Submissions Wanted for Book Based on Our Event!

Note : This was posted 25/2/10 but I am changing the date stamp to make it more visible to anyone who might be interested.

 Here, at last is the announcement!

Over the past five years, Bernice Chauly and I have had more than 160 writers read their work at the event we organise, Readings@Seksan (and elsewhere), and either read or tell their stories at CeritAku at No Black Tie. We would like to publish a collection of some of the best works from the events to be published by the middle of 2010 and we believe that the book would provide an excellent snapshot of the current state of the Malaysian writing scene.

The collection will be jointly edited by Sharon Bakar and Bernice Chauly and will probably be called CeritAku. We have decided to publish it ourselves.

All those who have taken part in the events are invited to submit work.

We would want the book(s) to reflect the nature of the event so all kinds of texts including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, short plays, journalism are welcome. Extracts from longer works will be considered as long as they can stand alone.

The prose pieces should be no longer than 2,500 words. You can submit as many pieces as you like (since this gives us more to choose from).

Contributions may either be in English or Malay. (The edition will be bilingual with translation into English of pieces originally written Malay.)

We realise that many people have read from published work. If the books are widely available locally (and I’m thinking here also of books like Body@Body, Malaysian Essays, Silverfish New Writing, Snapshots) then there is little point in including them again here. Instead we invite these writers to contribute a new piece.

If however your work has only been published on a website, or in a journal or magazine, or self-published chapbook; or if your piece or book was published overseas and is not easily available here, then we would be happy to consider it for the collection. (And be expected back to read it in public!)

We will be happy to talk to individuals about their contributions.

Each piece will be chosen for its merit i.e. just because you have read at an event it does not mean that your work will automatically be included – we have to put together a commercially viable publication of the best material. If we are inundated with good stuff (as I hope we will be) then we will definitely look at publishing a second book.

We may work with you on editing pieces where we feel some revision is necessary.

Contributors will be invited to help promote the book at events after publication including at the launches. (We hope to launch in Singapore and Bali as well as in KL).

I’m sorry we can’t pay you for your efforts, beyond giving you a free copy of the book. But you will continue to hold copyright of all work submitted, and if we do turn a profit, it will go towards further publications.
Since many excellent photographs have been taken at Readings, we would like to include some of these in the book and will be contacting photographers in due course.

How to submit : Send your work as a Word attachment with CERITAKU SUBMISSION in the subject line to sharonbakar@yahoo.com

Deadline for submission : March 31st 2010

BTW, if you feel left out because you haven’t read at Readings, Sharon may be able to find a slot for you. Write and ask.