Nearly two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Ovid wrote a series of letters in elegiac couplets during his exile from Rome called the Tristia. The poems capture Ovid’s final days in Rome, as well as his journey overseas to Tomis on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea, and are addressed to various figures including his wife, loyal and disloyal friends, and he even composes his epitaph. “I who lie here, sweet Ovid, poet of tender passions, / fell victim to my own sharp wit,” writes Ovid, translated by Peter Green in The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters (University of California Press, 2005). Inspired by this epic elegy, write a poem from the perspective of someone in exile. What does your speaker long for, and how does exile force them to voice unspoken concerns?

About a week remains before submissions are due for the Journal Non/Fiction Prize. The literary magazine of the Ohio State University MFA Program in Creative Writing, the Journal, will select one full-length collection of short prose to be published by Mad Creek Books, the trade imprint of Ohio State University Press, and offer a cash prize of $1,500. Emerging and established writers of fiction and creative nonfiction are eligible.

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Using only the online submission system, submit a collection of short stories, essays, or novellas (or a combination thereof) of 150 to 350 pages with a $23 entry fee ($11.50 for BIPOC writers), which includes a subscription to the Journal, by March 11. Michelle Herman, cofounder of the MFA program at Ohio State University, will judge. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Last year’s winner was Rebecca Bernard for her story collection, Our Sister Who Will Not Die. “If Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Homesick for Another World had a lovechild, it would be Our Sister Who Will Not Die,” Nick White, author of How to Survive a Summer, wrote of the book. “Wild and subversive in the very best ways, these stories had me by the throat.”

During the pandemic, a popular pastime has been rewatching favorite shows, from recent offerings to classics. According to an article published in Reader’s Digest, this trend can be traced to the concept of status quo bias: the idea of maintaining one’s current or previous decision. Psychologists also note that we tend to stick with what’s familiar to ease anxiety and avoid disappointment and stress. This week write an essay about rewatching your favorite shows. Do you encounter something new each time or find comfort in reliving the same emotions?

In a short essay for Literary Hub’s “Craft of Writing” newsletter, novelist Rebecca Makkai argues that setting is the most underutilized tool in fiction. Makkai explains that a setting should “give the reader enough ambience and context that they can extrapolate a world” as well as take an active part in offering characters something to react to and “trap characters together, destabilize them, provoke change, or provide refuge, urgency, or danger.” Keeping this definition in mind, draft a short story by starting with a clear and time-specific setting. Try to delineate the time period, the physical location, and the relationship this setting has to your protagonist so it can make an impact on your story.

In “When I See Stars in the Night Sky,” Joy Priest writes an ode to the late iconic singer Whitney Houston, tethering her memory to the stars in the sky. “It’s 1988           Her head /             Thrown back against a black backdrop     She is the only thing / glowing       So distant              from us in the universe,” writes Priest. The poem then moves into the personal connection the speaker has with the singer. “I love myself / because of her,” writes Priest. Inspired by this poem, write an ode to your favorite musician placing them, as Priest does, in a specific moment in time.

February may be the shortest month, but there is still plenty of time to submit to contests with a deadline of February 28. Prizes include $5,500 for a poetry collection and a story collection, $5,000 for a single work of prose characterized by “daring formal and aesthetic innovations,” and $2,500 for a self-published poetry e-book and a fiction e-book by an African American writer. All awards have a cash prize of $1,000 or more. Go forth and prosper, writers!

Association of Writers & Writing Programs
Award Series
Two prizes of $5,500 each and publication by a participating press are given annually for a poetry collection and a story collection. In addition, two prizes of $2,500 each and publication by a participating press are given annually for a novel and a book of creative nonfiction. For the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, the University of Pittsburgh Press will publish the winning collection. For the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, Red Hen Press will publish the winning collection. For the AWP Prize for the Novel, the University of Nebraska Press will publish the winning novel. For the Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction, the University of Georgia Press will publish the winning book. Entry fee: $30 ($20 for AWP members).

Austin Community College
Balcones Prizes
Two prizes of $1,500 each are given annually for a poetry collection and a book of fiction published during the previous year. Translated works are also eligible. Entry fee: $25 for poetry and $30 for fiction. 

Black Caucus of the American Library Association
Self-Publishing Literary Awards
Two prizes of $2,500 each are given annually for a poetry e-book and a fiction e-book by an African American writer self-published in the United States during the previous year. The awards honor books that depict “cultural, historical, and sociopolitical aspects of the Black Diaspora.” Entry fee: none.

Chautauqua Institution
Chautauqua Janus Prize
A prize of $5,000 and publication in Chautauqua is given annually for a single work of fiction or nonfiction by an emerging writer displaying “daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations.” The winner will also give a lecture during the summer 2023 season of the Chautauqua Institution. Writers who have not published a book of over 15,000 words and/or 100 pages in any prose genre are eligible. Entry fee: $20.

Fish Publishing
Flash Fiction Prize
A prize of €1,000 (approximately $1,035) and publication in the Fish Publishing anthology is given annually for a short short story. The winner is also invited to give a reading at the West Cork Literary Festival in July 2023. Kit de Waal will judge. Entry fee: $14. 

Minds Shine Bright
Confidence Competition
A prize of $1,600 AUD (approximately $1,031) and publication in the Confidence Minds Shine Bright anthology will be given annually for works of poetry or fiction exploring the theme of confidence. Entry fee: $3.

Omnidawn Publishing
First/Second Poetry Book Contest
A prize of $3,000, publication by Omnidawn Publishing, and 20 author copies is given annually for a first or second poetry collection. Sawako Nakayasu will judge. Entry fee: $35.

Poetry Northwest
James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets
Two prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Poetry Northwest are given annually for a single poem by an Indigenous poet. The winners will also receive an all-expenses-paid trip to read with the judge in the fall of 2023. Writers who have published no more than one full-length book and who are community-recognized members of tribal nations within the United States and its territories are eligible. Heid E. Erdrich will judge. Entry fee: none.

Red Hen Press
Women’s Prose Prize
A prize of $1,000 and publication by Red Hen Press is given annually for a book of fiction or nonfiction by a writer who identifies as a woman. Cai Emmons will judge. Entry fee: $25

Tupelo Press
Snowbound Chapbook Award
A prize of $1,000, publication by Tupelo Press, and 25 author copies is given annually for a poetry chapbook. All entries are considered for publication. Entry fee: $25.

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

In 2011, Oakland-based artist Alexis Arnold began making art from the discarded books and magazines she continually came across on the street. Arnold transformed the scrapped volumes into sculptures by growing crystals on them. Some of the books she has crystallized include Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, as well as encyclopedias and dictionaries. The results evoke, as Arnold describes it, “geologic specimens imbued with the history of time, use, and memory.” Inspired by the rapidly changing landscape of print media, write an essay that reflects on your first memories with books and print magazines. Do they remain precious to you? For more on Arnold’s art, read “The Written Image: Crystallized Books” in the March/April 2023 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

In the latest installment of our Ten Questions series, Colin Winnette discusses the inspiration behind his surreal dystopian novel Users (Soft Skull, 2023), which follows a troubled technology designer mired in a controversy surrounding a virtual-reality program he creates. When looking for ways to shape the book, Winnette was struck by a series of tweets by entrepreneur, and cofounder and former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey about his ten-day silent meditation retreat in Myanmar. “There was something so striking to me about the then-leading personality behind one of the noisiest places to exist online making such a dogged pursuit of silence,” says Winnette. This week write a story set in a silent retreat in which tensions start to rise. How will you sustain the story’s conflict despite there being little to no dialogue?

“I don’t call it sleep anymore. / I’ll risk losing something new instead,” writes Natalie Diaz in her poem “From the Desire Field,” which appears in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press, 2020). The poem speaks from the mind of someone unable to fall asleep who attempts to find a sense of relief through their insomnia. “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden,” she writes. Emotions then begin to move away from the tension of not being able to sleep into sensuality and passion. This week write a poem that revolves around what it feels like to experience insomnia. What do you do when you can’t fall asleep?