After the Holiday

The Time Is Now
12.27.22

Pulitzer Prize–winning poet James Merrill’s “Christmas Tree” is a wonderful example of a concrete poem, in which graphic patterns of words, letters, and symbols create a visual impact. Written in the shape of a Christmas tree and from its point of view, the poem captures the brief life of an iconic holiday decoration. “To be / Brought down at last / From the cold sighing mountain / Where I and the others / Had been fed, looked after, kept still, / Meant, I knew—of course I knew— / That there was nothing more to do,” writes Merrill. Taking inspiration from Merrill, write a poem from the perspective of a short-lived and celebrated object. If ambitious, try to incorporate a graphic element for more impact.

Toxic Fandom

The Time Is Now
12.22.22

In his article “Why Did Borges Hate Soccer?” published in the New Republic in 2014, Shaj Mathew uncovers the reasons the iconic Argentinean writer hated soccer so much that he even scheduled a lecture to conflict with Argentina’s first game of the 1978 World Cup. Mathew observes that what Borges was troubled with was the link from soccer fan culture to “the kind of blind popular support that propped up the leaders of the twentieth century’s most horrifying political movements.” Taking into consideration this year’s controversial FIFA World Cup in Qatar, write an essay that examines your relationship to a popular sport. Is there an element of fandom that unsettles you?

To Belong

The Time Is Now
12.21.22

In 2018, Chilean author Isabel Allende became the first Spanish-language author to receive the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. In her acceptance speech, Allende spoke of how her writing comes from “nostalgia, loss, and separation, from an incurable desire to belong in a place.” Lightheartedly and hilariously, she continued by noting that she not only writes in Spanish but cooks, dreams, and makes love in Spanish. “It would be ridiculous panting in English. My lover doesn’t speak a word of Spanish,” said Allende. This week, write a story in which two people from vastly different backgrounds connect through an unexpected similarity. How do they bond through their own language?

Stories of the Home

The Time Is Now
12.20.22

“This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun. // Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to / celebrate the terrible victory.” In her seminal poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here,” Joy Harjo explores the shared history of humanity through the image of a kitchen table. “We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here. // At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks,” writes Harjo. Write a poem that explores the joyful and sorrowful history of a past or present family home. What stories do the rooms, tables, and walls of your home tell you?

Upcoming Contest Deadlines

G&A: The Contest Blog
12.16.22

Celebrate the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 in literary style by submitting to contests with deadlines of December 31 and January 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6! Don’t miss the opportunity to receive fellowships offering $43,750 for a nine-month residency at Colgate University, $72,000 and writing space at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, and $15,000 alongside a yearlong stay in the Bay Area. All contests offer a cash prize of $1,000 or more and four are free to enter. Continue flourishing into the new year, writers! 

Boulevard
Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers
A prize of $1,500 and publication in Boulevard is given annually for a short story by a writer who has not published a nationally distributed book. The editors will judge. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: December 31. Entry fee: $16, which includes a subscription to Boulevard.

Colgate University
Olive B. O’Connor Fellowships
Two nine-month residencies at Colgate University, including a stipend of $43,750, health benefits, and travel expenses, are given annually to poets, fiction writers, or nonfiction writers. The 2023–2024 fellowships will be awarded to a poet and a nonfiction writer working on their first books. Each fellow will teach one creative writing course per semester and give a public reading. Writers who have recently completed an MFA, MA, or PhD in creative writing are among those eligible. Deadline: January 6. Entry fee: none.

Florida Review
Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Contest
A prize of $1,000 and publication by Florida Review is given annually for a chapbook of short fiction, short nonfiction, or graphic narrative. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: December 31. Entry fee: $25, which includes a subscription to Florida Review.

Leon Levy Center for Biography
Leon Levy Biography Fellowships
Four fellowships of $72,000, writing space at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City, access to research facilities, and research assistance from a graduate student are given annually to nonfiction writers working on biographies. An additional fellowship, the Sloan Fellowship, is given annually to a writer working on a biography of a figure in the field of science or technology. Deadline: January 4. Entry fee: none.

Mississippi Review
Mississippi Review Prize
Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Mississippi Review are given annually for a single poem, a short story, and an essay. Current or former University of Southern Mississippi students are ineligible. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: January 1. Entry fee: $15 ($16 for electronic submissions), which includes a copy of the prize issue.

The Moth
Poetry Prize
A prize of €6,000 (approximately $6,128) and publication in the Moth is given annually for a single poem. Three runner-up prizes of €1,000 (approximately $1,021) each and publication in the Moth are also given. The four shortlisted poets, including the winner, will also be invited to read at an awards ceremony at the Poetry Ireland festival in Dublin in spring 2023. Louise Glück will judge. Deadline: December 31. Entry fee: €15 (approximately $15) per poem.

North Carolina Writers’ Network
Jacobs/Jones African American Literary Prize
A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a short story or an essay that “seeks to convey the rich and varied existence of Black North Carolinians.” The winning entry is considered for publication in the Carolina Quarterly. Black writers who live in North Carolina are eligible. Deadline: January 2. Entry fee: $20 ($10 for NCWN members).

Poetry Society of America
Four Quartets Prize
A prize of $20,000 is given annually for a unified and complete sequence of poems published in the United States in a print or online journal, a chapbook, or a book during the current year. Three finalists, including the winner, will receive $1,000 each. Deadline: December 31. Entry fee: none.

San José State University
Steinbeck Fellowships in Creative Writing  
Six yearlong residencies at San José State University in San José, California, which include a stipend of $15,000 each, are given annually to fiction writers and creative nonfiction writers. The fellows are required to give one public reading and may be asked to live in the Bay Area during the academic year, as public health guidelines allow. Deadline: January 3. Entry fee: none.

Tupelo Press
Dorset Prize
A prize of $9,000, publication by Tupelo Press, and 20 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. The winner also receives the option of either a weeklong residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts, or a two-week residency at Gentle House in Port Angeles, Washington, both valued at $1,000. Diane Seuss will judge. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: December 31. Entry fee: $30. 

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.

Risking More

The Time Is Now
12.15.22

“Writers often talk about stakes, and they mostly mean the stakes within the piece: what’s at stake for the protagonist, whether fictional or not. Yet for me, the stakes that matter most—the stakes that shape the work profoundly—are those the author faces while writing,” writes Joy Castro, founding editor of the Machete series published by Ohio State University Press, in a recent installment of our Agents & Editors Recommend series. Castro encourages writers to take “bold, huge, scary risks” and “trust that your readers are as intelligent and soulful as you are.” Inspired by Castro’s advice, write an essay that considers your relationship to risk in life and your creative work. Do you take leaps or keep your feet on the ground?

A Secret Camaraderie

The Time Is Now
12.14.22

In the preface to Whorephobia: Strippers on Art, Work, and Life, an anthology of essays and interviews published by Seven Stories Press, editor Lizzie Borden writes about her experiences as a young filmmaker in the late 1970s and early 1980s in downtown New York when she worked at a brothel to support her art. Borden writes: “My way of justifying working at the brothel was to tell myself it was part of what I considered my ‘real work’ of writing and directing, so I always went to work armed with a tape recorder.” Years later Borden would run into old friends on the street who worked with her at the brothel and exchange coded looks that, as she writes, were a result of their “internalized societal whorephobia.” Write a story in which tensions rise when two characters decide to keep a secret. Try to paint a picture of the before and after of these characters’ lives and how the secret forever connects them.

Wrongness

The Time Is Now
12.13.22

“I first started writing poetry (and still write it) because the world, its people, and their ideas are wrong, insane, immoral, flawed, or unimaginably terrible. I write because I feel wrong, sad, crazy, disappointed, disappointing, and unimaginably terrible,” writes Rachel Zucker in “The Poetics of Wrongness, an Unapologia,” the first in a series of lectures delivered for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series in 2016 and collected in The Poetics of Wrongness, forthcoming in February from Wave Books. In the form of an unapologia, a reversal of the traditional apologia form that typically consists of a defense of one’s own opinions and actions, Zucker posits that “wrongness” is intrinsic to writing poetry and that poetry asserts “with its most defining formal device—the line break—that the margins of prose are wrong, or—with its attention to diction—that the ways in which we’ve come to understand and use words [is] wrong.” Write a poem in the form of an unapologia. Identify when you have been wrong in the past, and try not to defend yourself. Instead, speak through your feelings of wrongness.

Submissions Open for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Awards

G&A: The Contest Blog
12.9.22

The submission deadline for the annual Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) Literary Awards is coming up! Given for a poetry collection, a first novel, a book of fiction, and a book of nonfiction (including creative nonfiction) by African American writers published in the United States in the current year, these awards honor literary works that depict the “cultural, historical, or sociopolitical aspects of the Black Diaspora.” Winners in the four categories will each receive $1,000. Books published by small, large, and specialty presses are eligible.

Publishers may nominate books published in 2022 by sending one copy of each title to be considered to members of the awards committee by December 31. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines and a list of jurors to whom books should be sent.

Now in its fifty-second year running, BCALA is devoted to advocating for the “development, promotion, and improvement of library services and resources” for the African American community at large and provides professional development for Black librarians. The association’s literary awards, which were first presented in 1994 at the second National Conference of African American Librarians, acknowledge books that “portray some aspect of the African American experience” whether it be from the past, present, or future. Decisions for this year’s awards will be made in January 2023, and the winners will be presented at the American Library Association’s conference in June. Now in its fifty-second year running, BCALA is devoted to advocating for the “development, promotion, and improvement of library services and resources” for the African American community at large and provides professional development for Black librarians. The association’s literary awards, which were first presented in 1994 at the second National Conference of African American Librarians, acknowledge books that “portray some aspect of the African American experience” whether it be from the past, present, or future. Decisions for this year’s awards will be made in January 2023, and the winners will be presented at the American Library Association’s conference in June. 

Find a Writing Contest

The Grants & Awards database includes details about every writing contest we’ve published in Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it, making the Grants & Awards database the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

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Goblin Mode

The Time Is Now
12.8.22

Each year Oxford Languages names a Word of the Year that reflects the “ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the past twelve months” based on thorough analysis of statistics and data, but for the first time this year’s choice was open to a public vote. More than 300,000 people cast their vote and the overwhelming winner is “goblin mode,” a slang term defined as “a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.” Write an essay about a time you have gone into “goblin mode.” Was the period of unapologetic behavior necessary for you to recharge?

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