Chapbook Contest Seeks Poems

Contest announcements regularly cross this desk. They’re mostly the kind of writing contests that ask for your work, then guarantees you publication - if you’ll agree to buy a certain number of copies, etc.

Buyer beware.

But sometimes we get legitimate contests. And the one sponsored by Floating Bridge Press is a case in point. It’s certainly ambitious enough.

The 1997 Floating Bridge Press Poetry Chapbook Award, which is open to Washington residents only, calls for a maximum of 24 pages of poetry, a title page and a paginated table of contents.

One previous winner was Nance Van Winckel, the editor of Eastern Washington University’s award-winning literary journal Willow Springs. Her winning entry was “A Measure of Heaven.”

The 1997 contest winner will be awarded a minimum cash award of $250, receive 50 copies of the quality-printed chapbook and will be featured in a public Seattle reading.

The deadline is Feb. 1.

If you want more information - and trust me here, the submission rules are somewhat complex and very specific - you should write to: Floating Bridge Press, P.O. Box 18814, Seattle, WA 98118.

Over the radio waves

If you’ve ever listened to KPBX, Spokane’s Public Radio station, you’re probably familiar with the mellifluous, baritone voice of Doug Hurd.

Now you can read Hurd’s commentaries. Hurd has self-published some 95 of his essays-on-life under the title “Brain Rot, Shopping at Costco and Other Joys of Middle Age” (QBS Publishing, 303 pages, $13.95 paperback). They’re available at all Spokane Hasting’s stores (except the Wellesley outlet) and at Auntie’s Bookstore, and Hurd says they should be available in many others stores within a week.

These particular essays were written between 1993-95. And instead of being the column versions that are printed post-broadcast in The Edmonds Paper, they are the actual radio scripts. Hurd has arranged them in a subject format, which he admits presents a specific problem.

“Because of this,” he wrote, “my daughter may appear as a seventhgrader in one commentary and a freshman in the rest, but I figure you can deal with that.”

Signed pages

As part of its ongoing, ambitious schedule of book-signings, the Book & Game Co. at Coeur d’Alene’s Silver Lake Mall, is hosting a full weekend of activities.

From noon to 2 p.m. today, Idaho historian Carlos Schwantes will sign copies of his books “So Incredibly Idaho!” “Hard Traveling,” “Pacific Northwest,” “Railroad Signatures in the Northwest” and “In the Mountain Shadows.”

On Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Nancy Mae Anderson will sign copies of her book “Swede Homestead.”

And then from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, four authors whose books were published by the Museum of North Idaho will show up for a signing. They are David “Norgy” Asleson, “Up the Swiftwater”; Dorothy Dahlgren and Simone Carbonneau-Kincaid, “In All the West No Place Like This: A Pictorial History of the Coeur d’Alene Region” and Robert Singletary, “Kootenai Chronicles.”

In a book-signing to be held at Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane, Michael Schmeltzer will sign copies of “Spokane: A City for Living” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Holiday cooking

Mary Houser Caditz has written a book that many area residents might consider as a Christmas present. It’s titled “Wandering and Feasting: A Washington Cookbook” (Washington State University Press, 334 pages, $22.95).

According to the press materials provided by WSU’s Beth DeWeese, the book contains more than 200 recipes that utilize Washington’s particular foodstuffs. These range from salmon to cranberries, sweet onions to Cougar Gold cheese.

And the book apparently includes vignettes from many of the state’s rural communities, from Ritzville to Pomeroy, Walla Walla to Colville.

Caditz will sign copies of her books and share recipes with prospective readers at the following spots:

Tuesday - noon-1:30 p.m., WSU Bookstore; 5-7 p.m., BookPeople at 512 S. Main in Moscow.

Wednesday - noon-2 p.m., WSU Book Fair in the Compton Union Building in Pullman.

Thursday - noon-2 p.m., Made in Washington at 714 W. Main in Spokane.

The reader board

T.G. Boyden, author of “Warrior of the Mist,” will read from her book at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Auntie’s Bookstore.

Lance Olsen, author of “Time Famine,” will read from his novel at BookPeople, 512 S. Main in Moscow.

Valentino Jiminez, author of “The Swing Set,” will perform musical numbers from the children’s activities book at 11 a.m. Saturday at Auntie’s Bookstore.

Steve Oliver, author of “Moody Gets the Blues,” will read from his novel at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Auntie’s Bookstore.

, DataTimes