New Cover Star found and New Issue coming up!

It’s the buildup to the next issue, and I’ve been busy editing, finding our new cover star and beginning researching/reading for a plethora of essays! Tough times ahead!

Some of you will have gotten notification if you’ve been selected, but not all yet, sorry for the delay. Getting round to this as soon as possible.

We have also found our new cover star Linda Ravenswood, who has provided us with an amazing work of art. I won’t reveal it now, but stay tuned to see it as the next cover of Enigma Magazine!

I’d like to bring something else to light as well. I’ve started volunteering at a centre called Discover in Stratford, and am so excited about it. For those of you aged 0-11, those with children or those young at heart, I would suggest you pay a visit. Originally set up in 2001, it acts as a haven, a creative buzz of activity to create inspiration through drama and role play. It has served to culturally enrich Newham and it really did seem like a great colourful beacon to me. I’m really excited to start supporting it! Also, for those of you who love a challenge, check out NANOWRIMO if you haven’t already! If you need help and momentum for creating a novel, this is a very well established yearly project which supports writers online to finish and receive an award if you write 50,000 words.  If you don’t finish, there’s still an amazing creative process that you’d have gone through if you started, so it’s worthwhile to give it a go! I’ve decided that I’ll give it a crack this year, very excited!

Stay tuned for the next issue and hope you have a Happy Halloween!

Suze

Happy Birthday Enigma! One year online!

Failing to avoid cliches here! It really hasn’t felt like a year since its first upload – things have literally whizzed by, but the more I think about it, the more I realise how much the magazine has developed, and how I have since being its editor! I remember trying to spread the word and continuing to do so, asking all sorts of people for their help, especially from the editor of Inside Out, Rebecca Atherton and the marketing department of the Poetry Society! Their advice has been invaluable! Of course, I’d like to thank Denis and the team at CAARE for giving me this opportunity, as well as Jo Cohen with help in distribution and the opportunity for Enigma to be spotted in cafes and offices all over. We hope to extend our reach evermore throughout! I would also like to thank her and Brandi Travis for helping me edit the first edition and to get it out in time!

Future plans for Enigma include more open mics, more MP3 submissions, more print versions, our Birthday anthology and maybe some writing workshops next year! Am very excited!!

Be sure to stick around with us for another literary filled year!
Suze

National Poetry Day summary and Enigma’s birthday book!

Hi everyone,

Updates weren’t as frequent as I’d said, have been busy becoming a student yet again! I managed to catch the end of the Poetry seminar in the Southbank Centre, celebrating the huge scale Knit-a-Poem with the Poetry society and the Foyle Young Poets award! Congratulations to all those who won/took part! I also just made it (what is it with these close temporal scrapes?) to the 100 club, celebrating a whole host of jazz inspired poetry. Utterly amazing, from classical themes that can be applied to the present, political themes and general observations of the everyday, set to gloriously crafted music and monologues of comedy. I’d feel so privileged if they were to come to another Spoken from the Art! Feel free to comment on this post about the events you got up to on the day (poetry related of course !)

Speaking of which, photos should be available from that memorable night (again, apologies for the delay!). Trying to get worded up on uploads onto the site such as jpgs and mp3s, which I’ve had more than a little trouble with!

It’s only 3 days away from Enigma’s first birthday! If you’ve seen Murakami’s anthology of Birthday Stories, then you’ll know where this sentence is leading. I’m thinking about a little collection of birthday stories, poetry or playscripts. It will hopefully be available to buy online once it’s done (depends on the level of interest for the publication date – I’m thinking December/Jan – a new year with the magazine!). Illustrations of a birthday theme are more than welcome to go on the front and inside the booklet.

Returning to the present in a rather odd way, I come back to the issue of the Writers of Tomorrow, encapsulated in the 3rd issue! Submissions end tomorrow for the October Issue, so please get them in whilst you can! We really need an illustration for the front cover, so any budding artists or anyone who wishes to depict their hopes and/or fears in illustration as well as writing can send them in by all means.

That’s all for now! Stay tuned for the third issue!

Susan

National Poetry Day today (08/10/09)

It’s official, and everyone is going crazy for the nugget of literary in book, screen and spoken forms. To get involved in all areas, visit the events page on the official site here: http://www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk/national-events/

The Poetry Society has finished its giant knitted masterpiece of knit a poem and it looks absolutely fantastic! Lots of open mics have sprung up in libraries all over the country, so by all means get stuck in and enjoy the spoken word with your community!

Feel free to send in your lines for the best poem ever. Surely it should be more than one line, or maybe that’s all it takes! Still taking more submissions for online if you wish to send in or have a voice recording we currently have one from Jennifer Hooper, entitled “I am Alone”.

More updates will come from me as the day develops! Have fun!

Susan

The Best Poem in the World

To celebrate the upcoming National Poetry Day (8/10/09), I invite all of you to take part in what you think will shape the best poem in the world! Simply send a line that you think could not be better to editor@enigmacw.co.uk . I will compile them and edit them together in poetry form and will post up the resulting image soon!

Susan

Waiting for the Writers of Tommorow!

Just a reminder that the annual issue is accepting submissions for the October Issue! Do not miss the opportunity to be featured in Enigma’s first birthday issue! We accept illustrations, prose, poetry, playscripts and features so lots of scope for entries! The deadline is not fixed yet, but a rough one would be the 15th October!

Stay tuned for possible birthday events/prizes! Any Birthday themes would be welcome as well!

Susan

Spoken from the Art

Thank you everyone for your support, it was great to see all different styles of writing and performances housed under one roof, simply fantastic quality and variety! Best of both worlds. We have some photographs from the event that you can view at your leisure later. We have raised quite a bit for the printing of the magazine too

Remember, submissions are open for October!

Susan

September… already!?

Since July, summer’s just passed me by… it’s September already, and we welcome this month with our first Enigma fundraiser Spoken from the Art tomorrow! If you’ve seen the first issue in print, we intend to follow suit for the second and extend its reach ever more slightly.  To find out how to support this cause, click on the Events tab for more information.

Submissions are open throughout the year, but we would especially welcome them now to our autumn issue, AND realising that it’s Enigma’s first birthday on the 17th October! This was the day that Enigma Magazine was unleashed online for the public to see. If you’d like to be in Enigma’s birthday issue, click on the Submit tab for more details.

The advertising rates, as amazingly cheap they are, are only for this issue now as part of birthday celebrations! Check out the sales to get great offers!

Susan

Enigma Issue 2 is up and updates for event!

At long last, the second installment of Enigma Magaine is up and ready for all to read! Check out the issue under the Current Issue tab. I’d like to offer my congratulations to all those included in the magazine, and for Deborah Shaer’s illustration “Guardians” for this issue’s cover! Thanks also to Jorge Ba-oh for the magazine’s main layout.

The event Spoken from the Art is also planned for the 2nd September.

Hope you have fun reading the magazine!

Susie

Writers of Tomorrow…today!

I was fortunate enough this year to visit the London Book Fair, attending a seminar about the Writers of Tomorrow funnily enough! With such troubling recession tinged times as today, it was a very poignant subject and I was eager to see the problem from all angles and how to solve it. The question of tackling attitudes towards new talent in a tough economic period was covered by lecturers, literature development agencies as well as publishers themselves.

The opinion, unsuprisingly, was very mixed indeed: depending on whether you see the glass half full or in shards by the living room table. Some had mentioned that it was time for aspiring writers to turn their hand to non fiction and copywriting, and that the need for the literary titles were fading fast. Others had mentioned our literary “green shoots”, such as Picador taking on new writers, and the idea of self-publishing rising sky high.

And lo and behold, The Bookseller has recently announced that Picador have published 4 debut authors in 4 weeks, showing the commitment PacMacmillian have when supporting new talent. Source: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/92435-picador-backs-new-writers.html, where Paul Baggaley, the publisher, informs us of his wish to award effort, expertise and time. It’s hard to take risks, but that is the life blood of creativity after all. See, us artists are fearless! The way it should be.

Suze