Call For Submissions (Toronto)

Received this in an email forward from a friend:

The Maytree Foundation is launching a new project, Diaspora Dialogues. The project will encourage the creation and dissemination of written narratives - short story and poetry - that reflect the complexity of Toronto back to Torontonians through the eyes of recent immigrants. Diaspora Dialogues is designed to help newcomers find voice through story and to more fully include the evolving face of this city in the rendering of its written and oral history.

Diaspora Dialogues encourages new and emerging storytellers, while also involving professional writers (themselves first- and second-generation immigrants) in the creation of stories and poetry, the development of a mentoring component and the establishment of a reading series. Through partners in the mainstream and ethnic presses (print and radio), Diaspora Dialogues will disseminate the produced pieces through newspapers, magazines, radio, a book anthology and a website. A series of events will take place in communities across the city beginning July 1 in conjunction with PEN Canada, the Toronto Public Library, the YMCA of Greater Toronto and local neighbourhood centres.

We would like to distribute the Open Call for Submissions widely among communities across the greater Toronto region to encourage as many new voices as possible. We would appreciate your help in distributing the attached flyer through your networks.

The flyer it mentions is a PDF, so I can't easily post it. However, there is a brief mention and an email contact on the Maytree Foundation's What's New page. As well, there is a Diaspora Dialogues site that will have more information posted to it very soon -- the link was not yet functioning at the time I posted this, but it will be up and running this month, so if you're interested, bookmark it and check back often! (Thanks to MC for the email.)