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February 17, 2010: PWAC Launches Major New Writing Prizes
The Professional Writers Association of Canada has launched two major new writing awards.
The awards, which will be judged by a panel of some of Canada's leading writers, are open to PWAC members and non-members. The deadline for entries is March 19.
Awards will be given for feature-length stories (over 1,200 words) and shorter pieces (1,200 words and less).
"These awards will showcase the excellence of Canadian writers," said PWAC President Tanya Gulliver. "Our goal is for these awards to eventually become some of Canada's premier prizes for writing. PWAC is Canada's largest organization representing freelance writers, and our awards will celebrate that."
Entries must have been published in a paying Canadian print or web media outlet in 2009. The first prize in each category has a $500 value, including a free PWAC membership for a year (if eligible).
The judges in the two categories are:
- Stephen Kimber: the author of a novel and seven books of non-fiction; Stephen is the Roger Communications Chair at the University of King's College in Halifax.
- Elaine Kalman Naves: the Montreal-based award-winning author of six books and more than 500 articles and stories in a variety of Canadian and international periodicals and scholarly works.
- Bilbo Poynter: executive director and founder of the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting and a Hamilton-based investigative reporter for the CBC.
- Maxine Ruvinsky: associate professor and chair of the School of Journalism at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C.; Maxine also holds a PhD in comparative literature and authored Investigative Reporting in Canada and Practical Grammar: A Canadian Writer's Resource.
- Eric Siblin: the Montreal-based author of The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece, which won the QWF Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction and the QWF McAuslan First Book Prize and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
- Jennifer Walker: senior content editor at Best Health magazine and the winner of PWAC's Best Editor Award in 2009.
Entry requirements are available at www.pwac.ca/eventsandresources/pwacawards.
PWAC, established in 1976, is the national organization representing over 600 freelance writers and journalists in Canada.
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More information:
Tanya Gulliver, President
tanyagulliver@gmail.com
(647) 236-7589
Sandy Crawley, Executive Director
scrawley@pwac.ca
(416) 504-1645
You can also download this release in PDF format here.
February 17, 2010: 2009 CBC Literary Awards Shortlist
The 2009 shortlist for the 2009 CBC Literary Awards has been released and PWAC is proud to see that Thunder Bay, Ontario member Marion Agnew is in the running in the Creative Non-Fiction category.
Shelagh Rogers will announce the winners on CBC Radio One on Thursday, March 18, 2010. Check this page to discover the CBC Radio One frequency in your area.
Good luck to all the nominees!
February 16, 2010: Leon Wieseltier and Christoper Hedges on the Internet, Journalism, and Income
There is no doubt about how difficult life has become for many freelancers, especially those who write journalism or non-fiction writing for the non-corporate market. Two recent articles express the reasons why. Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, paints a bleak picture of a publishing industry that has largely abandoned its respect for writers and treats us more like serfs than professionals, both in terms of pay and in demands for short-and-sweet "content" that can be rapidly consumed on a webpage. What effect has that had on us? Wieseltier quotes James Rainey in the Los Angeles Times, "what's sailing away, a decade into the 21st century, is the common perception that writing is a profession - or at least a skilled craft that should come not only with psychic rewards but with something resembling a living wage."
Further analysis is offered by Christopher Hedges, who describes the internet as an "information super-sewer." In an online world dominated by a hive mentality, creativity and fair compensation are sacrificed as content becomes king. It is outsourced to the lowest bidder, appropriated en masse, aggregated, and disseminated without concern for creators' rights. In discussing Jaron Lanier's new book, You Are Not a Gadget, the characteristically acerbic Hedges writes,
"Music, books, journalism, commercials and bits of television shows and movies, along with inane YouTube videos, are thrust onto our screens and into national consciousness because of the statistical analysis of Internet crowd preferences. Lanier says that one of the biggest mistakes he and other computer scientists made when the Internet was developed was allowing contributions to the Internet to go unpaid. He says decisions such as this have now robbed people, especially those who create, of their ability to make a living and ultimately the capacity for dignity. Digital collectivism, he warns, is destroying the dwindling vestiges of authentic creativity and innovation, including journalism, which takes time, investment and self-reflection. And while there are a few sites that do pay for content - Truthdig being one - the vast majority are parasites. The only income left for most of those who create is earned through self-promotion, but as Lanier points out this turns culture into nothing but advertising. It fosters a social ethic in which the capacity for crowd manipulation is more highly valued than truth, beauty or thought."
A dismal picture indeed. However, I think we creators must avoid despair.
We have to hold to the faith that quality will win out in the end. The market may be dismal now, but if writers continue to devote themselves to the craft - protect the flame so to speak - something will emerge.
In his Truthdig article, Hedges mentions the short story, "The Machine Stops," written in 1912 by E.M. Forster. A more prescient story has never been written. People live underground in hive-like cells, plugged into "the Machine" which delivers them a steady stream of entertainment, chit-chat, and banality. People's bodies have atrophied; they've lost the taste for novelty; they endlessly seek for something to stave off boredom. Their entire life is served by the Machine. They shun the "surface world" for its harshness and directness. Direct experience has become painful and is avoided.
In many ways, we are entering that world. In the short story, a small group of rebels colonizes the surface world while the Machine collapses. The antihero, one of the colonizers, says to his mother who is hopelessly trapped within the Machine, "We have come back to our own. We die, but we have recaptured life, as it was in Wessex, when Ælfrid overthrew the Danes. We know what they know outside, they who dwelt in the cloud that is the colour of a pearl."
I like to think that the heart of every writer dwells in the cloud that is the colour of a pearl. We have to keep that in mind as we fight this battle and seek new markets. I think eventually that people will hunger so much for what we have to offer, we'll find those markets. If we try to adapt ourselves to a market that just values content at a dismal price, we are just becoming part of the Machine.
Currently, PWAC is in the process of conducting cross-country consultations with writers, editors and publishers for the publication of a "Best Practices" guide to working conditions and standards in the Canadian magazine sector." I hope, for all our sakes, that this spirit drives those discussions.
- Bruce Wilson, PWAC Vice President
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