Grind Writers - news June 2015

Read it online at Issuu  - here. 

Contents: 

--Royal City Writing

--Sew, you want to write

--Literary Bran – joy of  regularity

--The Fed votes in a new exec

--BC writers autonomous fan region

--SUBMIT!  (You know you want to)

--Constance Rook contest, big bucks

--New self-publishers' strategy - The Book Launch Gang 

--Happy anniversary TWS!

--Word stuff

--Turning on the tap

--Word Wenches

--Great BC Novel Contest

--Where we meet

--The free-write photo prompt: Just do it!

Tara Kimberley Torme - reflections on the battle for inclusion

Grind Writer, Tara Kimberley Torme, has published a review of the 2015 Inclusion BC Conference  she attended recently – on Self Advocate Net (“Changing attitudes one person at a time”).

This year’s theme was, ‘’Keep Moving Don’t Stop,” and focused on artists and people with disabilities. “People do not usually see people with disabilities as people with talents and abilities – they see them as people with disabilities first and foremost,” Tara wrote. 

The conference, and Tara in her article, talked about the situation for people with disabilities (PWD) 60 years ago, how “those with disabilities were put into institutions and locked away from society – not even given the right to an education – or even to be part of the community." In the '60s and ‘70s what was essentially a liberation movement began. “The disability movement literally began at a kitchen table nearly sixty years ago – parents and individuals with disabilities – seeking for equality and inclusion in the community – access to schools – and out of the institutions. [….] With the movement parents fought hard to end institutionalization of people with disabilities and to include them in the education system."

Inclusion has been quite a struggle ever since and every inch of the way.

One of Tara’s many reflections from this conference is an important one for all of us to remember: “Each person with a disability has hidden talents that nobody knows about because they are too busy focused on the disability – instead of the ability – they don’t see past the barrier of what’s there – so they miss the opportunity to see the real person underneath.”

You can read Tara’s full article here. It’s a very interesting article and gives one insight into a fraction of the issues PWD face and struggle with on a daily basis in our society.

--Margo Lamont

Grind Writers - Meeting Dates 2015

Before attending for the first time, for address etc,  please email:
grindwriters@gmail.com
We sometimes meet away from the Grind, do out-trips.

Grind Writers – Meeting Dates 2015
Note we skip any long weekends and go to the following week
Sat	Jan 10		Sat	July 11
Sun	Jan 25		Sun	July 26
Sat	Feb 14		Sat	Aug 8
Sun	Mar 1		Sun	Aug 23
Sat	Mar 14		Sat (Labour Day Sept 7)	Sept 12
Sun	Mar 29		Sun	Sept 27
Sat (Easter April 5)	Apr 11		Sat  (Thanksg. Oct 12)	Oct 17
Sun	Apr 26		Sun	Nov 1
Sat	May 9		Sat	Nov 14
SunVictoria Day May 18)	May 24		Sun	Nov 29
Sat	June 6		Sat	Dec 12
Sun	June 21

ManBug (by George Ilsley) -- An Appreciation

George Ilsley is a writer who, fortunately, attends quite frequently at the Grind Writers' group meetings. George is not exactly one to blow his own horn. And because I don't make the habit of googling everybody who attends, we didn't find out for at least a year that he had two books

published: Random Acts of Hatred  (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004) a book of short stories; and his latest, ManBug (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2006), a novel, which was a finalist for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award (Gay/Lesbian Fiction). George was subTERRAIN magazine's 2014 Lush Triumphant Contest winner for Creative Non-Fiction.  

____________________________________

I’ll never ignore armpits again. I’ll never feel the same way about them now either, now that George Ilsley has irrevocably associated the words “armpits” and “bonsai garden” in my consciousness in ManBug.  

And speaking of consciousness, ManBug book is awash in consciousness; it’s all about consciousness. The cons of false consciousness. The fleeting veracity of consciousness. Yours. Mine. Sebastian’s and Tom’s --  of each other, of themselves, of others, of insects. Especially insects. And intersections. And interspecies intersections. And about some things we’d just as rather not be conscious of -- what makes Glosette™-style raisins glossy for instance (Euw). The mating habits of all sort of beings, conscious or otherwise. And some things we are not conscious of, but others are: what hearing speech in colours is like, for instance.

But throughout, a perceptive Observer with a witty way of slicing & dicing our consciousnesses into his. George Ilsley’s. Sebastian’s. Tom’s. The bat bug’s. And an exploration of connection and consciousness and love in the forms love will choose to take and how we can be conscious of the many ways that love can manifest. And how strange love is. And what happens when it stops.

From the publisher's blurb:
Told in dreamlike fragments, ManBug unfolds as a love story between Sebastian, an entomologist with Asperger's Syndrome (similar to autism), and Tom, a spiritual bisexual who may or may not be recruiting Sebastian for a cult. They explore the world through their relationship, seeking meaning and value in themselves through the other. They also try to avoid the inevitable toxins around them, both real and imagined—like bugs avoiding insecticide—while asking the question, Just how much poison can any of us absorb?

--Margo Lamont