SNS | 10-28-23
Join us online for the 13th Annual SNS Halloween Reading & Costume Party!
Featuring: Jan Steckel & E.C. Barrett
Theme: Monsters & Ghosts
Hosted By: Hollie Hardy
Saturday October 28, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)
Online Event
Free Admission
Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List
The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to 3 MINUTES MAX
Scroll down for monthly writing prompt
Join Event on Zoom
Meeting ID: 840 9660 9338
Passcode: 564897
Author Bios
Jan Steckel’s debut fiction collection Ghosts and Oceans was released this month on Zeitgeist Press. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won two Rainbow Awards. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her creative prose and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, Canary, Assaracus and elsewhere. She lives in Oakland, California.
Get your copy of Ghosts and Oceans at:
https://www.zeitgeist-press.com/index.php/product/ghosts-and-oceans/
Or, for a signed copy, send $24 via PayPal @Jansteckel or Venmo @Jan-Steckel
E.C. Barrett (they/she) writes folk horror, fabulism, and dark speculative fiction. They are, or have been, an academic, journalist, bookseller, editor, critic, and linocut artist. A Clarion West graduate, E.C. has words in Baffling Magazine, Split Lip, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere, and she serves as the book reviews editor for Reckoning. E.C. is queer, neurodivergent, and enjoys more maker hobbies than is entirely practical. ecbarrett.com
October Writing Prompt:
For the 13th Annual Saturday Night Special Halloween Open Mic, we’re taking up some classic, spooky themes: Monsters & Ghosts.
Tell us a story; sing us a song; write us a poem.
SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:
What defines a monster? What monsters have you known? What monsters have you been? Were they real or imagined?
Think: evil, demons, zombies, vampires, sirens, witches, werewolves, ghosts, predators, clowns, the circus, the horsemen of the apocalypse, blood-thirsty or benign creatures, Bigfoot, fairies, mutants, psychopaths, politicians, parents, screaming children, bullies, bosses, exes, oppressors, societal cruelties, false fears, monsters in masquerade, the misunderstood…
What is grotesque? Unthinkable?
What are you afraid of? How is that fear literalized?
Think: things in the woods, under the bed, outside the window, inside the house, in the past, in your dreams.
Think: pool drains, sharks, heights, blood, poison, ants, failure, the sun, disfigurement, dying alone
Think: fire, flood, earthquakes, war, death, prejudice, injustice, grief, silence
Have you ever seen a ghost? An apparition? Experienced the supernatural? Or know someone who has? What happened?
In what ways are legacies, generational pain, memories, photos, even DNA kinds of ghosts?
Consider: palimpsest as ghost, the way a city builds on the bones of the past.
Think: haunted house, graveyard, poltergeist, possession, exorcism, bumps in the night
Whom have you lost? What would you say to their ghost?
What’s your best, craziest, strangest, or scariest Halloween story? Make a poem or flash story of it (3 minutes or less!)
As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement, feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.
FOR INSPIRATION:
The Hitman short short fiction by T. C. Boyle
Pumpkins flash fiction by Francine Prose
The Anatomy of Desire flash fiction by John L’Heureux
Jane Goodall and Bruce Springsteen Contemplate their Childlessness poem by John Dudek
All Souls poem by Michael Collier
Windigo poem by Louise Erdrich
Ghost poem by Cynthia Huntington
Field of Skulls poem by Mary Karr
Monster in the Lake poem by Martín Espada
Monster poem by Jason Irwin
The Witch Has Told You a Story poem by Ava Leavell Haymon
No Write-In this month!
Join me in Oakland, CA for Half Century Salon live in person on Friday, October 20!