Baby razor clams
By Audie Cockings
*Submit your photographs of nature and the outdoor life to [email protected] to participate in this weekly feature exploring the natural world.*
CRITIQUE THIS! Notes From a Writer’s Workshop
Can you handle the James N. Frey Intensive?
By Mark Ellis
It was 2002, and our guru at the weekend writing workshop on the Oregon coast was author James Frey.
Not that James Frey, who got in big trouble with Oprah Winfrey after committing one of literature’s cardinal sins: adding fictionalized elements to a purported memoir.
Our James Frey, James N. Frey, was (and is) a recognized author of both fiction (with an emphasis on mysteries) and nonfiction. He earned an Edgar Award nomination for his 1987 novel Long Way to Die, and his 1992 novel Winter of the Wolves was a Literary Guild Selection. By the second year of the new millennium, our Frey was perhaps best known for his writer’s how-to book, How to Write a Damn Good Novel. Frey was a much sought-after commodity for writer’s groups looking for workshop leaders and literary mentors interested in sharing knowledge of story-craft and developmental structure with aspiring and early-stage professional writers.
Twenty such writers had each ponied up $300, and on a foggy Friday night convened at the Oregon Writer’s Colony retreat at Rockaway Beach to cook communal meals, read aloud excerpts of their work, and face the legendary, brutally honest, and potentially devastating critiques of Mr. Frey.
The Greatest Conservative Films: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
By Eric M. Blake
Editor’s Note: In April of 2017 writer Eric M. Blake began a series at Western Free Press naming the “Greatest Conservative Films.” The introduction explaining the rules and indexing all films included in the series can be found here. Liberty Island will feature cross-posts of select essays from the series with the aim of encouraging discussion at this cross-roads of cinematic art with political ideology. (Click here to see the original essay. Click here to see the previously cross-posted entry on Jackie Brown.) If you would like join this dialogue please contact us at submissions [@] libertyislandmag.com.
Ohio Premiere of Controversial Pro-Police Play Needs Your Help!
By Robert Cooperman
Stage Right Theatrics, the country’s only conservative theatre company, is staging the Ohio premiere of Phelim McAleer’s controversial play Ferguson: Truth Matters. The production runs from July 13-15 at the Shedd Theatre in Columbus, Ohio.
Ferguson: Truth Matters dramatizes the actual grand jury testimony from the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. All dialogue in the play is taken verbatim from the grand jury testimony of November 2014 and presents exactly what the grand jury heard, leading to the decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown.
“I’m offering you the chance to resign now and avoid the opprobrium that’s sure to follow.”
An excerpt from page 97 of Miranda’s War – a literary, satirical novel by lawyer Howard Foster
By Howard Foster
Pick up on Amazon Miranda’s War: A Novel of the Up-Zone by Howard Foster. Check out this excerpt.
“Last Best Hope of Earth,” or Mass Graves and the Gulag?
Some Thoughts on Griff’s Cultural Dispatches from the Alamo…
By David Churchill Barrow
I make it a point to read Griff’s “Cultural Dispatches from the Alamo” as soon as I see them pop up on Liberty Island. (But “from the Alamo,” Griff? Are things that bad? Fannon has been massacred at Goliad, no one is coming, and Santa Anna’s band is striking up El Deguello every day?)
Griff repeatedly and accurately traces the roots of so-called “Progressivism” and its attendant cultural paroxysms back to Marxism, but the divergence of classical liberalism (modern American conservatism) from the left actually took place almost a century before Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto came out. It is found in the vast differences between the American shopkeepers and farmers who stood at Lexington and Concord to “fire the shot heard round the world” and the peasants who stormed the Bastille – their respective causes and their leadership.
The Fable of Sarah and the Little Red Hen
Or Peddling Chickenshit and Claiming It’s Chicken Salad
By Roy Griffis
Once upon a time a lady named Sarah wanted to go out to dinner. She decided to eat at the Little Red Hen’s restaurant. The Little Red Hen was staffed by the better, kinder, smarter sort of people who knew that Sarah was in league with Satan, and they told Sarah they didn’t want her to eat at their restaurant. Sarah quietly left.
The End
Healing Wordiness and Making Yourself Clear
Part 2 In a New Weekly Column With Advice for Conservative Creative Writers
By Jamie K. Wilson
Welcome to this series on how to write fiction from a conservative point of view. These posts can simply be read, or you are invited to join a guided writer’s workshop to practice and critique with other writers. To join the workshop, please email me, Jamie, at kywrite at gmail.com and request an invitation.
PreTeena: June 18 – June 24, 2018
Sunday Comics!
By Allison Barrows
You won’t want to miss these hilarious cartoons depicting the ups and downs of adolescence. Now each week’s strips will debut on Sundays as the lead strip of Liberty Island’s Sunday Comics feature. If you draw a comic and would like to have your work featured on Sundays, please contact us: [email protected]
“Penguins don’t come from next door… They come from the Antarctic!”
By David Churchill Barrow
*Submit your photographs of nature and the outdoor life to [email protected] to participate in this weekly feature exploring the natural world.*
