Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Writing Contest

Black Warrior Review
Entry Fee: 
$20
Deadline: 
August 1, 2025
Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Black Warrior Review are given annually for a poem, a short story, and an essay. Using only the online submission system, submit up to five poems of any length, a story of up to 7,000 words, or an essay of no more than 6,000 words with a $20 entry fee (fee waivers are available based on financial need) by August 1. All entries are considered for publication. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize

Seneca Review Books
Entry Fee: 
$27
Deadline: 
August 1, 2025
A prize of $2,000 and publication by Seneca Review Books is given biennially for a collection of lyric essays. The winner will also receive an invitation to give a reading with Hobart & William Smith Colleges. Melissa Febos will judge. Hybrid work, verse forms, text and image, and “connected or related pieces” are accepted. Using only the online submission system, submit a manuscript of 48 to 120 pages with a $27 entry fee by August 1. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Individual Artist Fellowships

Delaware Division of the Arts
Entry Fee: 
$0
Deadline: 
August 1, 2025
Established Professional Fellowships of $8,000 each and Emerging Artist Fellowships of $5,000 each are given annually to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers who have lived in Delaware for at least one year and will remain Delaware residents during the grant period. Using only the online submission system, submit 15 to 20 pages of poetry or prose, a résumé, and an artist’s statement by August 1. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Tags: 
creative nonfiction | fiction | poetry | grants

Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction Contest

Sewanee Review
Entry Fee: 
$30
Deadline: 
July 31, 2025
Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Sewanee Review are given annually for a single poem or group of poems, a short story, and an essay. Cindy Juyoung Ok will judge in poetry, Lauren Groff will judge in fiction, and Roger Reeves will judge in creative nonfiction. Using only the online submission system, submit up to six poems or a story or essay of up to 10,000 words with a $30 entry fee, which includes a subscription to Sewanee Review, from July 1 to July 31. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Andrea Long Chu: Authority

Caption: 

In this Center for Fiction event, author and critic Andrea Long Chu reads from her essay collection Authority (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025) and talks about the inherent contradictions in the way people discuss and disagree about art, and traces the political and intellectual history of literary criticism in a conversation with Arielle Angel.

Genre: 
Creative Nonfiction
Tags: 
Andrea Long Chu
Authority
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Center for Fiction
Arielle Angel
2025

Rehearsing

The Time Is Now
6.12.25

In the comedic documentary series The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder helps ordinary people rehearse difficult conversations they may be dreading by creating precisely replicated environments and hiring actors to prepare for each scenario. The elaborate sets include a fully functioning bar with patrons, a household with a child actor, and an exact reproduction of a Houston airport terminal. Compose a personal essay about a necessary conversation that has been weighing on you and write out several vignettes exploring potential ways the exchange might play out given your knowledge of your own mindset as well as the person you’re confronting. Consider incorporating thoughts about how some reactions or behaviors may be impossible to predict. How might this rehearsal of sorts help calm your nerves or provide an understanding of your own social tendencies?

All Talk

The Time Is Now
6.5.25

“The price of the ride was listening to people talk.” This sentiment is expressed by the young narrator of Joe Westmoreland’s 2001 coming-of-age autofictional book, Tramps Like Us, reissued this week by MCD, to describe his hitchhiking adventures in search of queer belonging and identity. The novel portrays a wide range of characters Joe comes across, befriends, works with, sleeps with, and sometimes loses on the road and in various cities. Compose a memoiristic piece that recounts a cast of characters you’ve met in the past, perhaps only briefly as you traveled from one place to another, who had colorful tales about lives very different from your own. Incorporate snippets of dialogue, trying as best as possible to recall any idiosyncrasies in their speech or vocabulary. Reflect on what you learned from listening and why these stories have stayed with you through the years.

Flair for Drama

The Time Is Now
5.29.25

In the 1997 film Face/Off, an FBI agent survives an assassination attempt that kills his young son and is out for vengeance and justice. To foil this criminal’s next plot to bomb the city, the agent undergoes a secret surgery to replace his face with that of the criminal, only to have him surgically don the agent’s face, effectively creating a mirrored switch in physical identities and an epic showdown. Notable for its flabbergasting premise, another aspect of the film’s cult popularity is director John Woo’s signature style and trademark motifs: balletic action sequences, doves and churches, deadlocked gunfights, and coats blowing in slow motion in the wind. Write an essay about a dramatic situation from your past in which you insert small details and observations of physical description that complement the tone of your piece. How might you translate a slow-motion effect in cinema to a slow-motion moment in your storytelling?

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