Category: news

Submissions on our theme of Carpe Diem have been flooding in from all over the world.  Today in the Riptide office we have been busy reading, reading and reading some more.  We have made the tiniest dent in the pile! Undaunted, we are asking for still more. The deadline is the end of November so seize the day, get writing, get polishing what you’ve already written and ping it across to the editors here.  As Shakespeare bemoaned: ‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me’ so avoid that fate, stop wasting time and send us your tale.

Riptide is currently working on a project with ‘Kaleider’ to produce an inspiring look at what people would do with the last barrel of oil on earth. This autumn, ‘Ancient Sunlight’ aims to run workshops in the community to produce poetry and short stories. The result will be a collection of books, written by people in Exeter, that look at five particular themes: Justice, Food, Leadership, Technology and Love.

Our very own Sally Flint is leading the project on ‘The Book of Food’ and is running workshops at Exeter College. Riptide will publish the books for the project and in the Spring of 2015, Kaleider plan to bring the books to life as an outdoor show in Exeter.

For more information, have a look at Kaleider’s website:

kaleider.com/projects/ancient-sunlight/

NOW CLOSED

At Riptide, we are delighted to invite submissions for our tenth issue – this time on the theme of Imagining the Suburbs.

We are interested in short fiction, poetry or life writing that evokes the particular experience of suburban life. In keeping with previous issues of Riptide we are particularly interested in submissions that eschew easy stereotyping and caricature of the suburbs and that instead look beneath the surface of suburbia, exploring and revealing its variety and its hidden depths. We want creative work that portrays the richness and diversity of suburbia in different contexts around the world.

This special issue complements the work of the Leverhulme Trust-funded Cultures of the Suburbs International Research Network and coincides with the Network’s 2014 conference, also on the theme of Imagining the Suburbs, to be held at the University of Exeter, UK, in June 2014.

As an extension to Riptide’s usual practice, we also invite submissions from visual artists whose work, if selected, will be published online as a Virtual Exhibition on the Cultures of the Suburbs Network’s website (for current examples see here)

Submission Guidelines:

Send your submission as a word attachment by email to editors@riptidejournal.co.uk with ‘Suburbs’ in the subject line.

Prose – Maximum of 5000 words (up to two pieces)

Poetry – Maxiumum of 40 lines (up to three poems)

Deadline : March 1st 2014

Publication: June 2014

Enquiries: editors@riptidejournal.co.uk

And for information about the Cultures of the Suburbs Network, see here

Enquiries e-mail: suburbs@ex.ac.uk

As part of exetreme imagination Riptide is delighted to have published 2 childhood-themed collections – one of short stories and, for the first time, one of poetry. Vol. 8 includes an introduction by Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE and vol. 9 by National Poetry Prize winner Julia Copus. More details about each book which contain writing by established writers and new talent are on our shop page. The launch of the books at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum was a great success with contributors coming to read from as far away as Scotland!

Writers will be especially interested in The College of Humanities and the University’s Arts and Culture Team’s collaborative event which brings together a poet, a photographer, a medical practitioner, a writer and psychologist, a cultural historian and a literary critic to explore the issue of preventative medicine, cancer and our perceptions about the body. 

Host for the event Dr Andy Brown, Director of Creative Writing at the University of Exeter explains: “The evening will open a dialogue about the relationship between arts and medicine, addressing issues surrounding cancer and preventative surgery and exploring perceptions about our bodies and their purposes.”

Visiting poet Clare Best will recite from her publication Excisions, which was nominated for the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry for 2012. The central sequence of the collection, Self-portrait without Breasts, is inspired by her own journey through preventative double mastectomy.

A panel will follow with Dr Corinna Wagner, Department of English, (author of Pathological Bodies: Medicine and Politics), writer and psychologist Professor Janet Reibstein, Department of Psychology, (author of Staying Alive: A Family Memoir) and, Dr James Mackay from University College London (who is the only accredited UK Consultant Medical Oncologist specialising in clinical cancer genetics).

This will be followed by a lively audience discussion and question and answer period, a wine reception and an exhibition of stunning photographs of Clare Best’s project, taken by Laura Stevens. More information:

http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/news/college/title_240779_en.html

Event Details:

Date:  Tuesday 27 November 2012  

Time: 18:30  

Where: Lecture Theatre 1, Queen’s Building, Streatham Campus, University of Exeter – followed by an exhibition and wine reception at 20:00 in The Forum.

The event is free and open to all (no need to register). Should you wish to find out more information about the event please contact Dr Corinna Wagner, c.m.wagner@exeter.ac.uk

Creative writing workshop – stories and poetry inspired by art and artefacts at RAMM.

Date: Saturday July 14th. 10am to 4 pm with a break for lunch.

Venue: Meeting Room A, RAMM.

Tutors: Ginny Baily and Sally Flint, Riptide Editors.

Cost: £25 for the day.  Email editors@riptidejournal.co.uk to book a place.

‘The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.’ (Flannery O’Connor)

This workshop will use RAMM’s exhibitions and artefacts to transport adult writers back in time to use the child’s voice or memories to spark a story or poem into being and to inspire innovative writing.

Structure, character development, dialogue, tenses will be discussed in relation to the best way to progress with a story or poem. both inside and beyond the frame.

As part of the Exeter Children’s Literary Festival 2013, Riptide is publishing two anthologies – one of poetry and one of short stories – with the theme of Childhood. The best story and/or poem submitted to the editors by writers who attend this workshop will receive further mentoring and be considered for publication.

Riptide is now accepting submissions on the theme of childhood for our next two volumes. For the first time we are looking for poetry as well as short stories.  Accepted work will be published in two separate anthologies whose launch will coincide with the Exetreme Imagination Children’s Literature Festival in Exeter in February 2013.

Details of how to submit are on our ‘Contribute’ page.

The launch event for Riptide 7 at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter on March 2nd was a great success.  Over 150 people attended, Ben Bradshaw gave a stirring talk about putting Devon on the literary map, the music was wonderful and very atmospheric to hear it there, wine glass in hand, amongst the artefacts.  Seven of the talented authors who contributed to this book  –  Sue Belfrage, Helen Chaloner, Judy Darley, Anthony Howcroft, Ben Smith, Martin Sorrell and Roland Tuson – read short extracts from their stories.

Riptide volume 7, produced in collaboration with Wordquest Devon, contains an eclectic mix of stories and memoir. These Devon-themed stories express the uniqueness of the county, its towns and its countryside, its wild parts and its settlements. Devon is the thread that binds the diverse stories into a whole, but the stories spill over the boundaries of the county to find a universal resonance. As Ben Bradshaw writes in the foreword: ‘This volume shows how Devon can be both the inspiration for creativity and the place where creativity is practised.’ Contributors are: Ginny Baily, Sue Belfrage, Helen Challoner, Judy Darley, Bill Eaton, Vanessa Gebbie, David Goodchild, Gregory Hoare, Anthony Howcroft, Luke Kennard, Sam North, Shohidur Rahman, Ben Smith, Martin Sorrell, Roland H. Tuson.

Available now from our online shop.