To help writers impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be highlighting emergency funds available to writers. For more sources of support, read our running list of resources for writers in the time of coronavirus.

The Authors League Fund assists poets, writers, dramatists, and journalists who are “experiencing unexpected hardship.” Writers with an established record of publication that live in the United States or who are American writers abroad are eligible to apply for a no-strings-attached, interest-free loan. The loan amount is based on the fund’s budget as well as the writer’s professional background and financial need; the fund requests the writer pay back the loan “when and as one is able.”

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Writers with a demonstrated record of success are eligible. Eligible writers include authors who have published at least one book with a traditional publisher, dramatists whose full-length plays have been produced in mid-size or large theaters or published by an established press, and poets, fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and journalists who have published “a substantial body of work in periodicals with a national or broad circulation.”

The fund typically disburses funds to writers who are ill or supporting someone who is in poor health; writers facing overwhelming medical or dental expenses; writers struggling after a natural disaster; and writers suffering financial crises unrelated to health, such as unexpected loss of income or temporary unemployment.

Using only the online application system, fill out the required entry form. Writers are asked to describe the nature of their emergency, detail their publication record and writing projects, and provide personal information regarding income, employment, rent, assets, and health insurance. Writing samples are not required. Visit the website for complete guidelines and eligibility requirements.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis and are typically processed in ten to fourteen days.

Novelist Ellis Parker Butler established the Authors League Fund in 1917; the fund has since disbursed millions of dollars to writers in need. Major donors to the fund include Suzanne Collins, James A. Michener, Kenneth Patchen, the Haven Foundation, and the Amazon Literary Partnership.

Eight writers have been named winners of the 2020 Windham-Campbell Prizes. The unrestricted grants of $165,000 are awarded annually to poets, fiction writers, nonfiction writers, and playwrights, and are intended to provide their recipients a life-changing opportunity “to focus on their work independent of financial concerns.”

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This year’s winners are poets Bhanu Kapil and Jonah Mixon-Webster, fiction writers Yiyun Li and Namwali Serpell, nonfiction writers Anne Boyer and Maria Tumarkin, and playwrights Julia Cho and Aleshea Harris.

The winners were announced via a livestream video hosted by fiction writer and journalist Damian Barr. Mike Kelleher, director of the Windham-Campbell Prizes, has remarked on the ambition and prescience of their collective work, which “digs deeply into everything from the poisoned water crisis in present-day Flint, Michigan, to the vicissitudes of the surveillance state in an Afro-Futurist Zambia.”

The Windham-Campbell Prizes were established at Yale University in 2013 by novelist and memoirist Donald Windham. The prizes honor Windham’s lifelong partner, Sandy M. Campbell, and their shared wish to provide others with the kind of security that allowed Windham’s writing to flourish. Previous recipients of the award include poets Kwame Dawes and Cathy Park Hong, fiction writer John Keene, and essayist Rebecca Solnit. Winners are selected through a confidential nomination process; there are no applications for the award.

Photos (clockwise from upper left): Bhanu Kapil, Julia Cho, Yiyun Li, Maria Tumarkin, Anne Boyer, Namwali Serpell, Aleshea Harris, and Jonah Mixon-Webster

“I sometimes find talking about a piece of visual art can help illuminate certain abstract ideas,” says Jessi Jezewska Stevens, author of the debut novel, The Exhibition of Persephone Q (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), in a BOMB magazine interview by Kristina Tate. “I am drawn to visual art as a tool of writing about perception and the fragility of perception.” Take a cue from Stevens’s way of connecting writing and visual art, and write a lyric essay inspired by a particular painting or work of art that you find resonant. What kind of inferences can you make about the artist’s ways of perception from looking at the work? How can you connect this with the ways you perceive the world?

“This is how you tell a story,” says narrator Tilda Swinton in a short film written and directed by Andrew Ondrejcak, which goes through six steps of a writer’s process paired with a dance choreographed by Kyle Abraham. “There is a problem. It is an obstacle so monumental that it seems unlikely our tiny protagonist will be able to overcome something so impressive. It’s a mountain pressing down, it’s a witch, a curse, a giant.” Think of the motions associated with loneliness and heartbreak, and write a scene of a short story that foregrounds your protagonist’s movements as they experience one of these invisible obstacles.

“The carnation had possessed me,” is a sentence from Amparo Dávila’s short story “The Breakfast,” illustrated in a New York Times piece by Tamara Shopsin. Through her illustrations, Shopsin presents quotes from Dávila’s story collection The Houseguest (New Directions, 2018), translated from the Spanish by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson, that imbue mundane plants with a sense of strange terror. Another sample is from the short story “The Cell”: “She was like ivy attached to a giant tree, submissive and trusting.” Select one of the lines—or jot down your own menacing plant simile or metaphor—and use it as a starting point for a poem.

The first contest deadlines of spring are upon us. These poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translation awards include a prize for fiction by a first-generation immigrant and opportunities to give readings in Ireland and New York City. All offer a cash prize of $1,000 or more, and all have deadlines of either March 30 or March 31.

Arts & Letters Prizes: Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Arts & Letters are given annually for a group of poems, a short story, and an essay. Cate Marvin will judge in poetry, Devi S. Laskar will judge in fiction, and Jason Allen will judge in nonfiction. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $20.

Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation: A prize of £3,000 (approximately $3,945) is given annually for a book of poetry or fiction translated from Arabic into English and published for the first time in English during the previous year. Translations of Arabic works of poetry or fiction originally published in 1967 or later are eligible. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: none.

Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize: A prize of $1,000, publication by Black Lawrence Press, and 10 author copies is given annually for a collection of poems or short stories. The editors will judge. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $25.

Chautauqua Institution Janus Prize: A prize of $5,000 and publication in Chautauqua will be given annually to an emerging prose writer. The winner will also receive lodging and travel expenses to give a lecture during the Summer 2020 season of the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. Writers who have not published a book of up to 15,000 words totaling no more than 100 pages in any prose genre are eligible. Hilary Plum will judge. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $20.

Cleveland State University Poetry Center Lighthouse Poetry Series: A prize of $1,000 and publication by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center is given annually for a poetry collection. Randall Mann will judge. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $28 (includes a recent book from the poetry center’s catalogue).

Elixir Press Antivenom Poetry Award: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Elixir Press is given annually for a first or second poetry collection. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $30.

Fish Publishing Poetry Prize: A prize of €1,000 (approximately $1,100) and publication in the 2020 Fish Publishing anthology is given annually for a single poem. The winner is also invited to read at the anthology launch event at the West Cork Literary Festival in July. Billy Collins will judge. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: €14 (approximately $15).

Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Four Way Books is given annually to a U.S. poet for a poetry collection. The winner will also be invited to participate in a reading in New York City. Diane Seuss will judge. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $30.

Gemini Magazine Short Story Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Gemini Magazine is given annually for a short story. The editors will judge. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $8.

Indiana Review Poetry and Fiction Prizes: Two prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Indiana Review are given annually for a group of poems and a story. Javier Zamora will judge in poetry and Angela Flournoy will judge in fiction. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $20 (includes subscription).

Narrative Winter Story Contest: A prize of $2,500 and publication in Narrative is given annually for a short story, a short short story, an essay, or an excerpt from a longer work of fiction or creative nonfiction. A second-place prize of $1,000 is also awarded. The editors will judge. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $27.

Press 53 Prime Number Magazine Awards: Two prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Prime Number Magazine are given annually for a poem and a short story. Adrian Rice will judge in poetry and Wendy J. Fox will judge in fiction. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $15.

Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Red Hen Press is given annually for an essay collection, memoir, or book of narrative nonfiction. Kristen Millares Young will judge. Deadline: March 31. Entry fee: $25.

Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing: A prize of $10,000 and publication by Restless Books is given in alternating years for a debut book of fiction or nonfiction by a first-generation immigrant. The 2020 prize will be given in fiction. Writers who have not published a book of fiction in English are eligible. Dinaw Mengestu, Achy Obejas, and Ilan Stavans will judge. Deadline: March 31. Entry Fee: none.

Frost Farm Prize: A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a poem written in metrical verse. The winner also receives a scholarship and a $400 honorarium to give a reading at the Frost Farm Poetry Conference in Derry, New Hampshire, in June. Rachel Hadas will judge. Deadline: March 30. Entry Fee: $6 per poem.

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