2012 Writers & Readers Rendezvous

Registration is now open for the Writers & Readers Rendezvous, May 3-5, 2012. Full conference schedule, event details and registration are at www.IdahoWritersRendezvous.  

Literary Lunch with the IWG and Guest Author Elaine Ambrose – “Writing with Humor”

Join the Idaho Writers Guild for a Literary Lunch on Tuesday, February 21.  Guest Author Elaine Ambrose will speak about “Writing with Humor.”

Smoky Mountain Pizza, 415 E. Parkcenter Blvd., Boise

11:30 – 1:30, free and open to the public

Elaine Ambrose is a local author and the owner of Mill Park Publishing.  Her national best-selling book, Menopause Sucks, helps women understand why menopause makes them want to break something. One of the more poignant passages explains why menopausal women often sneeze, fart and wet their pants all at the same time.  Her book, The Red Tease, won a national humor award, and her short story, “Evil Anne and the Mustard Seed,” won a writing award from the Idaho Press Club.  Read Elaine’s humorous blog, Midlife Cabernet, at www.ElaineAmbrose.com.

Feel free to bring along business cards, flyers, or anything else you’d like to share with your fellow writers. Also, we’ll be drawing 3 names to participate in a 3 minute open mic, so get writing! All styles and genres are welcome, as long as the work is original and can be read in under 3 minutes.

Hope to see you on February 21!

Remember, the IWG has a luncheon on the THIRD TUESDAY of each month at Smoky Mountain Pizza on Parkcenter. It’s an opportunity to network with other writers and find out what’s happening in your literary community.

Random Readings: John Rember

The Idaho Writers Guild is pleased to present John Rember for our Random Readings Event. Please join us Saturday, January 21st from 1-3pm at The Cabin, 801 S. Capitol Blvd., Boise, Idaho.

John Rember writes from inside his skin. He captures the essence of Idaho and even more: the man who lives there. His MFA in a Box inspires writers from a personal point of view. It is not a “how to”, but a “why to” write a book. He encourages writers to tap the stories that belong to them. MFA in a Box won the 2011 Silver Award from Nautilus Books, the Grand Prize Short List and Finalist 2011 Eric Hoffer Book Award, and was a Finalist for the 2011 Midwest Book Awards. The Idaho Library Association recognized his book Traplines: Coming Home to Sawtooth Valley as the 2004 Book of the Year. He has written numerous articles for publications such as Travel and Leisure, High Desert Journal and Wildlife Conservation. He has taught at The College of Idaho and, for many years, in the Pacific University MFA program in Forest Grove, Oregon. After his presentation, he will be available to sign books. www.johnrember.com

For more information: Judy Ware, 208-853-5198, warejudy@aol.com

Backtalk – Writing for Contests

Saturday, January 14, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Sun Ray Cafe, 1602 N 13th St., Boise

Join us for a stimulating January edition of Backtalk on Saturday, January 14, 11:30 – 1:30 at the Sun Ray Café, our usual Hyde Park haunt.  We’ve done a last-minute switch of topics to make sure we cover contests before the deadline for the Idaho Writers and Readers Rendezvous contests (details coming soon).  We’ll give tips on entering writing contests and discuss how to better your chances.

Join us at the Sun Ray Café in Hyde Park from 11:30 – 1:30 on Saturday, January 14th.  Food and drink will be available as always.

 

Literary Lunch with the IWG and Guest Author Mitch Wieland – “Effective Scene Building”

LUNCH WITH THE IDAHO WRITERS GUILD – “Effective Scene Building”

Join the Idaho Writers Guild for Literary Lunch on January 17th with Guest Author Mitch Wieland

Tuesday, January 17th, 11:30-1:30
Smoky Mountain Pizza, 415 E. Parkcenter Blvd., Boise

Mitch Wieland is the founding editor of The Idaho Review and the author of Willy Slater’s Lane (starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist) and God’s Dogs (named by New West as one of the Best Books in the West for 2009).   He is the recipient of a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship, two Literature Fellowships from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and a 2012 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Feel free to bring along business cards, flyers, or anything else you’d like to share with your fellow writers.  Also, we’ll be drawing 3 names to participate in a 3 minute open mic, so get writing!  All styles and genres are welcome, as long as the work is original and can be read in under 3 minutes.

Hope to see you on January 17th!

Welcome to the Idaho Writers Guild Blog

Thanks for stopping by!  For more information on the Idaho Writers Guild and membership, please visit our main site at www.IdahoWritersGuild.com.

Here on our blog we post information on upcoming events and occasional guest blogs from IWG members.  Our events include a Literary Lunch on the 3rd Tuesday of every month (resuming in January), Backtalk (a panel discussion with Q&A) on a Saturday every other month, and Random Readings featuring two authors of a particular genre.  Details on all of these events will be posted here as they are scheduled.  We’re also in the midst of planning our 2012 Writers & Readers Rendezvous, a conference that will include authors, publishers, editors, literary agents, screenwriters, songwriters and more.  The conference is scheduled for May 3-6, 2012.

So stay tuned for more information.  In the meantime, you can also connect with us on Facebook (Idaho Writers Guild) and Twitter (@IDWritersGuild).

Happy Holidays!

IWG

Literary Lunch with the IWG and Guest Author Carol Heimbuch

LUNCH WITH THE IDAHO WRITERS GUILD

Join the Idaho Writers Guild for Literary Lunch on November 15th with Guest Author Carol Heimbuch

Tuesday, November 15th, 11:30-1:30
Smoky Mountain Pizza, 415 E. Parkcenter Blvd., Boise

Carol Heimbuch writes books inspired by her personal treks in the Pacific Northwest and SE Alaska, including Shadow Stallion, a Wild West adventure,Twilight Tracks about salmon in Idaho and Condor Caper, an adventure regarding the California condor and a wildfire.  www.CarolHeimbuchBooks.com.

Feel free to bring along business cards, flyers, or anything else you’d like to share with your fellow writers.  Also, we’ll be drawing 3 names to participate in a 3 minute open mic, so get writing!  All styles and genres are welcome, as long as the work is original and can be read in under 3 minutes.

Hope to see you on November 15th!

Backtalk – eBooks!

Saturday, November 12th, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Sun Ray Cafe, 1602 N 13th St., Boise

Our next Backtalk will focus on eBooks.  Join the discussion on when and how to publish an ebook and what to expect from the process.  Joanne Pence, who just returned from an ebook conference in Florida, will lead the discussion.  All are welcome to attend, so please  join us at the Sun Ray Café in Hyde Park from 11:30 – 1:30 on Saturday, November 12th.  Food and drink will be available as always.

The Irreverent Writer by Michael Kroth

Recently I have begun to try to understand irreverence. I want to know its role in our individual lives, in organizations, and in society.  I want to know how it can work to enable positive change, and how it complements reverence to produce depth and wisdom and understanding.  When asked to discuss irreverent writing here I realized that I could only start the discussion with you, because there is so much I’d like to know about irreverent writing, but don’t.

When people think of irreverence the words witty, satiric, disrespectful, edgy, or humorous may come to mind. Yet if we consider irreverence to be something which nudges unexplored beliefs or practices then a broader range of writing can be considered irreverent.  One role writers play is to press against the status quo – to question the unquestionable, to discuss the undiscussable, and to experiment with the unthinkable so that society can do the same. The result is that something considered irreverent at the time it is written often becomes acceptable.

Irreverence depends upon the context of the situation.  In one era a treatise proposing that women be allowed to partake of the local saloon would have been considered irreverent; today, an editorial proposing that women be banned from local pubs would be viewed as offensive or simply laughable. Both would be irreverent writing. Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for writing his Ninety-Five Theses. Today, an essay calling for a ban on Protestantism would be considered outrageous. Both would be irreverent writing.

Irreverence takes no particular religious, political, ideological, philosophical, scientific, artistic, or moral position. Rather, it asks us to question the validity of all such positions, sometimes proposing alternative views or practices. It can be as trivial as Billy Bean taking on the hallowed traditions of baseball (sacrilege!), or as consequential as questioning beliefs about whether there really are weapons of mass destruction residing in a country before the decision is made to go to war.

While physical behavior (civil disobedience, for example) might be irreverent action in other arenas, words are the vehicle for the irreverent writer. 

Although irreverence can be used for various purposes – to shock, to get attention, to have or to make fun, to be rude, to hurt – here we are looking at what I’m calling “transformational irreverence”,  which confronts current beliefs or practices. At least two arenas exist for the irreverent writer – one has to do with form, the other with content.  For either, the irreverent writer might ask “What is considered blasphemous?”  Or, “What can’t be discussed?” Or, “What are the rules, and are there reasons to break them?”

Form

Here the writer challenges the revered and sanctioned rules or expectations about the craft of writing. It has to do with the way we write. Writers like e.e. cummings or James Joyce might author something so unconventional, so shocking, that the way we think about writing is turned upside down. The accepted form is contested or simply ignored and new ways of writing are then made possible. I am sure you have many more examples of this than I.

Content

Irreverence is often associated only with religion but it relates to any arena, including science, the arts, culture, commerce, and yes, to religion, wherein one might encounter beliefs or practices which go unquestioned. This has to do with the subject matter about which we write. Examples are abundant of writers who confronted belief systems or practices and consequently changed the world. Upton Sinclair, Betty Friedan, and Rachel Carson come quickly to mind.  Re-read Martin Luther King’s 1963, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to see how a reverend can be irreverent as he discusses his thinking about just and unjust laws; his disappointment with the church; “the appalling silence of the good people”; and his belief that it is just as wrong to “use moral means to preserve immoral ends” as it is to ”use immoral means to attain moral ends”.  (http://bit.ly/ohdWt7)

An inexhaustible range of topics is available for would be irreverent writers.  Just look for what would be considered heretical and you are likely to have a topic that lends itself to irreverent treatment.  But beware. While irreverence often takes the form of humor or satire – note the work of Jonathan Swift and Jon Stewart for example – it can be a serious and a risky business. Just ask Salman Rushdie.

Some authors are irreverent in both form and content. My favorite book is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller which, in satirizing war, does both.  It was described in a 1986 New York Times 25 year retrospective  as “a work of consummate zaniness populated by squadrons of madly eccentric, cartoonographic characters whose antics were far loonier than anything ever seen before in war fiction – or, for that matter, in any fiction.”

Great writing doesn’t have to be irreverent, but many great works are.  Here’s to more irreverence in all our writing.

References:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/home/heller-loony.html

Michael Kroth, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of Idaho. He has written or co-authored four books including Transforming Work: The Five Keys to Achieving Trust, Commitment, and Passion in the Workplace; The Manager as Motivator; and, Career Development Basics. Managing the Mobile Workforce: Leading, Building, and Sustaining Virtual Teams, co-authored with David Clemons, is his latest book. He is a past board member of The Cabin and is a member of the National Speakers Association. You can follow him @michaelkroth, LinkedIn, www.michaelkroth.com, or at http://managingthemobileworkforce.com/blog/. You can contact him at mkroth@uidaho.edu.

Backtalk – eBooks

Saturday, November 12, 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Sun Ray Cafe, 1602 N 13th St., Boise

Ebooks are everywhere, so let’s talk about them!  Join the Idaho Writers Guild along with special guest author Robert Wagner and IWG’s own Joanne Pence, who will just have returned from an ebook conference, to discuss the how and why of ebooks.  Join us at the Sun Ray Café in Hyde Park from 11:30 – 1:30 on Saturday, November 12th.  Food and drink will be available as always.