Bring your best poetry or prose that deals with those passionate emotions. The work can be about endearing love… or bitter hate…or anything in between.

You’ll have five minutes to read your piece to the judges and audience. We’ll then award prizes in a variety of categories.

So bring your best work about Love and Hate!

Shirley’s write-fests are always creative, different, and most of all, FUN! All you need is writing implement, paper, and willingness to have a great time.

Shirley J. Brewer (Baltimore, MD) is a poet, educator, and workshop facilitator. Shirley won First, Second, and Third Prizes in the Maryland Writers’ Association 2010 Short Works Contest for Poetry, and First Prize in 2004. Shirley received an Honorable Mention in Passager’s Poetry Contest in 2005 and again in 2009. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2009 by Manorborn. Publication credits include: Cortland Review, Pearl, Comstock Review, Loch Raven Review, HazMat Review, Edison Literary Review, Free Lunch, Manorborn, Calyx, Passager, Verse Wisconsin, Little Patuxent Review, and other journals. Her first poetry collection, A Little Breast Music, was published in 2008 by Passager Books (Baltimore). Shirley accessorizes freely. www.apoeticlicense.com

M.A. Creative Writing/Publishing Arts, University of Baltimore, 2005.

Prior to graduation, Shirley received the first Creative Writing Award for Excellence in Plorking.

PLORK = Play + Work, and is the keystone of the Creative Writing program at UB. Shirley has developed Plorkshops to help individuals awaken their creative genies.

Ukazoo Books is located in the Dulaney Plaza on Dulaney Valley Road at Fairmount Avenue in Towson, Maryland, across from the Towson Town Center. They are located above Record & Tape Traders.

I will give anyone who is interested the list of websites for paid and unpaid advertising of your self-published or traditionally published works. I don’t feel comfortable placing that list where anyone can google and find it; I’d rather have this be an MWA benefit.

So please email me at cathy_wiley@zapstone.com and I will mail you the list.

Join author and publisher Cathy Wiley as she presents the pros and cons of self-publishing. Should you wait for New York to call, or should you self-publish? Both options have their advantages and disadvantages.

Wiley joined the small press that contracted to print her first book Dead to Writes– which sold over 32K copies in the first year — so she’s not quite self-published, and not quite traditionally published.

Therefore, she can give an unbiased review of the joys and hardships of self-publishing.

Monday, November 28, 7:00-9:00 at the Towson Arts Collective studio, 410/406 York Road, in Towson. Look for the TAC sign (with a MWAB sign) on the street and follow the stairs down. Parking is available near the Library and on the street; there should be no charge after 6:00 p.m.