Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Transformation Awards

Leeway Foundation
Entry Fee: 
$0
Deadline: 
May 15, 2025
Awards of $15,000 each are given annually to women, transgender, and/or 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 in Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, or Philadelphia counties for at least two years and who are not full-time students in a degree-granting arts program are eligible. Submit a completed application form, which includes an artist information questionnaire, a list of relevant experience, and a statement demonstrating the applicant’s commitment to “art for social change work” by May 15. A panel of community-based artists will review applications and invite selected poets and writers to submit work for the second stage of the application process. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for the required application form and complete guidelines.

James A. Winn Prize

Michigan Quarterly Review
Entry Fee: 
$20
Deadline: 
May 31, 2025
A prize of $1,500 and publication in Michigan Quarterly Review is given annually for an essay or a work of nonfiction in hybrid form. Using only the online submission system, submit 1,500 to 7,000 words of prose with a $20 entry fee by May 31. All entries are considered for publication. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Literary Awards

New Letters
Entry Fee: 
$24
Deadline: 
May 19, 2025
Three prizes of $2,500 each and publication in New Letters are given annually for a poem, a short story, and an essay. Using only the online submission system, submit up to six poems totaling no more than 30 pages or a story or essay of up to 8,000 words with a $24 entry fee, which includes a subscription to New Letters, by May 19. All entries are considered for publication. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

PEN/Bare Life Review Grants

PEN America
Entry Fee: 
$0
Deadline: 
June 1, 2025
Two grants of $5,000 each are given annually for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction works-in-progress “by immigrant and refugee writers, recognizing that the literature of migration is of inherent and manifest value.” Using only the online submission system, submit a writing sample of up to 40 pages of poetry or up to 75 pages of prose, a curriculum vitae, and an outline and description of the project by June 1. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Mario Vargas Llosa

Caption: 

“The only counsel that is acceptable is to work! To work very hard until you discover the kind of writer that you want to be.” Nobel Prize–winning Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa dispenses advice to emerging writers in this Louisiana Channel interview with Christian Lund. Vargas Llosa died at the age of eighty-nine on April 13, 2025.

Genre: 
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction
Tags: 
Mario Vargas Llosa
Louisiana Channel
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
interview
2019
in memoriam

Zell Visiting Writers Series: Jane Wong

Caption: 

In this event hosted by the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, Jane Wong reads “To Love a Mosquito,” a chapter from her memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023), and pieces of her mother’s diary, followed by a discussion about her approaches to poetry versus creative nonfiction.

Genre: 
Poetry
Creative Nonfiction
Cross-Genre
Tags: 
Jane Wong
Helen Zell Writers' Program
University of Michigan
Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City
Tin House
reading
discussion
2025

New Way of Remembrance

The Time Is Now
4.10.25

In her memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in May, Yiyun Li writes about the loss of her two teenage sons. After her son Vincent’s death, Li wrote a book for him “in which a mother and a dead child continue their conversation across the border of life and death.” However, she finds that her son James’s character and their relationship evade her desire to write a book for him and in composing this memoir, Li embarks on a project to find a new alphabet, a new language, and a new way of storytelling. Taking inspiration from Li, write a lyrical essay about someone you have lost in a style that reflects their personality and your relationship, in all its complexities. Allow yourself to be experimental with structure and chronology.

Pages

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