Lit Up — Spring Is Sprung!
April Newsletter: News, Announcements, and Highlights
For the northern hemisphere, warmer weather, brighter sunshine, the peeking out of budding leaves and flowers and all that good spring stuff is happening — along with reduced lockdowns, better vaccinations and more well people, we do hope!
As this is our first newsletter of 2021, we would like to thank you for being with us for another year, and for waiting for our return after our long but much-needed break. We are now announcing our official return and we hope that, together, we can bring back our beloved community (which we missed endlessly!), and that we will all inspire and encourage each other to read and write more!
Our team and submission guidelines have been reformed, magnificent editors have been added to welcome and take care of your majestic tales, and we have so many literary treats coming your way that we can barely restrain our excitement!
But let’s see things in order…
March
Welcome to the March Newsletter, in which we hope our news, suggestions and selections will brighten your days too!
The Lit Up Press
Our biggest news this month is the establishment of our beautiful new website, The Lit Up Press, the online ‘zine for Lit Up, showcasing the exceptional writers of Lit Up, marvelous stories, superb poetry, fascinating creative nonfiction and our favourite longer Tales in Parts, along with competitions, author interviews, book reviews, connections to our audio stories and Youtube works. The magazine will be digital-only for an introductory period, before going to press. It will be a trimestrial publication and we’re looking forward to building the magazine into a sought-after venue for writers and readers alike. You can find the magazine here, in all its beginning glory!
Our Updated Submission Guidelines
And a chance to meet our team:
DiAmaya Dawn, Founder and Editor-in-Chief: Interview
A Maguire, Managing Editor: Interview
Julia Kantic, Fiction Editor: Interview
Ray Harvey, Poetry Editor: Interview
Dermott Hayes, Prompt Editor: Interview
New Writing Prompt
What can bring us more happiness than a new writing prompt?
Dermott Hayes, our new prompt editor, and I are here, impatiently waiting to welcome your submissions. Our prompts will now be running through each month, the theme will be announced in our monthly newsletters, and your beautiful submissions will be published every Wednesday.
The prompt for April will be:
Distraction!
During this difficult time, we all seek distraction. What’s yours?
We are looking for:
Flash fiction (up to 1000 words) and Poetry (our usual standards apply).How to submit
Through this form:
Prompt FORM
Submissions open: Today
Submissions close: April 26, 2021
Please subtitle your drafts: “Lit Up — April’s Prompt: Distraction”
We can’t wait!
On Writing
In February, Ray Harvey and A Maguire provided some tips on how to deliver your stories and characters more effectively in Subject Matter and Style, and Building Characters respectively. J. Brandon-Lowry and Anne Leigh Parrish delivered their hilarious perspectives on what it means to write and how to get started.
A Maguire — Building Characters
Ray Harvey — Literature, Subject Matter, Style
J. Brandon Lowry — The Path of Most Resistance, The Incalculable Value of Starting Small
Anne Leigh Parrish — In the Beginning
Some subscribers might have noticed that
we have a few guest writers appearing to share with us their pleasures, knowledge and pain in writing. From time to time, we do extend invitations to write for this part of Lit Up. Please don’t send in articles for submission unless you’ve received an invitation, however.
Without further ado, let’s look at the recommendations for January and February we have selected for you!
Poetry
Our poetry selection presents a wide variety of subjects by J.L. Littlejohn, and V. Plut among others, as well as our own Ray Harvey, A Maguire, Julia Kantic, and Dermott Hayes. Have you seen them?
J.L. Littlejohn — Thief of Summers
Ray Harvey — Early Winter
A Maguire — Beauty Unaware
V. Plut — Winter at the Aux Sable Creek
Cole Hardman — Geckos
Mel Rie — Black Becomes Her
Dermott Hayes — Driftwood
V. Plut — Thoughts When Photographing Shadows
Micah Baker — Thyme
Georgia Lewitt — I write my name
Ecem Yucel — C’est la vie
Wild Flower — Moments With You
Julia Kantic — Sweet Slips
Anna Rozwadowska — From the Heart
Marcos Wagner — The Itanhaém Lagoon and Me
Shalini C — Moonbeams, Shadows and a Lighthouse
Emma Briggs — The Serenity of Being Busy
Short Fiction
Short fiction is our staple and although we had not announced our official return yet, these months held some marvellous tales.
Stephen M. Tomic — Jalapeños in Paradise
E.D. Martin — Not My Thing
Bart Elbey — Lost & Found
Michael Banks — Tripping With Death High Above the Barren River
Tales in Parts
‘Solve This’ by Dale E. Lehman has been completed. ‘The Fall and the Net’ by JP Fosterson , ‘The Sunset Matinee’ by Jeff Suwak, and ‘MitcHELL’ by Cole Hardman are going strong, developing week by week into must-read tales. If you have longer works that you’d like to have showcased in Lit Up, submit them in their 4–5 minutes length parts in full.
JP Fosterson — The Fall and the Net
Jeff Suwak — The Sunset Matinee
Dale E. Lehman — Solve This
Cole Hardman — MitcHELL
Have you had your fill? There are many more wonderful reads to be found at Lit Up’s Medium location and now at the Lit Up Press website. While the sun might be getting brighter and stronger, there are still those cool, wet days and cold nights to get through and what better way than curled up with a good read?
Social Media Accounts
Make sure you follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and our brand-new Instagram account! We will be promoting your work there!
Don’t hesitate to tag us when you share your Lit Up-published tales so we can repost, retweet, and share!
On Instagram, we will be sharing selected quotes from your wonderful tales!
On YouTube we will be posting readings and some of the workshops! Please subscribe to our channel :)
(Click on the icons to find our accounts)
❤
We are looking forward to reading all your wonderful tales.
Take care! See you next month.
Much love,
DiAmaya Dawn
