Page Seventeen

The end of the submission window must feel very close this side of the seasons. We begin winter and we begin the home stretch for those of you who have been chiseling away at your prose and preparing your entry to the page seventeen smorgasbord.

So, if you have a short story or poem that you think we’ll like, send it in to our competition and it might net you some prize money (and publication to boot). If you have a photo that you think will look good on the front cover of Issue 09, send it in and that fancy might become fact.

And don’t forget about our inaugural non-fiction component, revolving around the ‘Craft of Writing‘ theme. It can be a feature piece on the Emerging Writers’ Festival, or National Young Writers’ Month, or a particularly illuminating workshop. It may be an interview with a writer or ambassador for writing and publishing. It may be a reflective piece on your own experiences with the craft of writing. There are a lot of angles that can be taken for this theme. So if you have a piece, or even just a pitch, then submit@pageseventeen.com.au is ready to receive.

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Got some free time this Sunday? Come down to Page Parlour at Federation Square. It caps of the Emerging Writers’ Festival and is a fantastic little market of magazines, journals and small presses. Of course, page seventeen will be there as well. So, I hope to see you there.

Today marks the first day of the Emerging Writers’ Festival in Melbourne. For anyone with a free night, there’s still a chance to get in for tonight’s opening gala at Fed Square. And there’s plenty on in the days to follow; http://www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au/events/ is the place to go.

pageseventeen will be at the Page Parlour market on Sunday, June 5. Amble in to the Fed Square Atrium anytime between 12-5 and you won’t be disappointed.

Submissions are rolling in, but I still have spare time, which will simply not do. There’s just over a month left before the submission window for 2011 closes, so the home stretch for anyone putting the finishing touches on their mini magnum opus is fast approaching.

Don’t forget we also have a non-fiction section this year – anyone with a piece or pitch relating to the theme, Craft of Writing, email it though to submit@pageseventeen.com.au. It can be a feature piece (relating to, say, a workshop in the EWF, hint hint), an interview with an established writer, an opinion piece on writing or the mechanics of writing, or one of a dozen other perspectives I probably couldn’t even begin to speculate on.

Also tell your photo-oriented buddies (if you aren’t one yourself) about our cover competition; a click of a camera could earn $100 and determine the front cover of Issue 09 of pageseventeen. Not too shabby.

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As a quick little plug, I will be at Book Street (in the arcade at 521 Toorak Rd, Toorak) on Thursday June 9. The Australian Literature Review (the website can be found here) is launching its newest anthology, Basics of Life, including a panel of featured writers (one of which is yours truly). I’ll be alongside up-and-comer Belinda Dorio and the always-charming George Ivanoff, talking about whatever it is writers talk about.

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I made a plug on Facebook, but I’ll follow up here; the latest poetry collection from our editor, Ashley Capes, has been out for the entirety of 2011 and he has been pretty quiet about it. You’ll find a link to his blog on the right-hand-side of this page as a way to tell him off for this, and find Orion Tips the Saucepan here.

With April 15th here, pageseventeen Issue #09 is officially underway. One cliche that would normally be used for this sort of moment would be that playtime’s over, but let’s face it, this is our playtime.

Issue #09 promises to be the most diverse yet; short stories, poetry, non-fiction (themed, see Submission Guidelines) as well as our traditional cover comp.

So have a look through this website if you haven’t already, like us on Facebook (FYI, we’re not hip enough yet for Twitter) and post us some pieces to read. You’ve got to be in the competition to win it, and $200 always looks nice on a cheque passed your way.

Best of luck to you all!

Good morning Page-seventeeners,

Here’s hoping that as you’re reading this, you”re already in the process of cooking up something for the 2011 edition of pageseventeen.

A quick change of details though. Unlike previous years, the cheques and money orders for the competition entry fees need to be made out to Busybird Publishing and Design. The forms on our Downloads page have already been updated with this new detail; it doesn’t matter if you end up using an old copy of the 2011 forms, as long as the cheque or money order you issue is payable to Busybird.

With that said, only two days left until we fling the gates open!

Only one week to go until the submission window opens … hope everyone’s getting just a little bit excited!

You’ll find the guidelines and entry forms for 2011 now available at Downloads. Also, our Submit page has been updated with details for Issue 09.

We also have our competiton running as usual:

The judge for the short story is none other than Tiggy Johnson, former editor of page seventeen. For poetry it’s Wendy Fleming, currently the acting president of the Melbourne Poets Union. For the cover competition we have Blaise van Hecke, of Busybird Design.

Don’t forget we have a new non-fiction section running – the theme is ‘The Craft of Writing’. Remember that this theme does not affect any fiction submissions or cover competition entries. See our submission details for more information.

So, lock and load for next week, everyone! We still accept email submissions for our general, non-comp entries at submit@pageseventeen.com.au. Postal entries have a new destination:

PO Box 8078, Tottenham, VIC 3012

Any questions at all, don’t forget about our enquiry line, enquire@pageseventeen.com.au.

Hola! It’s just about that time of year again for the Page Seventeen submission window to open, so below is a preliminary outline of what to expect.

Opening Friday 15 April

Closing Thursday 30 June

As in previous years, the regular submission window and the competition window will run concurrently. The details below are an outline of the different fields.

FICTION is unthemed. For general submissions stories may be up to 5000 words; however, competition entries must be under 3000 words. Competition entry fees are $5 per entry or $12 for three entries. You may mix your entries with poetry.

POETRY is also unthemed. General submissions can go up to 100 lines (including spaces), and can be a suite of smaller poems, treated as a single submission. Competition entries have a limit of 60 lines (including spaces). Competition fees are the same as for fiction, $5 per entry or $12 for three entries, and can be mixed with fiction submissions.

NON-FICTION is a new addition to the lineup; Issue 9 will feature a small selection of themed articles and pieces. The submission window (15 April – 30 June) is for pitches to be sent in; the theme for the non-fiction section is ‘Craft of Writing’. It may be an interview or profile, a feature piece, or an article with a select topic that is relevant to the theme. The pieces themselves must be under 5000 words, and wiill be due for submission by the beginning of August.

PHOTOGRAPHY for Issue 9 is limited to the traditional cover competition; Page Seventeen will unfortunately no longer be accepting photography as part of its in-book content. The cover competition will be the same as in the past; a $5 entry fee that covers entry of up to five photos.

As mentioned already, this is just an outline of the criteria for preparing your work; further details will be officially published soon.

Any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me at enquire@pageseventeen.com.au

I’ve felt confident since the early days of producing page seventeen that I would know when it was time to move on. This was helped partly, at least, by talking to other editors about it and the uniformity in which they’d nod and say ‘you’ll just know’.

While I have enjoyed almost every moment of producing this fabulous literary magazine, from the first submission call out in November 2004, until today, it is with a little sadness that I let you know that my time is up. It’s been an impressive journey and the part I’ve enjoyed most is to have been able to watch new writers grow into something more, and to share the excitement of a first acceptance. It hasn’t been easy to step back far enough to be able to see the impact page seventeen has had in the writing community, although there have been times when I have been able to do this, and to be honest, I’m kind of blown away that I’ve been able to achieve something so big.

Not that it was done on my own. There have been so many people along the way who have helped in various ways, with Kathryn Duncan of Celapene Press, my fellow co-founder, at the top of the list. I’m not going to make a list here, but they know who they are, and if you want to too, you can check the Foreword page/s of each issue.

My other favourite part of it has something to do with all the wonderful people I’ve met and become friends with along the way, though I’m no fan of the soppy violin stuff, so that’s all I’ll say on that. In fact, that’s about all I’m saying right now, possibly because it’s a little difficult to articulate much more.

Anyway, I do ask for your help on one little detail. As I won’t be staying on as editor, and because I have moved interstate, I need you to not send anything (at all) to the Cockatoo address you’ve come to love. And also to let others know not to use it. Truthfully, I will possibly receive anything sent there in the next couple of weeks but realistically, I may not receive anything from there ever again. This shouldn’t be a big deal though, because submissions are not currently open. If you do need to contact page seventeen for another reason, especially to order a copy if you can’t use Paypal, please email me for information: tiggatha[at]gmail[dot]com. In fact, feel free to email me anyway. (You can still use the page seventeen email addresses.)

As for news on what’s happening, I don’t have enough information at the moment to share, although I feel confident that page seventeen will indeed live on. When more is known, be sure that information will be available here.

Lastly, thanks to everyone who’s ever submitted, read or even mentioned page seventeen, especially if you were nice to me along the way  

Tiggy Johnson (ex-Editor)

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‘Poetry Editor.’ It wasn’t until Tiggy most generously asked me to take on the role for this issue of page seventeen that I realised how much I missed reading and choosing poetry for a print publication. Working on Egg (Poetry) and holland1945 were different from what I do with kipple, where I read one poem at a time. The amount of submissions that passed through the inbox (or postbox with Egg) were vastly superior.

And reading hundreds of poems from nearly two hundred writers over a few months, is another thing entirely. For one, it gave me an intimate view of a nice chunk of the Australian poetry scene. A healthy scene I might add. I also had the thrill of reading work from writers I hadn’t had read for years, people who’d made the other publications I’d been involved with so much better.

Afterwards, I realised I wanted to get some thoughts down on the editing process, and so here they are, hopefully they turn out to be of some use. As a writer, I understand how mysterious it can be, what goes on with editors when they have your work. And I’ve noticed more than a few editors making their selection process more transparent, and I think it’s a smart idea because editors deserve more credit, but also because it may help writers.

For me, editing poetry for a journal is usually split into two broad halves, selection and alteration. Both sides of the role are enjoyable, though I find that selection can be as heartbreaking as it is exciting and that’s what I want to talk about now.

In particular, it’s a tough job when a large amount of submissions fall into the ‘maybe’ pile, leaving only a small percentage of poems to be placed under the ‘yes’ heading immediately. Those that are put into the immediate ‘no’ pile can be the easy part. They are at times too wordy, too slight, too long or even too ‘soap-opera.’ Sometimes they are even missing words or letters from words – so on one hand it’s easy to pass on these poems. What’s difficult is that with hundreds of submissions, it’s not easy to find the time to tell a writer which one of these (at times) minor issues could be the reason a poem does not make a shortlist.

Proofing a poem only takes a few minutes and could mean all the difference – and I wish I could have said this or something similar to many writers who sent page seventeen work for issue eight. Instead, I spent the bulk of my time on the ‘maybe’ pile. And it was big. I was thrilled to have too much good work – it made me really happy. Sending so much of that great work back did not. But a journal is bound by its pages – and no publication has an infinite amount. Space is a consideration. And when two, three, four or more poems must compete for a single space, it comes down to slight but important differences in quality.

For issue eight I made such difficult decisions based on the following criteria (in no particular order):

1)       Is there already another poem which deals with this theme/concern/image etc in the issue/is this poem too similar in tone or structure to another poem?

2)      Would the tone or content of the entire issue become unbalanced if this poem were to be included?

3)      Which poem takes more risk in its delivery, word choice or structure etc?

4)      Which poem communicates best?

5)      Which poem do I think people will want to read more than once?

These are questions that come to mind at all times during a reading period, but especially when it’s down to a number of great poems vying for one page. And some of those criteria are subjective ones, but that is to be expected. Art is subjective, that’s why it’s fun, difficult and ultimately worthwhile. Many of the shortlisted poems that missed out, missed out due to one or two of the criteria above. And I did my best to inform those writers of that, because I feel it’s important to know why a piece was sent back. A rejection on those grounds isn’t a rejection of the poem itself, rather, it’s more a rejection of that particular poem at that particular time and in the context of that particular journal’s current issue.

Looking back over the poetry, and talking to the short story editors, I’m convinced that this issue will be one of the best. I’ve certainly been blessed by the work our poets sent for number eight, and so I’d like to thank them again.

Ashley Capes

Tiggy has begun her adventure and so I will be updating you on the happenings at Page Seventeen while she is away.  (I’m trying to avoid the cliche while the cat’s away the mice will play…but…)

Submissions have closed and this year we had more than 250 poems and 180 short stories for general submission. This is the most number of short story submissions we’ve ever had.

And now for the fun.

The editorial committee will begin reading. Our poetry editor, Ashley Capes, will be reading all poetry submissions, and the fiction will be read by myself, Peter Farrar and Laurie Steed (our fiction editor).

So I’m going to crank up the heating, make a coffee and immerse myself in some wonderful short stories.

Vicki Thornton -Acting Editor

It’s almost the end of June, which means there isn’t long to get submissions or entries in to us.

If you want to make a general submission, we accept stories, poetry and black and white images. Please use the relevant cover sheet, but feel free to email your submission (we may request a higher resolution image if what you submit is selected). There is a limit of 3 written pieces and 5 images. See the guidelines for more information.

If you want to enter the competition, there is no limit to how many pieces you may enter, so long as the correct fee accompanies your entry form and entries. You cannot email entries to the competition: they must be posted. You can enter short stories and/or poetry in the Short Story and Poetry Competition, or colour images in the Cover image competition, whereby the one fee of just $5 gets you up to 5 entries.

But, you have only until the end of next Wednesday, June 30, to do it, so get moving!

Also, congratulations to Angelina Mirabito, whose poem ‘Alone Together’ was selected for inclusion in Issue 8 at Stopping all Stations in Nunawading last Saturday. There were many great pieces to choose from and it wasn’t easy. Thanks to everyone who came along, both those who participated and those who enjoyed listening.

Don’t forget there’s a similar opportunity for Adelaide and Brisbane poets coming up. On Thursday 29th Julyand Sunday 1st August respectively. Check the Events page for details.

And, we’ve announced a little competition on our Facebook page. It’s free to enter and all you have to do is ‘Like’ our page then guess how many stories and poems we’ll receive in this year’s competition. The winner will receive an available issue of their choice.

Best of luck.