For the eighth installment of our Winners on Winning series, we spoke with Chris Hosea, the winner of the 2013 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for his debut collection, Put Your Hands In. The prize, given annually to a poet who has not yet published a book, includes $5,000, publication, and a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Hosea's winning manuscript, selected by John Ashbery, was published by Louisiana State University Press in March. Hosea received his MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and is a senior copywriter at H4B Chelsea. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

What kind of impact has winning the Whitman Award had on your career?
I'm pretty sure the Whitman Award helped me recently to land a new job, with better pay and more impressive-sounding title, in advertising. Creative distinctions, and particularly established institutional honors, are valued in such industries. 

Has winning this award, or previous awards, changed the way you approach your work?
I'm certain that contest judge John Ashbery's comparison between my poems and Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descebding a Staircase, and even more Ashbery's remarks about derision and eroticism in Put Your Hands In, will affect my writing for the rest of my life.

Have you ever entered a contest that you didn't win?
I have entered hundreds of contests and spent thousands of dollars on fees. If you don't play, you can't win. 

What advice would you offer to writers thinking of submitting to writing contests?
Sequencing is important. Give yourself at least a month to order and reorder the poems in your book. Also, contest screeners are often (though by no means always) young students who haven't read a lot of poetry before: so include some lyrical candy up front. 

For more Winners on Winning, read the current issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, and check back next Wednesday for a new installment.

Hosea: Myles Paige

Most of us associate the phrase "Wheel of Fortune" with the popular television game show. There is, however, another wheel of fortune—the tenth card in the tarot deck. This wheel isn't as glamorous as its television counterpart, but it can be equally exciting; the card represents a pivotal point in your life when new options become possible and which signals that luck is on your side. This week write a short story about a character spinning the wheel of fortune. She could be on the game show, in a casino spinning a roulette wheel, or at a summer carnival. Include some element of dramatic change once the wheel is spun, whether it's winning the grand prize, or taking the first step on a new and unfamiliar path.

Dr. Maya Angelou's joyous poem "Phenomenal Woman" trumpets: "I'm a woman / phenomenally. / Phenomenal woman, / that's me." After her passing last Wednesday, many who have been touched by her words and wisdom have been reflecting on Angelou's rich life. Today, take a moment to reflect on a phenomenal woman in your life and write a poem in her honor. Think about what makes her unique, and attempt to translate the essence of her spirit into the written word.

Submissions are open for the 2014 Paz Poetry Prize, sponsored by the Center for Literature and Theater at Miami Dade College and the National Poetry Series. An award of $2,000 and publication of a bilingual edition by Akashic Books will be given for a poetry collection written in Spanish by a U.S. resident. A translator will translate the winning entry from Spanish to English.

Submit a manuscript of at least 48 pages by June 15. There is no entry fee. Submissions can be sent by mail to the National Poetry Series, Paz Prize for Poetry, 57 Mountain Avenue, Princeton, NJ 08540. Richard Blanco will judge.

The biennial Paz prize was established in 2012 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Center for Literature and Theater at Miami Dade College. In response to why the prize was started, Lissette Mendez, the programs director at the center, says, “It’s hard for poets to publish, but poets who write in English have many contests they can enter in the U.S., as well as many independent presses and university presses to which they can submit manuscripts. It’s not quite that easy for poets who write in other languages—most publishers of foreign language books are in other countries. And then there is the issue of translation. The Paz Prize really works as a shortcut—publication in the U.S. by a wonderful, highly respected independent press in a bilingual edition. And our partner, National Poetry Series, is one of the most important poetry organizations in the country. It’s a wonderful thing to help a writer’s work get to the greater world, to help her or him find readers.”

Akashic Books, the Brooklyn-based press that will publish the winning collection, describes itself as committed to publishing work by authors who “are either ignored by the mainstream, or have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers.”

The 2012 winner of the Paz Prize, Dinapiera Di Donato, is a Venezuelan poet living in New York City. She won for her collection Colaterales/Collateral, which was chosen by Victor Hernandez Cruz, and translated by the poet Ricardo Alberto Maldonado.

The prize is named after the Mexican poet, essayist, and diplomat Octavio Paz (1914-1998), who wrote numerous poetry collections in Spanish from 1933 to 1989. He won the Cervantes Award in 1981, the Neustadt Prize in 1982, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.

Paz: La Jornada

Submissions are currently open for the third annual International Short Story Prize, sponsored by the Cavan, Ireland–based literary magazine the Moth. The winner will receive €3,000 (approximately $4,082), and publication in the autumn 2014 issue of the Moth.

A second-place prize of €1,000 (approximately $1,361) and a third-place prize that includes a weeklong writing retreat at Circle of Misse in Missé, France, and €250 (approximately $340) for travel expenses, will also be given. Both winners will receive publication of their stories in the autumn 2014 issue of the Moth, and will be invited, along with the first-place winner, to read at the Winding Stair Bookshop in Dublin in September.

Submit a story of up to 6,000 words with a €9 (approximately $12) entry fee by June 30. Submissions can be sent through the online submission system, or by mail, with the required entry form, to the Moth Short Story Prize, the Moth, 81 Church Street, Cavan, Co. Cavan, Ireland. Irish fiction writer Mike McCormack will judge. McCormack is the author of two short story collections, most recently Forensic Songs (The Lilliput Press, 2012), and two novels. A recent interview with McCormack can be read on the Moth website.

The International Short Story Prize was established in 2012. The 2013 winner, Meadhbh Ní Eadhra of Galway, Ireland, won for her story “Ghosties,” which was chosen by Martina Evans. Visit the Moth website to read the winning entry.

 Photo: The Winding Stair bookstore in Dublin.

There's an old adage that people tend to resemble their pets. This could be due to the law of attraction, which many people believe is at play when we look for a partner, and which suggests that we tend to feel more comfortable with those with a similar appearance and who share similar interests. What if there was a service available for people looking for their perfect pet match? Write a scene in which a character visits a "pet matchmaker," a professional who consults with clients on what they value most in a pet, and then conducts a search to help them find "the One."

For the seventh installment of our Winners on Winning series, we spoke with Paisley Rekdal, the winner of the 2013 University of North Texas Rilke Prize for her poetry collection, Animal Eye, published in 2012 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The $10,000 prize is given annually to a midcareer poet. Animal Eye was also a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Rekdal's previous books include an essay collection, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee; a hybrid-genre memoir, Intimate; and three previous books of poetry, A Crash of Rhinos, Six Girls Without Pants, and The Invention of the Kaleidoscope. She teaches at the University of Utah. 

What kind of impact has winning the Rilke Prize had on your career?
The Rilke Prize relieved me of certain fears about the current direction of my writing, in particular the kinds of aesthetic interests and experiments with which I was, and am now, engaged. That kind of validation is probably the biggest reward any prize can give, outside of a sudden influx of cash. In terms of connections, the Rilke prize put me in direct contact with Bruce Bond, Corey Marks, and Lisa Vining at UNT, which led to some wonderful conversations over my week there about art and reading, the state of the lyric, and the best place to buy cowboy boots. As for what the prize itself allowed me to do financially, it helped pay for a new roof, which (considering my bathroom ceiling that winter was literally uddered with snowmelt-filled paint balloons) was a true blessing.

Has winning this award, or previous awards, changed the way you approach your work?
Like any good American or egomaniac, I love awards, but I can't write for them. I don’t think anyone does. In terms of the seriousness with which I take my work, however, prizes have certainly given me the confidence to be more ambitious.

Have you ever entered a contest that you didn't win?
I can’t begin to list all the contests that I’ve entered and haven’t won. The upside of being a 95% loser, 5% winner (if I’m lucky that year) is that I’ve learned how to brush off the rejection and continue to write, even within hours of a serious disappointment. Disappointment is, in fact, a great thing for a writer (if by "great" we also mean "getting kicked in the groin"), since it forces you either to learn how to enjoy the writing process itself or give up. Over the years, I’ve also been a judge for small and large contests across the nation, and these experiences have taught me that, once you’ve winnowed the best manuscripts down to a small handful, picking a single winner is frighteningly arbitrary. Being a finalist or semifinalist really is a good sign, as I tell my students: it means that your skills are recognizable, even if they aren’t the ones the judge-of-the-moment loves most.

What advice would you offer to writers thinking of submitting to writing contests?
Gird your loins. And take nothing—whether it’s failure or success--personally.

For more Winners on Winning, read the current issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, and check back here every Wednesday for a new installment.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to live underwater? How would the days be different? Imagine a scenario in which humans have adapted to underwater life, and write a poem about what such a life would be like. Consider the kinds of evolutionary changes that would need to occur (gills, webbed hands and feet, etc.), the new predators to face, and the new scenery to enjoy.

Submissions are currently open for the Thurber House’s John E. Nance Writer-in-Residence award. The four-week residency is offered from September to October 2014 to a fiction writer or nonfiction writer who has had a book published within the past three years. The resident will be provided with a $4,000 stipend and a two-bedroom apartment in the former home of fiction writer and cartoonist James Thurber in Columbus, Ohio. Travel and food are not included. The resident is also asked to participate in three community outreach activities offered by the Thurber House, such as giving readings or teaching writing classes.

To apply, submit two copies of a book published in the past three years, along with three short stories, essays, or chapters of a novel or book of nonfiction with an optional table of contents totaling no more than 50 pages by June 2. There is no entry fee. Self-published books are not eligible. Submissions should be mailed with the required entry form to Thurber House, 77 Jefferson Avenue, Columbus, OH 43215. The resident will be chosen by July 7.

Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, James Thurber (1894-1961) was a prolific humorist, short story writer, and cartoonist. Though he spent most of his career in New York City, Thurber attended college in Ohio and worked at the Columbus Dispatch as a reporter from 1920 to 1924. He is buried in Columbus’s Greenlawn Cemetery.

Established in 2012 by Sally Crane, the annual John E. Nance Writer-in-Residence award is named after John Nance, a photojournalist who was the Thurber House writer-in-residence in 1995 and 1998. Previous residents include fiction writer Katrina Kittle and creative nonfiction writer Liza Monroy.