events in visual arts, film, et al.

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Art of Hustle 2: Curation, Consistency

I’m behind on my Art of Hustle stuff, which I’m writing about so that I can clear my head for Anthem’s podcast, which is tomorrow. It’s helpful for me to think about my work, to think about how to organize my work, so that I don’t get overwhelmed by it, or befuddled about what needs doing.

It’s important to be thoughtful and concrete, to be clear, to be open-minded, and to have follow-through. To be a big idea guy isn’t enough.

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Quick Updates: Books, Reviews, Teaching

I haven’t been posting much here, but have been on the PAWA blog, where I’ve been asking Filipino American authors for their reading and book buying recommendations. So far, Karen Llagas, Veronica Montes, Vangie Buell, Oliver de la Paz, and Eileen Tabios have responded. I’ve included my own as well, and I believe there are more recommendations to come. You can see them all here (be sure to check out Veronica’s commentary on each book as well).

In other e-spaces, let me also belatedly point you to Tamiko Beyer’s essay, “Notes towards a queer::eco::poetics,” at Doveglion.com. There is more to come in this space, so please do be on the lookout.

As for myself, I plan to do some reading this winter break. I’ve picked up Rabih Alameddine’s The Hakawati (lovely gentleman; I met him briefly outside Joe’s Barbershop in the Castro, and I kept thinking his name was “Robbie”). Hakawati, I see from that NY Times article, means “storyteller,” so already, this is interesting to me. I was telling some folks the other day that I hadn’t thought too centrally or consciously about “narrative” in my poems, but on the PAWA blog, Veronica points out the “story, story, story,” in Diwata, which I very much appreciate. And as one reader on Goodreads remarked about Diwata, he thought its allegorical prose narratives were very good, but was disappointed there wasn’t more “poetry” in it.

I also want to catch up on more poetry titles, especially as I am behind in my book reviewing commitments and other plans. I am not scheduled to teach at either USF or Mills College this coming semester, but will have an artist in residency stint at SF School for the Arts next month. As well, I plan to teach poetry workshop through one community group or another, so reading more poetry would be helpful.

PAWA Arkipelago Reading 03/29/2010 at 6:30 pm (SF)

[Please forward widely and share via your social media networks!]

Hi all, Please join us for our next event:

Gina Apostol will read from her new novel, The Revolution According to Raymond Mata (Anvil, 2009).

She will be joined by

Arlene Biala, author of Continental Drift (West End Press, 1999).
Vangie Buell, author of Twenty-Five Chickens and a Pig for a Bride (T’Boli, 2006).
Niki Escobar, poet and finalist for the FIlamore Tabios Sr. Memorial Prize for her manuscript, Loved Letters: Mailed Without a Scent of Home.

Monday March 29, 2010 @ 6:30 pm
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission Street (@6th Street), San Francisco.
FREE and open to the public.

http://pawainc.blogspot.com/
http://pawainc.com/

Being Online and Being In Class

These days, not so interested in being online, not Tweeting so much, and really mostly just blogging at the PAWA blog, where I’ve been posting reviews, events, artist opportunities. I’ve been happily expending all kinds of effort for my Fil Am Arts course, really enjoying the excellent class presentations my students have been doing — some great exploration and excavation of Bino A. Realuyo’s “From a Filipino Death March Survivor Whose World War II Benefits Were Rescinded by the U.S. Congress in 1946,” and Jaime Jacinto’s “World’s Fair, St. Louis, 1904,” discussion of Gayle Romasanta’s strong willed heroine in her short story, “The Bridge,” mining the historical details in Johanna Poethig’s murals Lakas Sambayanan and Ang Lipi Ni Lapu-Lapu, and the surrealist, Dada, and pop art influences and symbols in the volatile work of the Kwatro Kantos — as well as encouraging them to attend off campus arts events.

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Publishing Thoughts for the End of the Year and Decade

I’m inspired, or touched, or feeling warm fuzzies in general about Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor’s and Veronica Montes’s recent blog posts. With Growing Up Filipino II, Bec is now experiencing her first publication in an anthology (as she notes, an actual book), feeling “less a could-be writer and more a in-fact writer.” Inspired by Bec’s post, Veronica, who is reading for the PAWA-sponsored San Francisco book launch, is remembering her own first anthology publication. In both of their cases, Cecilia Brainard was the editor responsible for selecting their work for publication.

I am moved to think back on my own first anthology publication, which was Babaylan (Aunt Lute, 2000), edited by Nick Carbó and Eileen Tabios. Years later, as Eileen came to speak on her work as a poet and editor at SFSU for Justin Chin’s class, I remember her saying that there were some newbie or emerging poets who’d submitted work, and whom she chose to include in the anthology because she believed publication would encourage or propel these poets to continue with their poetic work. Sitting in the lecture hall audience, I thought to myself, “She must mean (poets like) me.”

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This Weekend: 12/06/09 Community & Academic Writing Programs: A Panel for Emerging Writers

Since I’ve been blogging a bit about bridging and community work, it’s worth mentioning that I’ll be hosting this weekend’s emerging writers’ panel at SFPL. I can’t gauge how much interest there is in this panel, as I’ve been too close to it to see what other people outside my immediate circle think. I do remember this panel’s origins as being some of the MFA Industrial Complex discussion about paying for consulting services for assistance in the MFA application process, who accesses these services, who benefits from these services.

To restate some of what I’ve previously blogged: I still believe no one absolutely needs the MFA degree in order to write or become a writer or author. I do not believe in the MFA as the thing that validates a writer to call herself a writer. I do not believe the MFA degree gives you the keys to any kingdom.

I do believe in the MFA program as one of many strategies a writer can use to hone her craft, to read and write beyond her current frame of reference, to develop critical language, to find critical readers of her work in progress. I also believe these can be found elsewhere — in writing circles, in community arts workshops, in community college writing courses. I believe that as writers we must try to do everything we can to fight off stagnation, to thrive and grow. I believe in surrounding ourselves with those critical readers instead of enablers and people with soft expectations for our work.

That said, below is the info for this weekend’s panel. I hope to see some of you there.

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