In E. L. Konigsburg’s 1967 classic children’s book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, two young runaways hole up in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for some adventure, but what would happen if it were a museum of food instead of art? Browse through National Geographic’s roundup of food museums and food factory tours—including ones for bread, Coca-Cola, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, chocolate, and ramen—and write a short story in which your protagonist has a memorable experience in one of these gastronomically focused places. Does the experience leave nothing—or everything—to be desired?

Works of poetry composed of tiny glass vials, a mineral collection, a board game, lunch boxes, Rolodexes, and View-Masters? In “Authors Thinking Outside the Box” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, Adrienne Raphel takes a look at Container, a small press founded by poets Jenni B. Baker and Douglas Luman, which teams with authors to publish books in nontraditional forms, oftentimes as a modified object or series of objects. Take a look around your home, a grocery store, or a hardware store for an everyday object that sparks your interest, and compose a poem that could be printed or inscribed onto the object in some way. Take in consideration how the object and your poem relate to one another.

Is it your New Year’s resolution to submit more of your poetry to contests and journals? Here are several poetry contests, all of which offer a cash prize of $500 to $2,000, with upcoming deadlines.

92Y Unterberg Poetry Center Discover Poetry Prizes: Four prizes of $500 each and publication in the Paris Review Daily are given annually for a group of poems. Winners also receive lodging and travel expenses to give a reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York City in May. Poets who have not yet published a full-length poetry collection are eligible. Timothy Donnelly and Mai Der Vang will serve as preliminary judges; Daniel Borzutzky, Randall Mann, and Patricia Smith will serve as final judges. Entry fee: $15. Deadline: January 11.

Colorado Review Colorado Prize for Poetry: A prize of $2,000 and publication by the Center for Literary Publishing is given annually for a poetry collection. Kazim Ali will judge. Entry fee: $25.Deadline: January 14.

BkMk Press Ciardi Prize: A prize of $1,000 and publication by BkMk Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Entry fee: $30. Deadline: January 15. 

WOMR/WFMR Community Radio Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest: A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a poem. Marge Piercy will judge. Entry fee: $15. Deadline: January 15.

Third Coast Poetry Contest: A prize of $1,000 each and publication in Third Coast is given annually for a poem. Leila Chatti will judge. Entry fee: $18. Deadline: January 15.

Asheville Poetry Review William Matthews Poetry Prize: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Asheville Poetry Review is given annually for a poem. Dorianne Laux will judge. Entry fee: $20. Deadline: January 15.

Wells College Press Chapbook Competition: A prize of $1,000, publication by Wells College Press, and 10 author copies is given annually for a poetry chapbook. The winner will also receive room and board to attend a launch party at Wells College in Fall 2019. Dan Rosenberg will judge. Entry fee: $20. Deadline: January 15.

Visit the contest websites for complete submission details, including eligibility guidelines and length requirements. For a look at more writing contests with upcoming deadlines, visit our Grants & Awards database and submission calendar. 

“Philosophically, the New Year is a time for beginnings, a time for reflection and change. I can’t think of a better place than this vast and ruggedly beautiful continent to put things in perspective,” says traveler Chuck Ward in a recent New York Times article about celebrating New Year’s Eve in Antarctica. Write a personal essay about a particularly poignant or exciting New Year’s celebration you’ve had in the past. Describe the setting and how it influenced your mood. What made the night memorable and did you intend for your festivities to help start the year off in a certain way? How did the rest of the year measure up to your New Year’s expectations? 

“There is no market, school, doctor, or shop, and from late-autumn until mid-spring the village is inaccessible by car and uninhabited,” Alex Crevar writes in National Geographic about Lukomir, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s highest village and home to just seventeen families. Write a story set in such a place (real or imagined) that is similarly caught between modernity and the social and technological isolation of its landscape. What does living in this world do to alter the interactions and daily concerns of its inhabitants? Is there a generational shift or a longing for change?

“Whenever I find myself at a literary crossroads, I reach for my Tarot deck. In my regular life, I’m a staunch scientific materialist…but in my creative life, I’m an unqualified mystic,” writes Will Dowd in a 2017 installment of Writers Recommend. In fact, there are many writers who have found inspiration in the Tarot, including W. B. Yeats, Italo Calvino, and Charles Williams. Try your hand at choosing a card to guide you for this week’s poem. Conduct an online search for a card and allow the image to be your muse. Their names, such as Temperance, Wheel of Fortune, the Magician, and Death,­ may be enough to conjure up ideas.

In the essay “The Poet’s Table,” published by the Poetry Foundation, food writer Mayukh Sen pays tribute to the late Maya Angelou for her lesser-known literary feats: her cookbooks. Angelou published two cookbooks when she was in her seventies and eighties, which offer readers more than just lists of measured ingredients and directions. The pages are filled with anecdotes and deeply personal stories touching upon cultural narratives, racial divisions, juvenile traumas, and moments of joy. “I feel cooking is a natural extension to my autobiography,” Angelou told the Guardian in 2011 regarding her cookbooks. This week, think of a recipe that contains some of your personal history within it—childhood memory, exploration of heritage, sense of place, or simply a snapshot of life. Write about the dish in detailed prose, allowing instruction to blend with your reminiscence.

In “How to Write a Family Newsletter Your Friends Will Actually Read,” New York Times writer Anna Goldfarb offers suggestions for the dos and don’ts of penning a family holiday newsletter. Perhaps you receive these missives annually from a friend or relative with a curated list of their accomplishments that year, or you participate voluntarily or involuntarily in one. For this week’s exercise, write a fictionalized holiday dispatch—maybe from someone with mischievous and beloved pets, parents that detail each of their children’s achievements, or that pays tribute to a departed relative. For tone, take in consideration Goldfarb’s advice: “Figure out whether you want this piece of writing to be preserved for future generations—a keepsake—or if you want this to be a throwaway piece of mail—scan, chuckle and toss.”

There is a long tradition of writers waxing poetic about the moon, dating back as far as ancient Vedic texts. Recently, Louisiana Channel asked six authors to discuss the mysterious figure in the sky and why it has such a profound effect on their writing lives. There’s even a word in German, Yoko Tawada says, which literally means “addicted to the moon”: mondsüchtig (translated as lunatic). For this week’s poem, continue the tradition of lunar poetry with your own lines about the moon. If you need more inspiration, read “To the Moon” by Percy Bysshe Shelley or “The Moon and the Yew Tree” by Sylvia Plath.

Planning to write over the holidays? Finish your writing year up strong and head into 2019 resolved to send more work out into the world with the following contests in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The twenty contests below have deadlines at the end of December or in the first days of January.

Bauhan Publishing Monadnock Essay Collection Prize: A prize of $1,000, publication by Bauhan Publishing, and 50 author copies is given annually for an essay collection. Anne Barngrover will judge. Entry fee: $25. Deadline: December 31.

Bayou Magazine Poetry and Fiction Prizes: Two prizes of $1,000 each and a subscription to Bayou Magazine are given annually for a poem and a short story. Entry fee: $20. Deadline: January 1.

Boulevard Short Fiction Contest: 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. Entry fee: $16. Deadline: December 31.

Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Competition: A prize of $1,000, publication by Bright Hill Press, and 30 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. Entry fee: $27. Deadline: December 31.

Crosswinds Poetry Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Crosswinds is given annually for a poem. Tina Cane will judge. Entry fee: $20. Deadline: December 31.

Florida Review Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Florida Review is given annually for a chapbook of short fiction, short nonfiction, or graphic narrative. Entry fee: 25. Deadline: December 31.

Gemini Magazine Poetry Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Gemini Magazine is given annually for a poem. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $7. Deadline: January 2.

Glimmer Train Family Matters Contest: A prize of $2,500, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 20 copies of the prize issue is given annually for a short story about families of any configuration. Entry fee: $18 Deadline: January 2.

Lascaux Review Prize in Short Fiction: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Lascaux Review is given annually for a short story. Entry fee: $10. Deadline: December 31.

Mississippi Review Prize: Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Mississippi Review are given annually for a poem, a short story, and an essay. Entry fee: $15. Deadline: January 1.

The Moth Poetry Prize: A prize of €10,000 (approximately $12,000) and publication in the Moth is given annually for a poem. Three runner-up prizes of €1,000 (approximately $1,200) each are also given. The winners will also be invited to read at an awards ceremony at the Poetry Ireland festival in Dublin in Spring 2019. Jacob Polley will judge. Entry fee: $13. Deadline: December 31.

New Rivers Press Many Voices Project Competition: Two prizes of $1,000 each and publication by New Rivers Press are given annually for a poetry collection and a book of fiction or creative nonfiction by an emerging writer. Entry fee: $25. Deadline: December 31.

Nowhere Magazine Travel Writing Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Nowhere Magazine is given twice yearly for a poem, a short story, or an essay that “possesses a powerful sense of place.” Porter Fox will judge. Entry fee: $20. Deadline: December 31.

Press 53 Award for Short Fiction: A prize of $1,000, publication by Press 53, and 50 author copies is given annually for a story collection. Kevin Morgan Watson will judge. Entry fee: $30. Deadline: December 31.

Quercus Review Press Poetry Book Award: A prize of $1,000, publication by Quercus Review Press, and 15 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. Sam Pierstorff will judge. Entry fee: $25. Deadline: December 28.

River Styx Micro-Fiction Contest: A prize of $1,500 and publication in River Styx is given annually for a short short story. Entry fee: $10. Deadline: December 31.

Tampa Review Danahy Fiction Prize: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Tampa Review is given annually for a short story. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $20. Deadline: December 31.

Tampa Review Prize for Poetry: A prize of $2,000 and publication by University of Tampa Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Entry fee: $28. Deadline: December 31.

Tupelo Press Dorset Prize: A prize of $3,000 and publication by Tupelo Press is given annually for a poetry collection. The winner also receives a weeklong residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Entry fee: $30. Deadline: December 31.

Whitefish Review Montana Award for Fiction: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Whitefish Review is given annually for a short story. Rick Bass will judge. Entry fee: $20. Deadline: January 1.

Visit the contest websites for complete submission details, including eligibility guidelines and length requirements. For a look at more writing contests with upcoming deadlines, visit our Grants & Awards database and submission calendar. Happy holidays, and happy submitting!