We’ve put up a poll on the main site for anyone interesting in having their voice heard on what Desi Writers Lounge should “officially” start with. We have six options to choose from, and in addition to this we’ve got some forms of interest over at the Paper Microphone Cafe for people interested in relaying their interest to us. We’re starting with 15 people max to keep book discussion maintainable, but might increase in future events.

A quick rundown on your options:

Burnt Shadows (Kamila Shamsie)
The Crow Eaters (Bapsi Sidhwa)
Without Dreams (Shahbano Bilgrami)
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Daniyal Mueenuddin)
The Case of Exploding Mangoes (Muhammad Haneef)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mohsin Hamid)

If you’re interested or know of people who are interested, send them over to the cafe and ask them to leave behind their email addresses so we can keep in touch with them (we never spam), and let them know when the club will start and reconvene.

Any questions, comments or points of contention email them in to info@desiwriterslounge.net.

– TPTB

From the Life’s Too Short site:

“The short story is what you make it. As a genre it has been used by writers as varied as Maupassant, Chekhov, Faulkner, Mansfield and Manto. It can be a gem consisting of a few paragraphs or the seed of a larger idea – both The Great Gatsby and The Sun also Rises started life as short stories.

The life’s too short Short Story Prize was conceived to reinvigorate this oft-neglected genre in Pakistan. With the increasing success of short story collections in the global publishing market, they are becoming big news again. Now we would like people to read yours.

Sponsored by the ZZ & Zohra Ahmed Foundation, entry to this competition is free of charge and the prize money is the most substantial for any such endeavour in Pakistan.”

The Prize Money referred to above ranges from Rs 10,000 to 100,000 although of course no true writer writes for money…right? 🙂

“Entries must be emailed to entry@lifestooshort.pk

‘The life’s too short short story prize’ should be written on the subject line of the email

The short story should be the body of the email. Emails with attachments will not be considered.

Each entry must include the name, address, telephone number(s) and email address of the writer

Submission deadline is June 30, 2009.”

The judges for this competition are well known desi authors: Kamila Shamsie, Daniyal Mueenuddin and Muhammad Haneef.

So if you’re interested, you know the details…for further information click the link above. Happy writing!

– T(he)P(owers)T(hat)B(e)

Now that the reading’s over, we’re turning our attention to organizing future events, more particularly the book club whose official selection may or may not be Muhammad Haneef’s The Case of Exploding Mangoes.

Aside from the above, we’re also working in collaboration with The Paper Microphone to bring out a Desi Writers Lounge corner at the cafe, allowing interested writers to write in any of our four regular columns on the forums: The B*tch Letters, A Writer’s Journal, Khutt and One Day, Two Minutes. They will be writing material on our official letterhead, and will have the option of either taking it with them or leaving it at the cafe for it to be featured on our site.

We will create a separate section here, called ‘DWL @ The Paper Microphone Cafe’ where material written there will be published on our site, as is. Of course, we realize much of the material most especially things like Khutt, which are letters written to receive closure, are extremely personal and may or may not want to be published, so we acknowledge that right to privacy and offer the participants a choice. The important thing, however, is that you’re being inspired to write. Even if it’s not being shared, it’s being written and that’s the most we can hope for. However, you can also post things anonymously, so things can be published on the site anonymously and no one will ever know.

Expect to hear more about the corner in the coming days. Meanwhile, our readings will either be held once a month or once every two months, depending on the organizational skills of our management. Also watch out for the book club.

Should you swing by the cafe, be sure to pick up our fliers and bookmarks on display.

The above text is also in our newsflash ticker on Desi Writers Lounge.net. Clarifying any redundancy issues that may arise.

– TPTB

If you’ve taken a trip to our website recently, you’ll notice an announcement on the Open Mic nights held by The Paper Microphone Cafe. And if you’ve been following our reading announcements, you may have noticed our reading will be taking place at the cafe as well. We have formed a verbal commitment with the cafe to host our events there, which currently include readings, book clubs and possibly an invite only game night (if you know someone who knows a desi writer, your chances are great).

Our reading is taking place on March 28th at 5PM sharp with the bulk of the material being presented by our own members. Realizing the guts it takes to read out your own material to a bunch of people you don’t really know, our members have stepped up to take care of things. We’re hoping, however, that after this reading more people outside of the fold will step forward with their material.

We will be announcing our book club during the reading to gauge interest as well as put it to a democratic vote on what book we should start with, using the shortlisted books we’ve settled on.

So there are a few events coming up for the remainder of ’09. As of this reading, attendees can register in advance to show their support (and attendance). If you have any questions, you can get in touch with us at info@desiwriterslounge.net.

That’s it!

ETA: Entirely forgot to mention we’re creating a Desi Writers Lounge corner at the cafe allowing interested writers to jot down their thoughts on our letterhead, and either leave it at the cafe for open display on our site or take it with them if they’d rather not share. We’ll detail this further in our next post. But to sum up, we’ll be incorporating our columns (One Day, Two Minutes; A Writer’s Journal, The B*tch Letters and Khutt) on hard copy, along with a folder containing our past e-zine issues.

– TPTB

Due to the Paper Microphone Cafe (our venue) being closed on Sunday due to the security situation of the Long March, our reading has been pushed back to March 28 until further notice.

We apologize profusely for the short notice, but were just notified ourselves and thus passed the message along to the general webosphere. The good news in all of this is attendees now have more time to send in their material! So start sending yours in for consideration if you’re interested.

Hoping to see you then…

– TPTB

We’ve had a few questions on whether we’re still going to proceed with the reading taking place at F-6, Super Market (at the Paper Microphone Cafe) on March 15, a day before the scheduled march. Currently, our plans remain unchanged but things could swerve around on Saturday if the situation looks particularly dire. Hopefully, we shouldn’t face too much of a lag in terms of attendance especially since we were considering discussing future events in this session.

That said, fliers, bookmarks and business cards for the founding members have come back from the printers and things are looking dandy! We’ve made specific bookmarks for attendees to the book club, so hopefully that should kick off soon enough. We’re still unsure on whether we should have a meeting once a month or make it a little less frequent. Although a book a month seems quite reasonable, as long as its length isn’t too long. However, if we give our audience a deadline they might well work better in that perimeter of time. This will be, I suppose, a more hardcore book club…not one to be undertaken by the faint of heart.

Oh well, there are a lot of things that still need ironing out and that will be ironed out soon enough.

Meanwhile, event registration has been officially closed along with the deadline for sending in pieces for this session. It was a little disappointing to see that not all registrants who were going to read something out, sent in their material but we have quite a few of our own members in attendance and the bulk of material will be represented by the Lounge. We are hopeful, however, that for subsequent readings we will be able to present writers outside of the fold and thus wholly “undiscovered”, so to speak and subject them to our process of working at the Desi Writers Lounge.

Fingers still crossed for a full house on the 15th.

– TPTB

Tabulating the totals from the event posted on Facebook with the onsite registration, and removing any redundancies, the total number of people attending the reading is 25. The total is a little over double the number we’ve boasted on one of our reading, which until then had the most number in attendance.

To be honest, we’re a little nervous to cater to so many people and are hoping that not only we, but the event delivers and brings some of them back again if not to attend the readings, then at least the book club and other events we have on the horizon.

Meanwhile, we’re always on the look out for writers and the event announcement and alliance with The Paper Microphone has brought on a member surge into the Lounge. However, we’re still looking for further material to present at the reading so as a reminder: the deadline’s March 12 for sending in material for consideration.

Fingers crossed, people! Fingers crossed…

– TPTB

‘ello peoples! So we’ve finally settled on a date for the reading. Details are what follow.

The What: Desi Writers Lounge Reading #5
The When: Sunday, March 15 @ 5 PM
The Where: The Paper Microphone (details and registration info here)
The Details: We’re doing something different and inviting you to register for the event, including whether you’ll be a reader or writer and whether you’d like critique if it’s the latter.
The Important Stuff: Write in to readings@desiwriterslounge.net with your material no later than March 12, to be considered.

Please, spread the word! We’ve also created an event on FB (although you’re requested to register via the site). Here’s the link to our group if you didn’t know about it earlier. 🙂

Our first 2009 reading has been planned for Sunday, March 15 @ 5 pm (sharp) at the Paper Microphone, a cafe built to serve the purposes of events like these.

However, in the future we’re planning other events like Poetry and Prose Workshops (including a possible series of summer workshops aimed at grades 8-10 and possibly beyond; it’s all under discussion). Aside from the workshops, we’re bringing you a book club in the future which will naturally be open to members outside of the Lounge. The entire point of these events is to bring together like minded people and offer them activities that are hitherto relatively unknown in this country of ours.

If you’re interested in any of the above, soon we’ll have an event registration/reminder so people can register for an event and we’ll be notified and can make the necessary arrangements. This will be in place before the flyers and other promotional material is handed out.

The workshops will be limited to 15 people/session, since that’s a manageable group of people and still maintains a comfortable rapport between the attendees.

Needless to say, we’re extremely excited about the above ventures. We’ll create FB events for the readings and book club.

It’s important to note the difference between our readings (where writers who present their work receive light feedback only) and a workshop (which will involve heavy critiquing and writing in a close knit, but nonetheless intense environment). The book club will involve reading books together and discussing the impact, etc. Again, details are being ironed out. This space will be updated accordingly.

But meanwhile, we’re moving forward!

– TPTB

‘ello peoples,

Now that the e-zine is out of the way, at least for the next few months, we’re jumpstarting our reading series again. This new series; new because it’s a brand new year, will be marketed around town so you’re encouraged to write in to readings@desiwriterslounge.net to send in your material.

Like our past readings, this is more of a writer’s workshop where we collectively offer insights and opinions on a piece if you’re open to that kind of thing. If you’d just like to read it to an audience, we provide a listening ear too.

We’re excited for this run, hopeful that more people will get to know just what we do at the Desi Writers Lounge, so keep a look out for our posters and/or fliers and if you have an idea for what else we can do, to boost our rep, write in the comments and let us know. 🙂

– TPTB