July’s Chalkboard: Villanelles, Readings, and Fiction
Hi, Chalkboard scribblers!
How was June for you? It was really busy for us at Chalkboard.
We’re happy to see such enthusiasm for our projects and we’ve added quite a few people to our writers list. We’ve also redesigned our homepage layout in the last week, and we hope it’s easier for you to find the latest submissions, current prompts, and general information now. Let us know what you think!
Our upcoming projects have been waiting for a while to meet you in the new season, and it’s time for these babies to spread their wings. Now for a quick summary on our Chalkboard projects and where they’re at:
Currently open
“Let me edit that for you” is an impish fiction project that will tickle your mind, if not your belly.
Villanelle Vestiges is a chain villanelle project where you take two lines from an existing villanelle and weave it into your own villanelle. The form is beautiful and we recommend to give it a try. [ed. Tamyka is impressed that Dewi resisted the urge to call them villanevilles…]
Readings is our audio project, where we invite you to read and record a poem by another writer. We’ve released the first batch of readings out, and if you haven’t taken the time to listen yet, you’re missing out. You’ll be blown away by the diverse interpretations of each set of words. We are currently accepting readings for the next three poems and would love it if you’d consider sharing your voice.
Out of Site, Out of Minds is an off-site social media collaboration. We’re happy to see this project is triggering more and more people to find new ways to collaborate and inspire each other.
One-Line Poems continue to be a crowd-pleaser, because more does not always mean better.
Coming soon
We’ll open a triolet collaboration very soon, and it’s one we’ve tested and proven in our kitchen (Slack) to ensure it’s the right balance of fun and challenging. We’ve got another cross-genre project brewing in the back room, and we’ll release more details as soon as it’s ready.
Gone…for now
The Murder Room is closed for submission. The Chalkboard editorial team appreciated the many creative ways you plotted Thomas Kendall’s demise, and we’re happy to conclude that you mess with Chalkboard writers at your own risk! We’re toying with some ideas for a second season and a spin-off project. We’ll keep you informed of course.
We’ve just closed the Imagà Imaginings project for submission, but the works will still be accessible if you haven’t gone through all of them yet. The project received enormous love with 21 image prompts that gathered almost a hundred poems, stories and captions as submissions and responses. We’re not sure of the exact numbers, as further stories were published off Chalkboard, but we know those numbers were BIG. Thank you very much to everyone for the success of this project. We hope that it was a meaningful exercise for you.
So you think you know it’s Summer
But some of us are down here on the winter side of the world, braving the elements. Here’s a picture of Tamyka in the recent GeoQuest Adventure Race, a 48-hour event that shrunk significantly when massive storms blew through, bringing four-metre swells that pounded the shore (and the kayaks!) and flooded the region’s rivers (and our crossings). But it’s not all dismal and dreary — right now, all we’re seeing is the red-orange sun.
Photo by Geocentric Outdoors
Got an idea? Let us know!
Remember, Chalkboard only accepts submissions that are either a contribution to a current project or a kick-off post for a new project. So if our current fiction and poetry projects aren’t calling out to you, feel free to submit your own idea. (More info.)
We’ll check in again in August, but until then, you should find everything you need in our publication pages. Have a great week!
Chalkboard editors.
