How are you documenting these unusual times? "The Quarantine Chronicles" is a place for you to share the way you are creativity recording life through the COVID-19 crisis. We hope to gather perspectives from across the Great Lakes Bay Region through artwork and writing. Whether you are drawing, crafting poetry, creating a journal, or making audio/video recordings, we want to bring individual voices together to connect a shared experience across our community.

To learn more and participate, visit www.saginawartmuseum.org/quarantinechronicles

This project is lead by the Saginaw Art Museum and the SVSU Center for Community Writing. We are welcoming other partnering organizations throughout the region!

Dear writers,

As we enter our second month of shelter-in-place here in Michigan, I want you to know that we miss seeing you at our Bay and Saginaw Community Writing Centers! As you already know, we’ve started to offer online consultations for your writing projects via email. This means you can send in any piece of writing (a resume, a poem or short story, a section of your novel-in-progress) and get feedback from one of our writing tutors sent back to you. I admit, it’s not as nice as having a face-to-face conversation with each of you, but it’s still a way to connect – and keep writing!

Also, I wanted to remind you of two amazing writing contests we have going on right now – that come with cash prizes! First, our “Saginaw, I Believe” Poetry Postcard contest is now accepting submissions online! Write a short poem (20 lines or less) about Saginaw, and submit it here: http://svsu.edu/ccw/writingcontests/

Second, our “Start with Art – Write” Contest is a cool collaboration with the Saginaw Art Museum. Visit this site to view a piece of art from their collection, and write a short story or poem based on the artwork. Detailed submission guidelines, along with the submission link, can be found here: https://www.saginawartmuseum.org/event/startwithart-write/

Both contest deadlines are April 30 – so start writing today!

We hope to see you again this summer, and we’ll certainly keep you posted as soon as we know when we are able to re-open. In the meantime, stay safe and stay healthy.

Sincerely,

Helen Raica-Klotz, SCWC/BCWC Co-Director