Bring your poetry, short prose, and other creative pursuits! Come to participate and share, or come merely to listen and admire. All are welcome. Wednesday night, November 16th, from 7:30 to 9:00pm.
Open Mic on Wednesday!
Readings
Creative Writing Events Cancelled
As many of you have already heard, GCC and the Maricopa County Community Colleges District have taken steps to prevent the spread of Covid-19. These steps include the extension of spring break for students by one week, and the implementation of distance/online learning for our classes thereafter. If you are a student at GCC or another college within the district, please check your student email for official communication from the district.
As you might expect, then, we are cancelling/postponing all of our creative writing events for the foreseeable future. That includes:
- The Humorous Poetry Contest & Traveler Celebratory Reading, currently scheduled for March 18th, has been postponed indefinitely.
- Our student Writing Club will not meet. Use the Discord channel if you would like to stay in touch with each other and share work.
- Our Saturday Workshop planned for March 21st has been cancelled. The April workshop is still TBD.
Details about rescheduling postponed events will be provided once they are available. If you have any questions about creative writing events at GCC, please contact jeffrey.baker@gccaz.edu.
Writing Competition Extension!
The Artists of Promise Creative Writing Competition has been extended a couple days to November 21st. If you have trouble submitting over the weekend, go in now to submit! Remember that it’s free to submit your fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or drama/one-act play,. Open to all students in the Maricopa Community Colleges. Submit here!
GCC’s Annual Poetry & Prose Slam
Like a helicopter parent or a cantaloupe defiant of gravity, GCC’s Annual Poetry & Prose Slam draws closer–looms, one might say. Do you hear it? See it? Smell it? There is no ignoring the Slam. No pretending it isn’t there, nestled in your kitchen cabinets, between the cushions of your ride-share, in your Twitter mentions questioning the earnestness of your contributions. There will be no ducking, no hiding, no avoidant behavior of any kind.
And why would you want to avoid the Slam, especially when all it wants to do is award you with fame and money and expired chicken dinner coupons? Therefore, you are going to attend the Annual Poetry & Prose Slam. You are going to share a few of your original, creative pieces with a supportive audience and eager panel of judges. Open to the public, and with some free refreshments provided, there is no reason not to attend!
- What: GCC’s Annual Poetry & Prose Slam
- When: Wednesday, November 20th from 7:00PM to 8:30PM
- Where: GCC Main Campus, SU-104
Basic Rules of the Slam:
- Arrive a few minutes before 7PM so you can sign up to compete.
- Each round, read one original piece, keeping under the three-minute time limit. Performances that exceed this limit will have their scores penalized.
- Expect at least two rounds, with the potential for more if time permits. Meaning, you can enter more than one piece in the competition, but always perform your best pieces first.
- Once all competitors have read/performed their work, the judges will tabulate scores. The top three performers will earn $100, $50, and $25 prizes respectively.
- Have fun!
Upcoming Writing Events in November
With numerous competitions, workshops, and readings, November promises to be a busy month for creative writers at GCC and around the valley. Here’s a quick list of important dates and events:
November 4th: GCC is holding a series of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) writing sessions in the library. The first session is November 4th from 4PM to 5:30PM in L-138. Additional sessions will take place on November 12th, November 18th, and November 25th. Full flier here.
November 15th & November 22nd: ASU is offering scholarships for their Desert Nights & Rising Stars conference. While the conference will be held in spring, scholarship applications are due this month! More details here.
November 16th: GCC is hosting its third and final Saturday Workshop for this semester. David Martinez presents “Learning to Bleed on the Page with Style.” The workshop runs from 10AM to 12PM and is free/open to the public.
November 18th: The Maricopa County Community Colleges District is holding a creative writing competition where winners both get published and paid. The new deadline for this competition is Monday, November 18th. Read all about this Artists of Promise competition here.
November 19th: Mesa Community College is hosting Tiffany Midge for their Literary Reading Series. Midge is a bestselling author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and she will read from her book Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s. The reading begins at 7PM and will be held in the Mesa Community College Art Gallery.
November 20th: GCC is hosting its annual Poetry & Prose Slam. Participants share their original, creative work (poems, very short fiction or prose) to a live audience and a panel of judges. The top three participants earn monetary prizes! This event is free and open to the public.
November 30th: GCC’s Library is holding a Fabulous First Chapter Contest and the deadline lands on the final day of November. This competition is open only to GCC students. Full details can be found here.
Open Mic Night – Presented by BSU
Reminder: Be Funny, Make Money (March 6th)
We are just a few days away from our Humorous Poetry Contest and our celebratory reading for the 2018-2019 Traveler winners. A few of our literary winners from this year’s Traveler will lead off the night, sharing their winning work. Afterwards, participants in the Humorous Poetry Contest will read/perform their funniest, most creative poetry, making us laugh and smile and snort.
Come to compete, come to listen, come to support this great opportunity for the GCC writing community!
- What: Humorous Poetry Contest (The Randy Smith Award for Humorous Poetry)
- When: Wednesday, March 6th from 7 to 9PM
- Where: GCC Main Campus, in SU-104 (A, B, C)
- Why: First place wins $100
This event is free and open to the public, but contest participants must be GCC students. We do not restrict the subjects of creative works.
Scholarship: The Randy Smith Award for Humorous Poetry
Event: Poetry on the Patio
Congratulations to Poetry & Prose Slam Winners!
A week ago, we hosted our annual Poetry & Prose Slam competition. During the night, numerous competitors read and performed the best of their poetry as well as their flash and short fiction. It took three rounds, nearly two hours, and a surprising amount of math to determine the victors. Congratulations to:
- First Place: JJ Gathings
- Second Place: Francisco Ayón
- Third Place: Lynne MacVean
Thank you to the many participants, to our judges, to Laura White for hosting, and to those that simply came to listen and support our community of writers. We hope to see all of you, and more, in February for our Traveler readings and for a new competition for comedic poetry. Stay tuned to the GCCAZCRW blog for more information.
GCC Creative Writing 
