501 Nights

[vaneramos]

Barbara Campbell is the Australian Scheherazade of 1001 Nights Cast. On Friday night she will reach the halfway mark in her epic journey, and what a remarkable voyage it has been so far! To mark the occasion she extends a special invitation to new writers. She adds sobering observations on affairs in the Middle East, which inspired the project.

1001 nights cast turns 501 this Friday 3 November. This is the half way
milestone of the project.

To celebrate the event I am calling upon newcomers everywhere to submit
a story for that day. I will select the best to perform or I may even
do a montage of several stories. So please spread the word to your
writer friends.

If you want to tune in on Friday night, the live webcast will be at
7.25pm from Sydney. That is
4.25pm in Perth, Manila, Hong Kong and Singapore
10:25am in Beirut, Jerusalem and Istanbul
9:25am in Madrid, Paris and Berlin
8:25am in London and Portugal
3:25am in New York, Toronto and Bogota
12:25am in Los Angeles

You might like to listen to The Book Show on ABC Radio National on
Thursday 2 November at 10am when I perform one of Anne Brennan's
stories and she and I talk to one of the producers about the project.
There will also be a piece in the arts pages of the Sydney Morning
Herald on Friday 3 November (so I'm told).

Meanwhile, here are some statistics about the project to date:
133 writers have contributed since performance #0001 on June 21 2005.
Together they have written about 425,000 words. At the average novel
length of 80,000 that is more than 5 novels worth, all archived on the
site for you to read.
To this point, the site has had 23,780 visits. Currently, it is getting
an average of 63 visits/day.
Stories have been performed from Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Canberra,
Brisbane, Melbourne, London, Madrid, Granada and a property outside of
Dungog, New South Wales (thanks to a satellite dish).

On the sobering side, I have read reports every day covering
contemporary events in the Middle East in order to give writers their
writing prompt. To recap on some of the things that have been told to
us by journalists working for western media outlets: The coalition
forces in Iraq have found no weapons of mass destruction and Saddam
Hussein is still on trial for genocide. Meanwhile more than 100 Iraqi
civilians are killed every day - many more if the report in The Lancet
is to be believed (and why should it be discounted - the investigators
were shown death certificates after all). There are now wars within
wars in Iraq with no clear "strategies" for resolution. Former prime
minister of Lebanon, Rafic Hariri, was assassinated, his killers still
at large and Syria's involvement pointed to and denied. Hamas won the
January elections in Palestine and for their voting sins, the US and
Israel continue to enforce an economic blockade. The new Kadima party
won the Israeli elections in March without the intellectual presence of
its figurehead Ariel Sharon who still lies in a coma. Before this, some
of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank were evacuated and
bulldozed. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has come to power in Iran and has been
denying any sinister nuclear intentions ever since, much to the
frustration of Washington who still refuses to have direct talks with
Tehran. Condoleeza Rice has been earning lots of frequent flyer points.
And freshest in our minds is the five week Israeli/Hezbollah conflict
with cluster bombs lying unexploded in the fields of southern Lebanon.
In reading through all these reports, I have implemented my own kind of
self-censorship. It may give you some comfort to know that I do not
draw any writing prompts from straight reportage of beheadings,
suicide-bombings or body counts. To quote from story #495, I would feel
like a "lammergeyer in Tyre".

I look forward to your company for the next 500 nights.

Barbara

http://1001.net.au

Comments

[fivecats.livejournal.com]

completely off topic (my apologies): clarenolen had written that she was going to take a break from LJ. Last week I noticed she dropped me from her f-list but didn't think to check on it until last night when I discovered she'd deleted her blog entirely.

Do you know if she's alright? Is she planning on returning to lj at all?

I have always enjoyed her photography and insights.

thanks

...

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yes, the public aspect of LJ became overwhelming for her, but she is doing well. I will mention your comment to her.