Submissions are open for the Hurston/Wright Crossover Award. Administered by the Hurston/Wright Foundation and sponsored by ESPN’s online publication the Undefeated, the award honors “probing, provocative, and original new voices in literary nonfiction.” The winning writer will demonstrate an ability to work across genres or “crossover between writing styles and techniques.” The winner will receive a cash prize of $2,000, free attendance at the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s Summer Writers Week, and a complimentary ticket to the foundation’s nineteenth annual Legacy Awards Ceremony in October 2020.

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Using only the online submission system, submit up to 20 pages of literary nonfiction with a $30 entry fee by February 29. Black writers who have not published a book in any genre, through any publishing platform, are eligible. Visit the website for complete guidelines. 

The winner of the competition will be announced in May and honored at the Legacy Awards Ceremony in October 2020. Founded in 1990, the Hurston/Wright Foundation conducts writing workshops, public readings, and other programs devoted to increasing Black literary representation. The Undefeated “explor[es] the intersection of race, sports, and culture.” 

In the New York Times Letter of Recommendation series, Durga Chew-Bose writes about the value of getting an assortment of things framed after moving to an apartment in Montreal. “Some of us are born a little mournful, and we spend our lives discovering new traditions for housing those ghosts we’ve long considered companions. Framing, I’d venture, is central to this urge. It gives memories a physique.” Think of a memory that continues to haunt you like a ghost. Write a personal essay that uses a frame technique—the telling of a story within a story—to give the narrative a fixed structure. Tell the story of your memory, framed at the beginning and end with your current state of mind. What is revealed by the juxtaposition of this story embedded within another?  

My New Orleans Black History Month series of posts continues today with the NOMMO Literary Society. It’s impossible to talk about New Orleans Black literary history without talking about Kalamu ya Salaam and the NOMMO Literary Society.

Many of you may not know that NOMMO was founded by Salaam in New Orleans in 1995, a rare Black writers workshop established a year before Cave Canem. That summer, Salaam had led a writing workshop for male students on the invitation of Tommye Myrick at Southern University New Orleans. Poet Ayo Fayemi-Robinson (formerly known as Kysha Brown Robinson) then questioned Salaam about the exclusion of women writers in the workshop and from that encounter, NOMMO was born and had its first meeting that fall.

The workshop consisted of three parts: a selected reading, a “housekeeping” to share information about upcoming literary events and resources, and giving and receiving feedback on original compositions. The physical space of NOMMO had shelves full of books and CDs of music by Black artists, and there was a monthly reading held at Community Book Center.

The name NOMMO has two origins. First is the central African concept of NOMMO being the power of the spoken word. Second is from Salaam’s sarcastic quip that it was time for the elevation of the Black vernacular and “no more of that literary shit.” The workshop met weekly and hosted several prominent writers, such as Amiri Baraka, Staceyann Chin, Toi Derricotte, Terrance Hayes, Major Jackson, E. Ethelbert Miller, and Sonia Sanchez.

Hurricane Katrina ended NOMMO in 2005, but the legacy lives on through published books by alumni like Jericho Brown, Jarvis DeBerry, Freddi Williams Evans, and Keturah Kendrick.

New Orleans has a long literary history, including the 1845 publication of Les Cenelles, the first anthology of poetry by African Americans which featured the work of seventeen New Orleans poets. NOMMO was a continuation of this rich tradition of African American writing that lives on today.

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In A Hidden Life, Terrence Malick’s latest film about an Austrian farmer who refuses to fight on behalf of the Nazis during World War II even while faced with execution for his defiance, the camera moves across landscapes as actors are kept in constant motion. Vulture film critic Bilge Ebiri reasons that this continuous movement of both camera and actor becomes a dance of sorts. Write a short story in which you place emphasis on the movement of your characters’ bodies. Focus closely on their actions, how they relate to one another spatially, and try to keep your writerly eye on the move. Create a dance that becomes a narrative of its own. What emotional states do these movements reveal?

“Truth can be lazy because it becomes satisfied with itself, and it is often so tethered to time and space that to demand one truth can often invisibilize another’s truth,” says Natalie Diaz in “Energy,” an interview by Jacqueline Woodson in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. “When and where does truth begin, and whose truth is it?” Think of an issue in your life that you feel conflicted over, an idea or state of being that you have long held to be true, whose solidity you have begun to question. Write a poem that attempts to demand more from this perceived truth, exploring how it entered your belief system. To whom is it tethered?

Submissions are open for the annual $40,000 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants, given to up to eight writers “in the process of completing a book-length work of deeply researched and imaginatively composed nonfiction for a general readership.” Administered by the Whiting Foundation, the grants are meant to provide writers with the time and resources required to research and compose “original, ambitious projects that bring writing to the highest possible standard.”

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Only books under contract with a U.S. publisher are eligible for the grants. In previous years, the foundation also required that books be under contract for at least two years at the time of application; this restriction has been lifted. 

Using only the online submission system, submit a résumé, a statement of progress, and three sample chapters totaling no more than 25,000 words. Applicants must also include a signed and dated contract with a U.S. publisher, the original proposal that led to the contract with the publisher, a letter of support from the book’s publisher or editor, an additional letter of support, and a list of all sources of funding received for the book to date. All materials must be received by April 20. There is no application fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines and eligibility. 

In 2019, eight writers were awarded grants: Wil S. Hylton, Channing Gerard Joseph, Jim Morris, Kristen Radtke, Albert Samaha, Damon Tabor, Walter Thompson-Hernández, and Ilyon Woo. Previous grant recipients also include Jess Row, the author of White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination (Graywolf Press, 2019); Jennifer Block, the author of Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution (St. Martin’s Press, 2019); and Sarah M. Broom, whose debut memoir, The Yellow House (Grove Press, 2019), won the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction. 

Founded in 1963, the Whiting Foundation believes in “identifying and empowering talented people as early as possible in their creative and intellectual development.” In addition to the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants, the organization honors emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama with the annual Whiting Awards, and print and online publications with the annual Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes. 

“Objects make love visible. They give us an archive, a timeline with clear milestones. They tell a story that would otherwise be almost impossible to see or even narrate,” Jenn Shapland writes in her Literary Hub essay “The Maggie Nelson Test for Lesbian Dating Success.” Shapland explores the value of shared and exchanged objects and artifacts between friends and lovers, with an emphasis on gifting books. Write an essay about a book that you gave or received from someone with whom you’ve had a significant relationship, perhaps at a particularly precarious turning point. Describe the book and set the scene, exploring what the exchange revealed about you and the state of the relationship.