In her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, The Wild Iris, Louise Glück gives voice to a multitude of flowers: violets, snowdrops, trillium, lamium, scilla, and more. Glück uses floral imagery and personification, as well as the relationship between garden and gardener, to explore themes of resurrection, existence, loss, and suffering. In the poem “Lamium,” she writes: “This is how you live when you have a cold heart. / As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock, / under the great maple trees.” This week, inspired by this season’s super blooms, write a poem in the voice of your favorite flower.

Spring is in full swing: Give your writing the chance to bloom by submitting to contests with a May 15 deadline. Prizes include $5,000 for a debut novel set in the American South; $1,000 for a single poem; and $15,000 for women, transgender, and/or otherwise gender-nonconforming poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers in the Philadelphia area who have been creating art for social change. All prizes have a cash award of $1,000 or more, and two have no entry fee. Good luck, writers!

Academy of American Poets
James Laughlin Award
A prize of $5,000 is given annually for a second book of poetry by a living poet to be published in the coming calendar year. The winner also receives an all-expenses-paid weeklong residency at the Betsy Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. Copies of the winning book are distributed to members of the Academy of American Poets. Entry fee: None.

Academy of American Poets
Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
A prize of $25,000 is given annually for a poetry collection by a living poet published in the United States during the previous year. The winner also receives a 10-day residency, free of charge, at the Glen Hollow cottage in Naples, New York. Copies of the winning book are distributed to members of the Academy of American Poets. Entry fee: $75.

American Poetry Review
Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize
A prize of $1,000 and publication in American Poetry Review is given annually for a single poem by a poet under the age of 40. Multilingual submissions are eligible, provided one of the languages is English. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $15.

Crook’s Corner Book Prize Foundation
Book Prize
A prize of $5,000 is given annually for a debut novel set in the American South. The author may live anywhere, but eligible novels must be set primarily in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, or Washington, D.C. Self-published books are eligible, but books available only as e-books are not. Wiley Cash will judge. Entry fee: $35.

Gaudy Boy
Poetry Book Prize
A prize of $1,500 and publication by Gaudy Boy, an imprint of the New York City–based literary nonprofit Singapore Unbound, is given annually for a poetry collection by a writer of Asian heritage residing anywhere in the world. Divya Victor will judge. Entry fee: $10.

Leeway Foundation
Transformation Awards
Awards of $15,000 each are given annually to women, transgender, and/or otherwise gender-nonconforming poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers in the Philadelphia area who have been creating art for social change for five or more years. Writers who have lived for at least two years in Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, or Philadelphia counties, who are at least 18 years of age, and who are not full-time students in a degree-granting arts program are eligible. Entry fee: None.

Lost Horse Press
Idaho Prize for Poetry
A prize of $1,000, publication by Lost Horse Press, and 20 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection by a U.S. poet. Entry fee: $28.

Pittsburg State University
Cow Creek Chapbook Prize
A prize of $1,000, publication by Pittsburg State University, and 25 author copies is given annually for a poetry chapbook. Chad Abushanab will judge. Entry fee: $15.

Ploughshares
Emerging Writer’s Contest
Three prizes of $2,000 each and publication in Ploughshares are given annually for a poem or group of poems, a short story, and an essay. Each winner also receives a consultation with the literary agency Aevitas Creative Management. Writers who have not published a book or a chapbook with a print run of over 300 copies are eligible. Entry fee: $24.

Regal House Publishing
Fugere Book Prize
A prize of $1,000 and publication by Regal House Publishing will be given annually for a novella. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $25.

Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines, and check out the Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more contests in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and translation.
 

Every year Time magazine releases a list of the year’s one hundred most influential people, offering a look into the political, cultural, and social figures who have made notable achievements. This year’s list includes politicians such as U.S. Congressman and Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Colombian president Gustavo Petro, writers Judy Blume and Neil Gaiman, and scientists Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin who codeveloped the first COVID-19 vaccine approved worldwide. If you composed a list of your own life’s most influential people, who would be on it? Write an essay that considers who you’ve been influenced by and the many ways your life has been changed by them.

At the end of the nineteenth century, French impressionist painter Claude Monet repeatedly painted the water lilies he planted in the pond of his famed water garden in Giverny, France. According to the description of his “Water Lilies” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, after nearly sixteen years Monet achieved “a completely new, fluid, and somewhat audacious style of painting in which the water-lily pond became the point of departure for an almost abstract art.” This week write a story in which an artist reaches a turning point in their practice. What are the conditions in their life that lead to this needed transformation? For inspiration, read Rachel Cusk’s story “The Stuntman.”

In “Blooming How She Must: A Profile of Camille T. Dungy,” published in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, Renée H. Shea writes about how the poet “scrutinizes the tradition of the loner, the solitary individual, in nature writing and as part of the artistic life in general” in her new book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023). Write a poem that reflects on your relationship to being alone. Do you find the idea of a solitary life as an artist inviting or does it feel restricting?

Are you a nonfiction writer whose prose explores the ethos or ecology of dry climates? If so, consider submitting to the High Desert Museum’s Waterston Desert Writing Prize, which offers $3,000 for a work of nonfiction that recognizes “the vital role deserts play worldwide in the ecosystem and the human narrative, with the desert as both subject and setting.” The winner will also be provided with travel and lodging to attend a reception and awards ceremony at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon, in September, as well as the opportunity to attend a residency at PLAYA at Summer Lake.

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Using the online submission system, submit up to 10 pages of nonfiction, a biographical statement, and a one-page project description by May 1. There is no entry fee. Works-in-progress as well as published and unpublished prose are eligible. Proposals will be reviewed by the Waterston Desert Writing Prize Advisory Committee and Rena Priest, the first Indigenous poet laureate of Washington. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Last year’s prize winner was Caroline Tracey for “Salt Lakes,” a group of eighteen essays offering a queer take on the eponymous water bodies, which are under threat due to climate change. Founded in 2014 by writer Ellen Waterston, the High Desert Museum’s Waterston Desert Writing Prize has a mission to “strengthen and support the literary arts and humanities in the High Desert region through recognition of literary excellence in nonfiction writing about desert landscapes, through community interaction with the winning authors of the annual prize, and presentations and programs that take place in association with the program,” according to the museum’s website. Oregon’s High Desert region includes most of Central Oregon, beginning east of the Cascade mountains at the “high” elevation of 4,000 feet above sea level. The High Desert Museum is located on 135 acres that offer a “close-up view of native wildlife, such as river otters, porcupines and raptors” and 100,000 square feet of exhibition space.

“I grew up a few hours from the scrapyard my namesake, Ida Novey, started in 1906. Nobody suggested a trip to see what had come of the still-operating Novey scrapyard, and I never asked. I have no material connection to what is now over a century of Novey recyclers,” writes author Idra Novey in her essay “Monstrous Hybrids and the Conjuring of Legacy,” published in the Yale Review, which chronicles a visit to a scrapyard owned by her family for generations. Novey discusses the nature of material versus linguistic inheritance, as she traces her connection to the ancestors who began this scrapyard a century before. This week consider your own sense of inheritance, whether material or otherwise, and write an essay that connects you to this history.

In Nathacha Appanah’s novel The Sky Above the Roof, translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan and out now from Graywolf Press, a family drama unfolds through the eyes of several characters. After seventeen-year-old Wolf steals his mother’s car to search for his estranged sister, he causes an accident for which he is arrested and incarcerated, forcing his mother and sister to fight for his release. Instead of using a linear narrative to tell the story of what led to this event, Appanah builds the family’s fractured lives into the novel’s structure, each chapter offering a new version of events. As the novel progresses and more details about the characters are revealed, the reader is able to piece together the story. Taking inspiration from nonlinear narratives, build a story around a single life-altering event. First, try listing the characters affected by the conflict then write into their individual perspectives, taking into account each distinct tone, diction, and background.

“The American experiment will end in 2030 she said / looking into the cards, / the charts, the stars, the mathematics of it,” writes Jorie Graham in “Time Frame,” a poem in her latest collection, To 2040, out today from Copper Canyon Press. The book’s title suggests both a dedication and an urgent address, casting the poems therein as reflections on the age of the Anthropocene and calls to action to protect the earth’s natural wonders. Write a poem that illustrates and reflects on your vision of the future, whether hopeful or woeful. Use the open-endedness of this prompt to fold in as many aspects of the future as possible, including your personal journey and what you foresee for the natural world.