[1]  The Sixth-Ever Black Warrior Review Contest has begun! Send us your dearest-beloved (stories/poems/essays)!

Guest Judges are:
Claudia Rankine (Poetry)
Peter Markus (Fiction)
Lia Purpura (Nonfiction)

Payment must be made online (the Submission Manager will direct you to do so).

To Submit your Work or for more details and guidelines, please visit: http://www.bwr.ua.edu. Winners in each genre will receive $1,000 and publication in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue. Finalists in each category will receive notation in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue and are also considered for publication.

Reading Fee is $15 per short story (up to 7500 words), $15 per nonfiction piece (up to 7500 words), and $15 per group of up to 3 poems.

All contestants will also receive a complimentary one-year subscription (That’s $1 less than conventional subscriptions!.)

Submissions close on September 1, 2010.

[2] Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (MAAF) kicks-off July with the opening of the poetry-themed online exhibition On Both Sides of Our Door available on the Mid Atlantic Artist Registry site July 1.

The exhibition will feature works by Linda Blaskey, Emari DiGiogrio, Barbara Goldberg, Kathleen Hellen, Louise Kennelly, Joshua Poteat, and Pat Valdata.

On Both Sides of Our Door is curated by Don Share, senior editor of Poetry magazine and a former curator of poetry at Harvard University. His books include Squandermania, Union, The Traumatophile, and Seneca in English.

Share characterized the exhibition as a “still, small voice,” which refers to the Prophet Elijah’s experience on Mount Sinai described in the Bible. God first teased Elijah with wind, an earthquake, and a fire, and finally manifesting himself in a “still small voice.” Share says this voice “comes from within, where conscience – and poetry – are born.” He went on to explain that by describing seemingly insignificant matters in their poems, the poets give this “small” voice real amplitude.

On Both Sides of Our Door is the second online exhibition since the launch of the Mid Atlantic Artist Registry. Containing profiles and work samples of the artist fellowship winners from Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, U.S. Virgin Islands, Virginia, and West Virginia, the Registry allows quick and easy search of artists by state, discipline, or name.

The Artist Registry can be accessed through MAAF’s primary site (www.midatlanticarts.org); the exhibition can be viewed from the Registry page, or through the direct link at www.midatlanticarts.org/maar/exhibitions.html.

[3] ZOMBIE SUMMER

[4] Artifice Magazine is Having a Subscription Drive.

They write:

We want to get 50 new subscriptions in July. We think we can do it. You can help us, and get free stuff, too.

If we make it to 50 new subscriptions in July, August 1, 2010 will be declared Artifice Pizza Party Day. All Artifice subscribers will be welcomed to treat themselves to a Pizza Party.

LET US COUNT THE WAYS:

Way 1. If you’re one of the first five.

Each week in July, starting on Monday (7/5, 7/12, 7/19, 7/26), the FIRST FIVE NEW SUBSCRIBERS will receive a free limited edition screen print of their choice ($15 value). No, we will not tell you when the five-subscription limit each week has been exceeded.

Way 2. If you’re subscribed, and get someone else to subscribe.

July, any CURRENT SUBSCRIBER (as of June 30) who refers a NEW SUBSCRIBER in July will receive a free limited edition screen print of their choice. New subscriptions may be for either Issue 1 and 2 or Issue 3 and 4. Current subscribers must email us at editors AT artificemag DOT com with print choice AFTER their referred subscriber has made payment.

Way 3. If you renew your subscription.

During July, any CURRENT SUBSCRIBER (Issues 1 and 2) who renews their subscription for Issues 3 and 4 will receive a free limited edition screen print of their choice. Current subscribers must email us at editors AT artificemag DOT com with print choice AFTER they have renewed their subscription.

Way 4. If you subscribe because someone who’s already subscribed referred you.

During July, any NEW SUBSCRIBER (during July) referred by a CURRENT SUBSCRIBER (as of June 30) will receive a free limited edition screen print of their choice. New subscribers must tell us in the notes section of their PayPal payment who the referring current subscriber is. They must email us at editors AT artificemag DOT com with their print choice following payment.

Way 6. If you live in a US state where no other subscribers live.

During July, any NEW SUBSCRIBER with a mailing address in a state where Artifice does not currently have any subscribers (on the date of payment) will receive a free limited edition screen print of their choice. No, we will not tell you what states are not yet represented. If your subscription mailing address qualifies as as not-yet-represented-state, we will email you upon payment to ask for your print choice.

>>>Screen prints were created in limited edition; please note that prints will be available while supplies last. All the prints can be seen here. Limit five (5) free screen print illustrations per person.<<<

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, one of our intrepid readers and bloggers, needs your help!

She has a Kickstarter page for a Midwest Poetry Tour and there are only eleven days left for the funding to come through. Her tour is only about halfway funded, so she needs our help to make this awesome tour happen.

Here is the link should you choose to accept this mission: http://kck.st/dvWsid

The link will self-destruct in eleven days.

Drinking my Saturday morning coffee, browsing on my iPad, I make the usual online rounds: email, Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader. As I swipe and tap the glass, cigarette smoke wafting through the living room, I’m energized by guilt and looming deadlines. My mind dips in and out of possible topics to write about, to say nothing of the music review—and the unopened zip file containing the album—sitting on my desktop. I shut off the iPad and lumber over to my glass, L-shaped desk.

A 22″   LCD monitor lords over the setup; speakers and two external hard drives flank the monitor’s left and right sides. Underneath a pewter lamp, my Macbook is closed and wired to the monitor, my external keyboard, the speakers and now, the iPad, syncing and charging in silence. Underneath the monitor, my Motorola Droid displays the time and weather. Further to the right, my printer whimpers for black ink. The cable modem and router radiates the Internet throughout the apartment. Underneath the desk, the PC tower hums next to the speakers’ subwoofer.

I’m at a stage in my writing life where I need to get organized. More than calendars and to-do lists, I require technological balance. There’s always a “gadget utilization”  period for me. I buy it, run it into the ground, learn its strengths and weaknesses for myself, expert reviews notwithstanding, and plug it into my writing ecosystem accordingly.

Since bringing the “magical”  iPad home, my ecosystem has come undone. Left is right, up is down and I realized I didn’t know which tool to use for which task. The iPad’s existence in my world brought to the surface a bit of overlap between my tools and, as the deadline for this article pressed its cold nozzle against my temple, my frustration grew.

Will it be slow-pecking on the smartphone’s keyboard or an on-screen, capacitive touchscreen? I could take the Macbook out of the house, bang out a first draft during my lunch break. Yet, the iPad can do the same, more or less. All the while, my phone would sit idle in my jeans pocket, probably pouring impotence-rendering radiation into my groin.

And what about a simple pen and journal?

It became comical, now that I think about it. So many gadgets to write with, yet it took over a week for me to get my act together, to settle down and—well—write. Color me proactive, because I know this will happen again. So while I find myself smiling, tapping away at the external keyboard, I’ve made some important decisions to repair my ecosystem.

First, my smartphone is my mobile office. Email me, send me a tweet, post a note on my Facebook wall, comment on my blog: it all sends literal shivers down my over-clocked phone’s spine. This is how I communicate with the world, to stay in touch. As an example, the opportunity to do this piece presented itself, by chance, on my phone as I sat in the dentist’s office. By the time I scheduled my (second) root canal, the invitation to pitch the column flashed across my screen.

My Macbook is the undisputed king of long prose production. My Droid’s keyboard is, by design, a disaster, a slab of flat keys that aggravates me to the point of wishing for my old Blackberry Curve—or any Blackberry. The touchscreen keyboard is good for quick notes and dry, sarcastic tweets, but not much else. And I understand my writing process, that I’ve never gotten into a rhythm while working in public. This is where I need to be to get the work done, at my desk, the television on mute behind me.

It actually conjures up a desire for another ecosystem reorganization, to sell my Macbook and replace it with an iMac. Remember, its as much about utilization as its about balance. If I no longer see a need for a laptop, then why bother? Besides, writing at a Starbucks is overrated. Trust me. I end up eavesdropping instead of typing.

I use my journals and pens for “easier”  writing, when speed isn’t a requisite, when I don’t have a deadline chasing me like a rabid dog. Similar to scratch paper to figure out a math problem, I use a journal to work out a plot issue in a story or, if nothing else, to rant about how much I suck at writing, how I’ll never succeed at it and all of that good stuff akin to wanting to be creative. In other words, the journal allows me to slowly unravel a kink in my work or to maniacally rant in the name of catharsis; the latter helps to spare my blog readers from my public mewling.

Which brings me to the iPad. After using it for a month, I conclude that, within my ecosystem, its best purpose resides in the world of synchronization. While some bemoan the iPad’s usefulness, the ye olde “solution in search of a problem” argument, I’m pragmatic enough to know a new breed of technology when I see it. I discovered its niche in my writing world when I first used it to remote access my Macbook, essentially viewing and controlling my laptop from the iPad’s screen, not to mention creating and editing my Macbook files as well.

The iPad is where I can begin to do “serious”  writing, to then move my files through iTunes when I sync. I could move them through the “cloud” via Google Docs, but I’m paranoid about cloud computing. I like to keep my files local, moving from system to system with one little white cord. So call it excellent or poor design, but the iPad, as a writing tool in my life, works best alongside a full-bodied desktop system.

Technology breeds choice, foregoing bulky, utilitarian monoliths for sleek, bezeled super-machines created, and marketed, with multitasking in mind. Of course, writing is a matter of sitting down, the “ass to chair”   theory, and doing the work. The act of writing and technology, naturally, go hand in hand, but I think new challenges are born when writers, once users of utilitarian devices, are introduced to the electric parade of gadgets pumped out of tech companies’ imaginations. It’s too easy to get distracted these days, but the devices themselves, like the apps they run, requires the knowledge to understand what to use, when to use it and why. Then again, we could all use Moleskines and call it a day. But Moleskines don’t have Wi-Fi antennas inside them, so–

Mensah Demary (true identity: Thomas DeMary II) is a full-time worker bee, part-time fiction writer and occasional blogger at mensahdemary.com. From his home in southern New Jersey, dominated by farmlands and flea markets, he melds technology and the written word, sometimes with mixed results. You can read his story, “Saturn Return,“ at Up The Staircase.