Still Life

The Time Is Now
6.14.22

A still life, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a picture consisting predominantly of inanimate objects,” but in Jay Hopler’s Still Life, published in June by McSweeney’s, the term takes on new meaning. Hopler, who was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in 2017, charges his poems with sharp observations of the body and lyrical ruminations that wander well beyond the traditional associations of a still life. In “still life w/ hands” he writes: “poor dumb lugs what loves you not the butterfly knife not the corkscrew....” In “still life w/ wet gems” he writes from a more fractured perspective: “lightnings bang their jaggeds on the cloud-glower / the cloud-glower is a broken necklace spilling its wet gems / its wet gems w/ facets cut are uncountable / uncountable the reflections of the world in those gems.” Inspired by Hopler’s Still Life, write a still-life poem of your own. Will your poem consider inanimate objects or living things, actions, emotions? Use this exercise as an opportunity to challenge a familiar perspective and consider a new viewpoint.

Upcoming Contest Deadlines

G&A: The Contest Blog
6.10.22

Celebrate the beginning of summer and the endless possibilities the season brings by submitting to contests with a deadline of June 30. Awards include an $8,000 grand prize for a self-published book in any of seven categories, including graphic narrative and creative nonfiction; a weeklong retreat in Missé, France, for a winning short story; and an approximately $51,123 prize for a poetry collection by a poet or translator published during the previous year. Enjoy!

Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize Book Award: A prize of $1,000, publication by Cider Press Review, and 25 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $26. 

Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry Prize: Two prizes of $65,000 Canadian (approximately $51,123) each are given annually for poetry collections by a Canadian poet or translator and by an international poet or translator published during the previous year. Finalists receive $10,000 Canadian (approximately $7,865) each for their participation in the shortlisted authors event to be held in Toronto. Adam Dickinson, Valzhyna Mort, and Claudia Rankine will judge. Entry fee: None.

Los Angeles Review Literary Awards: Four prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Los Angeles Review are given annually for a poem, a short story, a short short story, and an essay. Joshua Rivkin will judge in poetry, Landon Houle will judge in fiction, Thea Prieto will judge in flash fiction, and Chelsea Catherine will judge in creative nonfiction. Entry fee: $20.

The Moth International Short Story Prize: A prize of €3,000 (approximately $3,423) is given annually for a short story. A prize of a weeklong retreat at Circle of Misse in Missé, France, with a €250 (approximately $285) travel stipend, and a prize of €1,000 (approximately $1,141) are also given. The winners will be published in the Moth. Sarah Hall will judge. Entry fee: €15 (approximately $17).

Omnidawn Publishing Poetry Chapbook Contest: A prize of $1,000, publication by Omnidawn Publishing, and 100 author copies is given annually for a poetry chapbook. Ruth Ellen Kocher will judge. Entry fee: $18. (For an additional $2, entrants will receive one chapbook of their choice from the Omnidawn catalogue.)  

Poetry London Prize: A first-place prize of £5,000 (approximately $6,762), a second-place prize of £2,000 (approximately $2,705), and a third-place prize of £1,000 (approximately $1,353) will be given annually for a poem. The winners will also receive publication in the Autumn issue of Poetry London and an invitation to read at the issue’s launch, held at the Southbank Centre in London. Romalyn Ante will judge. Entry fee: £8 (approximately $11), or £4 (approximately $5) for Poetry London subscribers.

Twyckenham Notes Joe Bolton Poetry Award: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Twyckenham Notes is given annually for a poem or group of poems. The editors will judge. All entries will be considered for publication. Entry fee: $20. 

University of North Texas Press Katherine Anne Porter Prize: A prize of $1,000 and publication by University of North Texas Press is given annually for a collection of short fiction. Entry fee: $25.

University of Pittsburgh Press Drue Heinz Literature Prize: A prize of $15,000 and publication by University of Pittsburgh Press is given annually for a collection of short fiction. Writers who have published at least one previous book of fiction or a minimum of three short stories or novellas in nationally distributed magazines or literary journals are eligible. Entry fee: None.

Winning Writers North Street Book Prize: A grand prize of $8,000 and seven additional prizes of $1,000 each are given annually for self-published books of poetry, fiction, genre fiction, creative nonfiction, children’s literature, graphic narrative, and art books. Each of the winners will also receive publication of an excerpt on the Winning Writers website; a marketing consultation with author and publishing consultant Carolyn Howard-Johnson; $300 in credit at BookBaby, a distributor for self-published authors; and free advertising in the Winning Writers e-mail newsletter. Ellen LaFleche and Jendi Reiter will judge. Entry fee: $70.

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.

Dear Diary

The Time Is Now
6.9.22

For the Paris Review Daily blog, Sloane Crosley, whose new novel, Cult Classic, was published this week by MCD, reflects on a journal entry she wrote about a time she and a friend boarded the wrong overnight train leaving Barcelona to Geneva during a twenty-day trip through Europe. Crosley considers how the diary entry of the experience includes the fight she recalls having with her friend but leaves out them making up and moving on with their trip. Think of a time when you were traveling on a trip and something went wrong—plans fell through, a friend got sick, a fight broke out. Write an essay about this experience including what you remember and might misremember.

Wild Parade

The Time Is Now
6.8.22

Pride Month is celebrated each year in the month of June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City’s Greenwich Village. The first Pride March in New York City was held in 1970 and has since become an annual civil rights demonstration as well as a celebration of the queer community. Cities all around the world, including Athens, Berlin, Taipei, Tel Aviv, and Zurich, now host extravagant parades and parties throughout the month. Write a story that occurs during a Pride celebration in which things take an unexpected turn for the protagonist. Will your characters be swept away in a parade or end the night somewhere they’ve never been before?

Limits

The Time Is Now
6.7.22

In this week’s installment of our Craft Capsules series, poet Trevor Ketner writes about setting specific parameters and inventing methods to guide their writing. For their first book, [WHITE] (University of Georgia Press, 2021), Ketner based a series of poems on the major arcana cards of the tarot: “Because the major arcana comprises twenty-two cards, I wrote twenty-two poems of twenty-two lines each,” says Ketner. Inspired by Ketner’s use of invented forms, choose a number significant to you and write a poem limited to that number of lines. Will having a set structure surprise you with the freedom to push your language?

Submissions Open for the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Story Contest

G&A: The Contest Blog
6.3.22

The 2022 Short Fiction Story Contest, sponsored by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF), is currently accepting submissions. The contest awards two prizes: the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers Prize, which is open to unpublished U.S. and Canadian fiction writers of Caribbean heritage, and the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean, which honors “Caribbean writers of all levels who reside and work in the Caribbean.” The winner of each award will receive $1,750, as well publication in the New York Carib News and a selection of titles from Akashic Books. Winners will be also be profiled on the BCLF website.

Using the online submission system, submit a short story of up to 3,000 words by July 1. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Established in 2019, the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival celebrates “culture as expressed through the pen of the storyteller and the voice of the poet” and aims to “facilitate vibrant conversations about Caribbean identity.” This year’s festival will take place from September 9 to September 11 at an outdoor location in Brooklyn, New York City. Visit the festival’s website for additional details as the event approaches.

Find a Writing Contest

The Grants & Awards database includes details about every writing contest we’ve published in Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it, making the Grants & Awards database the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Search the database

Crown Shyness

The Time Is Now
6.2.22

Crown shyness, otherwise known as canopy disengagement, is a phenomenon observed in some tree species in which gaps form between the outermost branches. As for why these trees keep a distance from one another, one theory suggests that severe wind causes abrasion between the ends of trees, while another possibility is that the gaps allow for light to filter down for plants and animals to receive nutrients below. Write an essay inspired by crown shyness in which you trace the many unexpected ways you are connected to others even while physically distanced from them. For more inspiration, read this article on the social distancing of trees from the Natural History Museum in London’s website.

Stories of Kindness

The Time Is Now
6.1.22

With all the turmoil in the world, it is sometimes easy to forget the kindness shared between strangers and loved ones. Reader’s Digest recently asked their readers to share stories of everyday kindness, which included donating gifts and buying groceries for someone in need. This week, inspired by these firsthand accounts of compassion, write a story of your own in which a moment of human kindness is shared between characters. How does this act of goodwill help, if even for a second, to relieve the pressure from your characters’ lives?

The Love of Racing

The Time Is Now
5.31.22

The 2022 National Senior Games, the largest multi-sport event in the world for men and women fifty years old and over, took place this month in Florida where over eleven thousand athletes registered to compete. In an article for the New York Times, Talya Minsberg interviewed runners who offer their advice on how to keep going. Roy Englert, the oldest competitor at ninety-nine years old, says to “keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, and have a little luck.” Ninety-three-year-old Lillian Atchley says, “I guess you just have to have the love to race, the determination to just do it.” This week write a poem using running as a metaphor. What images and words of inspiration come up for you?

Upcoming Contest Deadlines

G&A: The Contest Blog
5.26.22

Memorial Day weekend is upon us! Spend part of the holiday applying to contests with deadlines of June 13, 15, and 16. Four prizes are available for recent books of poetry, fiction, or nonfiction—including the Pulitzer Prize, which comes with a $15,000 award, and the Bard Fiction Prize, which offers $30,000 and a writer-in-residence appointment. There are several publication prizes for poetry or fiction manuscripts, along with a fellowship for a Maine writer. All contests offer a cash prize of $1,000 or more, and three do not require an entry fee. May the force be with you, writers!

42 Miles Poetry Award: A prize of $1,000, publication by 42 Miles Press, and 50 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. David Dodd Lee will judge. Deadline: June 15. Entry fee: $25.

Bard Fiction Prize: A prize of $30,000 and a one-semester appointment as writer-in-residence at Bard College is given annually to a U.S. writer under the age of 40 for a published a book of fiction. Deadline: June 15. Entry fee: None.

Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Award: A prize of $1,500 and publication by Bitter Oleander Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Deadline: June 15. Entry fee: $28.

Maine Arts Commission Maine Artist Fellowship: A fellowship of up to $5,000 is given annually to a poet, a fiction writer, a creative nonfiction writer, or a writer working in a genre beyond these categories who has lived in the state of Maine for at least one year. The fellow is expected to reside in the state for the year of the fellowship. Deadline: June 16. Entry fee: None.

New American Fiction Prize: A prize of $1,500, publication by New American Press, and 25 author copies is given annually for a book of fiction. Weike Wang will judge. Deadline: June 15. Entry fee: $25.

Pulitzer Prizes: Five prizes of $15,000 each are given annually for books of poetry, fiction, general nonfiction, U.S. history, and biography or autobiography (including memoir) first published in the United States during the current year. Deadline (for books published between January 1 and June 14): June 15. Entry fee: $75.

Towson University Prize for Literature: A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a book of poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction by a current resident of Maryland who has lived in the state for at least three years. Books published within the past three years or scheduled for publication in 2022 are eligible. Deadline: June 15. Entry fee: None.

Western Connecticut State University Housatonic Book Awards: Three prizes of $1,000 each are given annually for books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published in the previous year. The winners also receive $500 in travel expenses to give a reading and teach a master class at Western Connecticut State University’s low-residency MFA program. Deadline: June 13. Entry fee: $25.

University of Akron Press Akron Poetry Prize: A prize of $1,500 and publication by University of Akron Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Adrian Matejka will judge. Deadline: June 15. 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, and creative nonfiction.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - blogs