Open Letter to Artists | No Fee Art Submissions

Dear Artists,
 

We are in the process of making several major changes and I am anxious to tell you about them.

First, artists who submit work in response to our calls will no longer have to pay fees. Everything else about our exhibitions will stay the same. We will select thirty artists whose work will be shown online and in our art and literary journal, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and we will designate 5 artists as award winners in 5 categories.

Call for Artists

Second, we have decided to transition to a digital interactive journal; eventually, we will stop producing our journal in print. This decision was mainly driven by difficulties we've had with the U.S. Postal Service regarding delivery. We've made several changes over the years to try to improve our delivery rates, but we still experience a number of costly delivery problems with every mailing. For a small business, these expenses can be very troubling. Some of you have experienced this problem with us. So, we've decided to focus our efforts in the future on our digital piece, and we plan to make it an interactive digital publication with links and pop-ups. We're excited about the next steps in the evolution of our very fine art and literary journal. Also, we will continue to honor paid subscriptions to print editions until they expire.
Still Point Arts Quarterly

Third, subscriptions and single copies of our digital publication will be free. With our expenses drastically lowered by not paying printing and mailing costs, we feel we can offer our journal to readers at no cost. Ultimately, our goal is to dramatically widen our reach into the art and literary community. 

Sign up for your free digital subscription to Still Point Arts Quarterly, which starts with the fall 2017 issue.

I know there is a feeling on the part of many artists that the practice of paying money to have one's work considered for an exhibition is questionable, at best. While it is a very common practice, it has both pros and cons, and I have often given this consideration. But the business of producing a print journal has required us to find ways to support the ever-increasing costs of printing and postage. Since our artists are featured in the journal, I felt charging fees was justified. But by now dropping our printing and mailing expenses, it only makes sense to not charge fees for submitting artwork for consideration. 

I hope you will continue to support and delight us with your art submissions. Our commitment to quality content and presentation is unchanged. Please share this message with your friends and colleagues.

Thank you for all you do to make our work so enjoyable.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Christine Cote
Founder and Proud Member

Rare Literary Achievement Available Again

Shanti Arts Publishing announces the release of Bob Thurber's debut novel, Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel. Paperboy was first published by Casperian Books in 2011 and went out of print a few years later. The book's popularity and superb reviews led to its republication by Shanti Arts Publishing. It is due to be released May 31, 2016.

Paperboy is the story of fourteen-year-old Jack Fisher-malnourished and battered, abandoned by his father, neglected by his mother, manipulated by his older sister, harangued by his boss, and shortchanged by customers. Jack delivers papers in Pawtucket while trying to keep his family from self-destructing completely. It is 1969, and as the whole world holds its breath to see what will become of the Apollo 11 astronauts, Jack clings to his daily mantra, "Things will get better." But things get drastically worse, at space-age speed.

Bob Thurber is an award-winning short story writer whose fiction has appeared in hundreds of publications and dozens of anthologies. Born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1955, he experienced poverty, a lack of formal education, and a series of dull dreary jobs while working obsessively at writing nearly every day for twenty years before attempting to publish his work. Since then he has produced an enormously successful body of work that has received a nearly endless list of awards and citations. Thurber is also the author of Cinderella She Was Not (2013), Nickel Fictions: Volume One (2013), and Nothing But Trouble (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2014).

Paperboy has received much praise from authors, reviewers, and editors. The literary website Three Guys One Book wrote: "Reading this book, even at its darkest places, you can see Bob Thurber's fingerprints. He's so sharp-especially at short fiction-that he writes short burning chapters from which you can't tear away. He slugs you right in the gut without any maudlin posturing-you'll probably ask for more. Raw and horrific throughout, but genuinely funny in places."

Author Dennis Must said: "Paperboy continues to haunt my consciousness. The narrator's skill and veracity in this pared-down and guileless rendering I consider a rare literary achievement."

Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel is a publication of Shanti Arts Publishing in Brunswick, Maine. The book may be purchased through all major online booksellers and may be found in select bookstores. A digital edition is available through most sellers of ebooks.

ISBN: 978-1-941830-34-5 (print, softcover) $17.95 USD
ISBN: 978-1-941830-35-2 (digital) $3.99 USD

more information

Bob Thurber's Reflection on Writing

Something for our writers . . . 

Remember . . . Keystrokes are hammer taps. Get words on paper. Don’t worry about connections, character or plot. Work for an hour. Promise yourself an hour. Do nothing else but move your fingers. Make coarse shapes. Follow any emotion that pops up but never impose emotion, never fake it, and don’t make up your mind or your heart ahead of time. Understand you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why you’re here. Rough it out. Anything goes. You can decide later what any piece of text looks like, what it might mean. Don’t stop. Don’t question. Don’t quit. Don’t stop to read what you wrote. Move your fingers. You mind will have no other option but to keep up. Remember that writer’s block is merely the cold marble waiting for the chisel to heat up.

— Bob Thurber, author of Paperboy and Nothing But Trouble (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2014) and countless short stories and flash fiction.

Note: Shanti Arts Publishing is republishing Paperboy and it will be released later this spring. When I read Paperboy a few years ago, I was stunned and amazed. It's a book I've never been able to get out of my head. When Bob asked us to republish it, I was elated. I'm delighted to make this book available again.

Diana Crane Awarded 2015 Write Well Award

Diana Crane has received the 2015 Write Well Award  for her story, "The Visitor," which appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly.  

The Write Well Award was established by the Silver Pen Writers Association, a non-profit organization that encourages and fosters creative writing careers, and is named after the Write Well, Write to Sell blog by Rick Taubold and Scott Gamboe, also a part of Silver Pen. The award seeks to recognize excellence in published short fiction in both print and electronic magazines. 
 

Diana Crane grew up in Canada, taught sociology in the United States, and has published several books of nonfiction on topics related to fashion, the media, and the arts. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and twice the recipient of a Fulbright award. She now lives in Paris where she writes fiction as well as articles about fashion and the arts. She also co-edits a fashion studies journal.

Please click here to read "The Visitor."

Images in this story are by Susan Landor Keegin.

Spring Rain Winter Snow Honored by the Haiku Society of Ameria

We are delighted that our children's book Spring Rain Winter Snow received an Honorable Mention in the annual book awards by the Haiku Society of America. The haiku in Spring Rain Winter Snow are by Edward J. Rielly, and illustrations are by Angelina Buonaiuto. 

Spring Rain Winter Snow celebrates the four seasons with insightful haiku and enchanting illustrations. The pages of this lovely book are filled with opportunities for children to gaze, wonder, question, and smile. Both children and adults will enjoy this book for its engaging approach to the magic of nature's seasons.

JUVENILE NONFICTION / Concepts / Seasons
JUVENILE NONFICTION / Poetry / General

ISBN: 978-1-941830-94-9 (print; hardcover) $19.99

More Information  |  Purchase


Samples pages:

Three Writers Nominated for Write Well Award

Three featured writers have been nominated by Shanti Arts for the 2014 Write Well Award, which seeks to recognize excellence in published short fiction in both print and electronic magazines. Winners will be announced in August 2015.

Nominated writers are:

Diana Crane, for "The Visitor," which appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of Still Point Arts Quarterly. 

Diana Crane grew up in Canada, taught sociology in the United States, and has published several books of nonfiction on topics related to fashion, the media, and the arts. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and twice the recipient of a Fulbright award. She now lives in Paris where she writes fiction as well as articles about fashion and the arts. She also co-edits a fashion studies journal.
Crane's website | Amazon page

Frederic Smith, for "The Old Man and the Ballerina," which appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of Stone Voices.

Frederic Smith is a southern Californian who went to Princeton and Cambridge. Twenty years ago he tired of practicing law and turned full-time to writing. He is the author of numerous stories and a novel, See How We Run, which received the lead reviews in the New Statesman and the Irish Times.  

Susan Scott, for "Still Life," which appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of Stone Voices.  Susan Scott collaborates with artists, scholars and activists on a wide range of creative projects and serves as a lead editor with New Quarterly magazine, home to the Wild Writers Festival in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Scott teaches memoir, short fiction, and the well-wrought essay; 2014 workshops include the annual French River Creative Writing Retreat and Stone by Stone: Writing Spiritual Memoir, with Prajna of Amida Mosaic Sangha. A memoir in-progress, Sainted Dirt: Stories from the Fringe, explores the gifts of spiritual displacement. A chapbook, Temple in a Teapot, was launched on the Mormon Women Writers Literary Tour.

Loving Awareness

Lukas Riebling, Flaming Heart.

How does one become loving awareness? If I change my identification from the ego to the soul, then as I look at people, they all appear like souls to me. I change from my head, the thought of who I am, to my spiritual heart, which is a different sort of awareness — feeling directly, intuiting, loving awareness. It's changing from a worldly outer identification to a spiritual inner identification. Concentrate on your spiritual heart, right in the middle of your chest. ~ Ram Dass

Let go of it?

One cold day a bearskin was floating down the river.

I said to a man who had no clothes,

"Jump in and pull it out."

But the bearskin was a live bear,

and the man who jumped in so eagerly

was caught in the clutches of what he went to grab.

"Let go of it," I said, "Fighting won't get you anywhere."

"Let go of it? This coat won't let go of me!"

~ Rumi, "The Pull of Love"

A Bear Fighting a Tiger, 1610

Leonard Cohen: He's My Man

I've rediscovered Leonard Cohen....he's my man.

"I generally find the song arises out of the guitar playing, just fooling around on the guitar. Just trying different sequences of chords, really, just like playing guitar every day and singing until I make myself cry, then I stop. . . . I don't weep copiously, I just feel a little catch in my throat or something like that. Then I know that I am in contact with something that is just a little deeper than where I started when I picked the guitar up."

An Afternoon with Bergman - Ingmar Bergman

As editor of two art and literary journals, I have the pleasure of reading an amazing variety of submissions—gripping stories, inspiring characters, surprising endings. Of those pieces that are selected, I then have the delight of putting them in layout, which involves doing a very close read and creating the visual display, the "look and feel," that will enhance the telling of the story and the delivery of the message.

Today I had a very special treat. I was working on a piece that will appear in the upcoming summer issue of Stone Voices. Called "I'm Anxious, Mr. Bergman," by Leo Tracy, its story is entwined with that of the 1972 Ingmar Bergman film Cries and Whispers.

Tracy tells the story of a young man dealing with searing questions about life, love, joy, destiny, cruelty, and death. His internal struggle is made even more difficult because he is gripped by anxiety and OCD. While visiting his uncle, the young man goes to see Cries and Whispers—not ever an easy movie to watch, but far less easy while gripped with emotional fragility. As for me, a close read of this piece made me determined to see Cries and Whispers. So I checked Hulu for availability . . . and there it was.

The film tells the story of three sisters, one of whom is dying of cancer. Through flashbacks, the problems of the family are revealed: infidelity, jealousy, arrogance, and even hatred. This makes dealing with the death of a sibling extremely difficult. Only the family maid is able to comfort and care for the dying woman and does so out of genuine love and affection.

The film is a thing of beauty. Costumes and furnishings are splendid. Poses, postures, and facial expressions of characters are precise and expressive. The flow of the film is slow and serene, but also perfect; one can't rush through the kind of emotional spectacle presented here. Adding to the drama, the color red is used to punctuate scene changes and certain highly emotional moments. It is a memorable and complex creation.

"I'm Anxious, Mr. Bergman" is ultimately about the intertwining of life and art. We bring ourselves to art, our anxiety, sorrow, desperation, as well as joy, freedom, and sense of fulfillment. If we are open and engaged, art helps us churn through all the muddled pieces of our lives. Sometimes art is enjoyable and refreshing; sometimes it tears us wide open. But do it, we must.