Ted Berrigan, a prominent figure in the second generation of the New York School of Poets, is best known for his book The Sonnets (Lorenz and Ellen Gude, 1964). Berrigan’s sonnets were assembled using collage techniques. For instance, many of the lines are found text from outside sources, and many of the individual lines are recycled throughout the book; two of the sonnets even use the exact same fourteen lines, presented in different orders. This week, try writing your own Berrigan-style sonnet (free verse or rhyming, as you please). Create a bank of individual lines—these could be original lines that you write, found text, or some combination—and then assemble these lines into a sonnet. Allow the poem to be nonlinear, if that is what the process calls for, and travel down unexpected trains of thought.

Submissions are currently open for the 2018 Blue Lights Book Prize. An award of $2,000 and publication by Indiana University Press will be given for a collection of short fiction.

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The winner will also receive travel expenses to read at the 2019 Blue Light Reading in Bloomington, Indiana. Short story writer and novelist Samrat Upadhyay will judge.

Using the online submission system, submit a manuscript of 35,000 to 45,000 words with a $20 entry fee by February 9.

Cosponsored by Indiana Review and Indiana University Press, the Blue Lights Book Prize is given in alternating years for a collection of poetry or a collection of short fiction. The 2017 winner in poetry was Jennifer Givhan for her collection, Girl With Death Mask, selected by Ross Gay; the 2016 winner in fiction was Andrea Lewis for her collection, What My Last Man Did, selected by Michael Martone.

Visit the Indiana Review website for complete guidelines, and check out the Poets & Writers Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more upcoming contests in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Recently, the chief curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City rejected the White House’s request to loan Vincent van Gogh’s “Landscape With Snow” painting, instead offering to lend Maurizio Cattelan’s functional, solid gold toilet sculpture titled “America.” If you could borrow any work of art from a museum or collection in the world, what would you choose? Write a personal essay describing the piece and your emotional connection to it. Where would you choose to display it and how would its presence feel in your space? Is your choice related to a personal statement or a strictly aesthetic reason?

BuzzFeed has announced the recipients of its 2018 BuzzFeed Emerging Writer Fellowships. They are Min Li Chan, Sandi Rankaduwa, and Adriana Widdoes.

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The three nonfiction writers will each receive a stipend of $14,000 and career mentorship from BuzzFeed News’s senior editorial staff. Beginning in March, the fellows will spend four months at BuzzFeed’s offices in New York City and will focus on writing cultural reportage, personal essays, and criticism for BuzzFeed Reader.

Min Li Chan is an essayist and technologist based in San Francisco and Detroit. She is deeply invested in the essay’s possibilities for expansive inquiry and productive provocation. Her recent essay for the Point interrogates the moral contradictions of being a tech worker amidst Silicon Valley’s profound socioeconomic inequality.

Sandi Rankaduwa is a Sri Lankan–Canadian writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in the Believer, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. Most recently, she wrote a piece for BuzzFeed Reader on the symbolic implications of Meghan Markle’s upcoming marriage.

Adriana Widdoes of Los Angeles is a writer and coeditor of Which Witch L.A., an indie publishing project that produces female-centered projects exploring narrative through research, image, and text-based works. You can read an excerpt of Widdoes’s recent essay “Marshmallow Mayonnaise,” which was published on the Los Angeles Review of Books vertical Voluble.

BuzzFeed’s editorial staff selected this year’s fellows from a pool of more than four hundred applicants. Launched in 2015, the fellowship’s mission is to expand the media landscape and empower emerging writers, particularly those who are “traditionally locked out” of media opportunities. Read an interview with Karolina Waclawiak, BuzzFeed’s executive editor of culture, about the program’s growth over the past few years.

(Photos from left: Min Li Chan, Sandi Rankaduwa, Adriana Widdoes)

“Milton’s Satan, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz, Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit, Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden.” Steve Almond’s essay “The Darkness Within: In Praise of the Unlikable” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine examines off-putting characters throughout literature and the issues that surround readers’ responses to them: gender, reader sensibility, morality, the role of literature, the publishing industry. Write a short story that showcases a main character’s repellent or abrasive behavior. In what way does complicating the character to make the reader uncomfortable and unsympathetic express an understanding of how struggles with failure and darkness are an integral part of the human experience?

Swiss photographer Steeve Iuncker has photographed Yakutsk, Siberia (coldest city in the world); Tokyo, Japan (most populous city in the world); and Ahwaz, Iran (most polluted city in the world) for a photo series project focusing on different record-holding locations. Write a poem about a record-holding city, using a real or humorously obscure record of your invention. You might find inspiration in a city you’ve lived in, loved, have never been to, or that only exists in your imagination. How are the geography, culture, and inhabitants affected by the extreme conditions? What kind of behavior and interaction unique to this place will you explore?

Poets, do you have a group of poems or a full-length collection ready to submit? Consider the following six contests, which are open for submissions until January 31. Each contest offers a prize of at least $1,000 and publication.

Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award: A prize of $3,000, publication by Red Hen Press, and a four-week residency at the PLAYA writers retreat in Summer Lake, Oregon, is given annually for a poetry collection. Richard Blanco will judge. Entry fee: $25

Lascaux Review Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry: A prize of $1,000 will be given annually for a poetry collection published during the previous two years. Entry fee: $25

Autumn House Press Rising Writer Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Autumn House Press will be given annually for a debut poetry collection by a writer age 33 or younger. Richard Siken will judge. Entry fee: $25

Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award: A prize of $1,200, publication by Main Street Rag, and 50 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. The editors and previous winners will judge. Entry: $25

Writers at Work Writing Competition: A prize of publication in Quarterly West is given annually for a group of poems. The winner can also choose to receive either $1,000 or tuition to attend the Writers at Work Conference in Alta, Utah, in June. Entry fee: $20

Winter Anthology Writing Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Winter Anthology is given annually for a group of poems. Dan Beachy-Quick will judge. Entry fee: $11

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

In 2014, the oldest eel in the world passed away. Ale the eel was 155 years old and had been living in a well in a small fishing town in Sweden, thrown in the well by a young boy when eels were used to keep a house’s water supply clean from insects. That statement may sound like the premise of a fable, or perhaps the beginning of a joke, but in fact it is a true story. Reality abounds with such surprises. This week, seek out a bizarre fact from the news or a historical document and try using it as the starting point for an essay.

Submissions are currently open for the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize. An award of €1,000 (approximately $1,220), a weeklong residency at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy, and a consultation with literary agent Adriann Ranta Zurhellen of Foundry Literary + Media, will be given for a short story.

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The winner and two runners-up will also receive publication in 3:AM Magazine, Structo Magazine, and A Women’s Thing, and will be invited to participate in events at the Desperate Literature Bookstore in Madrid, Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and the Rizoma Film Festival in Madrid in June. The dates of the events will be announced at a later date. Travel and lodging expenses are not included.

Using the online submission system, submit an unpublished story of up to 2,000 words with a €20 entry fee (€10 for each additional entry) by February 14. 3:AM editors Hestia Peppe and Eley Williams and Structo editor Euan Monaghan will judge.

Established by the Desperate Literature Bookstore in Madrid, the prize aims to celebrate “not just the best of brief fiction, but the continued growth of an Anglophone literary community in Madrid.” Visit the website for the required entry form and complete guidelines.

Something Something Soup Something is a video game, or “interactive thought experiment,” created by Dr. Stefano Gualeni, a philosopher and video game designer at the University of Malta. In the game, you are presented with an image and a list of ingredients, and are simply asked to decide “Soup” or “Not Soup.” For example: “Rocks with flies and a candy cane served in a hat with a fork.” Taking this question as inspiration, try writing a scene that begins with a bowl of soup. Perhaps the scene focuses on the senses involved in creating and tasting the soup, or an absurd bit of dialogue debating the definition of soup. Let the strangeness of this thought experiment guide your story out of the ordinary.