Articles tagged with: Nicole Blizzard
RAW seeks submissions for 2012 Nicole Blizzard Short Story Contest
Every year, Radical Arts for Women (RAW) sponsors the Nicole Blizzard Short Story Contest open to all women living in Alaska. This year’s submission deadline is April 1, 2012. Winners will be announced at at Celebration of Change on April 21, 2012.
RAW seeks submissions for Nicole Blizzard Short Story Contest
Every year, Radical Arts for Women (RAW) sponsors a short story contest open to all women living in Alaska. The contest is named in honor of Nicole Blizzard, a local lesbian writer and creator, publisher, and editor of the local LGBT literary journal Naked Ptarmigan, who passed away in December 2009.
To enter, you must be a woman living in Alaska as of January 2011. Stories must be fiction of between 250 and 5,000 words and contain some lesbian content. Per the contest website, “The fiction and lesbian stipulations may be interpreted by the author, but we are not seeking poetry or non-fiction. Erotica is acceptable.”
Entries must be mailed in (no electronic submissions!), so writers, leave yourself with enough time to get to the post office! The postmark deadline is Friday, April 1.
And if you win? Generous cash prizes: first place $500, second place $300, and third place $100. Winners will be announced at the Anchorage annual women’s show Celebration of Change, which will take place this year on Saturday, April 23, at the Wendy Williamson Theatre on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus. The first place winner’s story will also be published on RAW’s website.
There are formatting and other issues to be addressed in submitting any writing for contests or publication, so check out the complete submission guidelines on the RAW website. And while you’re there, enjoy the writings of past years’ winners, too!
RAW 2010 Short Story Winners
Radical Arts for Women is pleased to announce the winners of the 4th annual RAW short story contest.
“We received entries from Anchorage, Fairbanks, Soldotna and Ketchikan. We had science fiction and down-to-earth tales, stories about jail and about rural Alaska.”
“Next year we will change the name of the contest to the Nicole Blizzard Short Story Contest. Nicole Blizzard was a local lesbian writer and editor who passed away in December. She created, published and edited the local LGBT literary journal Naked Ptarmigan (which also publishes the winner of the RAW short story contest), and last year Nicole published her first collection of short stories. We are pleased to rename the contest in honor of her.”
The Winners for 2010
Grand prize and winner of $500 – “Mail Plane” by Emily Sousa
2nd place and winner of $300 – “Itch” by Mel Green
3rd place and winner of $100 – “The Remaking of Audrey Lang” by CN McLaughlin
Honorable mention – “219s” by Amy Whinston
Honorable mention – “Gone, Fishing” by Audrey Fearnside
The winners were announced during the annual women’s performance Celebration of Change. A scene from the grand prize story “Mail Plane” was read during Celebration, and the full story is now posted on RAW’s web site. Mel posted her 2nd place winning lesbian love story “Itch” on her blog Henkimaa.
Memorials for Nicole Blizzard, tonight & Jan 31
Nicole Blizzard of Anchorage passed away on Dec. 30, and a memorial service is being held tonight, Thursday Jan. 7, at 5:30 p.m. in Providence Hospital’s West Auditorium. Blizzard was an RN in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Providence.
The queer community is planning a second memorial later this month at Mad Myrna’s. Blizzard asked for a party instead of a funeral, so her friends are throwing a Birthday Party Celebration of Nicole’s Life at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday Jan. 31, which would have been her 52nd birthday.
In December, she was dealing with health problems and developed complications. Her close friends were with her when she passed away. They will spread her ashes in Cook Inlet this spring, as she requested.
Blizzard founded The Naked Ptarmigan, an LGBT literary journal for Alaska. She was a former editor of The NorthView, a former board member of Identity, and a co-host of RAW’s Celebration of Change.
She loved music, photography and writing, wrote online book and music reviews, and contributed to the web site TechnoDyke. A new book of her writings, Love and Other Mishaps: An Accidental Anthology, was published in early December, and autographed copies are available in the Local Interest section of Border’s Bookstore in Anchorage.
RAW is considering a last issue of The Naked Ptarmigan in honor of Nicole, and may set up a scholarship named for her. Details will be announced on March 27 at Celebration of Change.
Condolences to her friends and family. She was well-known and will be missed.
