Month: August 2020

It’s another day, a consecutive day, and I’m writing a blog post.

Three months and sixteen days ago I came across the Heartland Review – 2018 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize, and naturally I submitted a piece. The prizes offered were $350 for First Place, $100 for Second Place and $75 for Third Place. All finalists were to be published in THR’s spring 2018 issue and invited to a special reading at Elizabethtown Community & Technical College (Kentucky) in honor of poetry month. To enter the contest, participants were to mail a $3 donation by check or money order (PayPal was an option) to The Heartland Review. The donations were to go to funding the contest, creation of the journal, and scholarships for creative writing students.

At this point I have no expectations when it comes to writing competition results or
whether my work will be accepted or rejected. I have been published…

Lane Cove Literary Awards 2017 An Anthology has been published and made available to the public as of the 19th of April. Unfortunately I was unable to travel to Lane Cove, NSW in order to attend the book launch but I did receive a surprise in the mail! On Wednesday I received the Anthology in which my memoir, Syria, No Not That Syria, was published. I have previously posted the prize winning memoir on my blog, read here.

I’m so grateful to be a part of such an incredible Literary Award and to have been involved with the wonderful Lane Cove Community.

Lane Cove Literary Awards 2017 An Anthology has been published and made available to the public as of the 19th of April. Unfortunately I was unable to travel to Lane Cove, NSW in order to attend the book launch but I did receive a surprise in the mail! On Wednesday I received the Anthology in which my memoir, Syria, No Not That Syria, was published. I have previously posted the prize winning memoir on my blog, read here.

I’m so grateful to be a part of such an incredible Literary Award and to have been involved with the wonderful Lane Cove Community.

Hi Hey Hello I get tired of formalities. Can I just start a sentence with can I and not include the correct punctuation. There it is, no question mark. And no one to interrupt my typing to give me an answer or tell me that I’ve just begun a sentence with ‘and’.

So, new publication!! As I’ve previously I mentioned I had entered my poem, Hob Wa Harb into the 2018 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize, resulting in me being a finalist. I was unable to travel to Kentucky in order to perform a reading of my poem and so it was read by one of the organizers of the event.

The Heartland Review’s spring 2018 issue in which my poem appears has been finalised and is available for purchase here as of yesterday.

Rum Champions is all about sharing the stories of the folks who’re passionate about making, promoting and talking rum. An awesome resource that deals with those last two points isRumcast, a podcast that’s hosted by John Gulla and Will Hoekenga.

It was a pleasure to interview John about his journey into rum and what inspired him to set up the podcast. Read on to discover John’s thoughts on how rum compares to bourbon, the state of the rum industry in Miami and the famous historical characters he’d share a tot with.

Caribbean folklore features a rich mixture of local stories, legends and creatures from all over the islands. A tale that’s endured in African, French, Trinidad and Jamaican culture is the legend of La Diablesse, a woman who you wouldn’t want to meet on a dark night on your own!

A Pirate’s Life focuses on the drinking habits of history’s most influential brigands, imagining the kind of rum they would drink in modern times. Ching Shih is widely considered the most successful pirate of all-time, having commanded a fleet of over 1500 ships and being so badass that she forced the Chinese government into giving her a pardon.

If Shih were alive today, she’d no doubt have acquired an impressive collection of rum plundered from all over Asia.