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In this Green Apple Books event, the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN) presents a night of readings featuring writers François Luong, Aimee Phan, Minnie Phan, and Thien Pham, sponsored by the San Francisco Public Library and San Francisco Arts Commission.
“It was happily free of theoretical ambitions, such as being avant-garde or radical or even funny,” writes Ron Padgett in the foreword to The Complete C Comics (New York Review Books, 2025), which collects the two issues of comic books created by Joe Brainard in collaboration with New York School poets in the 1960s. Brainard created the drawings and poets, such as Padgett, John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and Peter Schjeldahl, provided text for speech balloons and captions. This week experiment with the energy and humor of this illustrative format. Take inspiration from classic comic book icons and characters and write a poem that channels the childlike playfulness of comics, giving them your own “adult” spin, perhaps incorporating elements of surrealism or parody, or even accompanying your own doodles and sketches.
Two prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Hayden’s Ferry Review are given for a poem or a group of poems and a work of fiction. Sarah Ghazal Ali will judge in poetry and Gina Chung will judge in fiction. Using only the online submission system, submit one to three poems totaling no more than 10 pages or a short story or novel excerpt of up to 20 pages with a $15 or $23 entry fee, which includes a digital or print subscription to Hayden’s Ferry Review, respectively, by February 28. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Five fellowships of $27,000 each are given annually to U.S. poets between the ages of 21 and 31. Using only the online submission system, submit 10 pages of poetry and an application between January 15 and March 2. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for the required application form, which can be accessed via Poetry Foundation’s online portal (applicants must register for portal access by February 23), and complete guidelines.
A prize of $1,000 and publication in Soundings East, the annual literary journal of Salem State University, is given annually for a group of poems. Susan Rich will judge. Using only the online submission system, submit 8 to 10 pages of poetry (no more than one poem per page) with a $10 entry fee (or $15, which includes a copy of the latest issue of Soundings East) by February 1. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a single poem. Andrew Schelling will judge. Submit up to three poems of no more than three pages each with a $10 entry fee by March 14. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Three prizes of $1,500 each and publication in Iowa Review are given annually for works of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Using only the online submission system, submit up to 10 pages of poetry or up to 25 pages of prose with a $20 entry fee between January 1 and January 31. All entries are considered for publication. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Three prizes of $2,000 each and publication by Sarabande Books are given annually for a poetry collection, a work of fiction, and an essay collection. For the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, using only the online submission system, submit a poetry collection of at least 48 pages with a $34 entry fee by February 15. For the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, using only the online submission system, submit a collection of stories or novellas or a short novel of 150 to 250 pages with a $34 entry fee by February 15. For the Sarabande Prize in the Essay, using only the online submission system, submit an essay collection of 150 to 250 pages with a $34 entry fee by February 15. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
