G&A: The Contest Blog

Submissions are currently open for the 2017 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets. A prize of $2,000 and publication in Frontier Poetry is given annually for a poem by an emerging poet. Tyehimba Jess, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, will judge.

Poets with no more than two full-length published collections are eligible. There is no style or topic restriction, but the editors want “work that is blister, that is color, that strikes hot the urge to live and be.” Using the online submission system, submit up to three poems totaling no more than five pages with a $20 entry fee by September 30. Multiple submissions are allowed. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Check out our Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more upcoming contests in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Watch Tyehimba Jess read from his Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Olio:

If you’ve completed a full-length poetry manuscript and want to submit it to publication contests, look no further. Below you’ll find contests with deadlines in September that offer publication and a prize of at least $1,000.

California State University in Fresno Philip Levine Prize for Poetry: A prize of $2,000 and publication by Anhinga Press is given annually for a poetry collection. C. G. Hanzlicek will judge. Deadline: September 30. Entry fee: $28.

Mad Creek Books Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize: A prize of $2,500 and publication by Mad Creek Books, the literary trade imprint of Ohio State University Press, is given annually for a poetry collection. Kathy Fagan will judge. Deadline: September 30. Entry fee: $38.

New Criterion Poetry Prize: A prize of $3,000 and publication by St. Augustine’s Press is given annually for a poetry collection that pays close attention to form. Roger Kimball, Charles Martin, and David Yezzi will judge. Deadline: September 30. Entry fee: $25.

New Issues Poetry & Prose Green Rose Prize: A prize of $1,000, publication by New Issues Poetry & Prose, and a reading at Western Michigan University is given annually for a poetry collection. Poets who have published at least one full-length collection of poetry are eligible. Deadline: September 30. Entry Fee: $30.

Red Mountain Press Poetry Prize: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Red Mountain Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Irena Praitis will judge. Deadline: September 15. Entry fee: $28.

University of Arkansas Press Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize: A prize of $5,000 and publication by University of Arkansas Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Billy Collins will judge. Deadline September 30. Entry fee: $28.

University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prizes: Two prizes of $1,000 each and publication by University of Massachusetts Press are given annually for a first poetry collection and a poetry collection. The creative writing faculty at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst will judge. Deadline: September 30. Entry Fee: $30.

University of Wisconsin Press Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes: Two prizes of $1,000 each and publication by University of Wisconsin Press are given annually for poetry collections. Deadline September 15. Entry fee: $28.

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

Fiction and nonfiction writers: The weather’s changing and hopefully stirring up creative energy for you to put towards your writing. Consider submitting to the following contests with upcoming deadlines, each offering at least $1,000 and publication.

Hippocampus Magazine Remember in November Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Hippocampus Magazine is given annually for an essay. The winner will also receive free admission to the annual HippoCamp Conference for creative nonfiction writers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in Summer 2018. Deadline: September 15. Entry fee: $12

Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction: A prize of $10,000 and publication by Dzanc Books is given annually for a novel. Lindsey Drager, Daniel A. Hoyt, and Chrissy Kolaya will judge. Deadline: September 15. Entry fee: $25

Dzanc Books Short Story Competition: A prize of $2,500 and publication by Dzanc Books is given annually for a story collection. Deadline: September 15. Entry fee: $25

Disquiet/Dzanc Books Open Borders Book Prize: A prize of $5,000 and publication by Disquiet, an imprint of Dzanc Books, will be given annually for a novel, a memoir, a collection of short stories or essays, or a cross-genre work that “exhibits a marked commitment to mutual understanding and cultural exchange across the globe.” Deadline: September 15. Entry fee: $25

TulipTree Publishing Stories That Need to Be Told Contest: A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a short story or an essay “that tells a story.” The winning work will also be published in the contest anthology, Stories That Need to Be Told. Deadline: September 16. Entry fee: $20

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

The Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine have announced the recipients of the 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. The annual awards are given to five U.S. poets between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one. Each winner receives $25,800.

Ruth Lilly 2017 Fellows

(Photos from left: Fatimah Asghar, Sumita Chakraborty, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Roy G. Guzmán, Emily Jungmin Yoon)

This year’s fellows are Fatimah Asghar, Sumita Chakraborty, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Roy G. Guzmán and Emily Jungmin Yoon. Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine, said of the winners, “In a year during which some readers have asked ‘Why poetry?’ here are poets whose work not only provides a powerful answer, but demonstrates that the present—and future—of poetry have never been in such fine hands.”

Established in 1989 by Ruth Lilly, the fellowship program celebrates and encourages young poets to further their studies and writing of poetry. Visit the Poetry Foundation website for more information.

Prose writers, end your summer strong and submit to the following contests in fiction and nonfiction by Thursday, August 31. Each contest offers an award of at least $1,000 and publication.

Gemini Magazine Flash Fiction Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Gemini Magazine is given annually for a short short story. Entry fee: $5

Glimmer Train Press Fiction Open: A prize of $3,000, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 20 copies of the prize issue is given twice yearly for a short story. A second-place prize of $1,000 is also given. Entry fee: $21

Glimmer Train Press Very Short Fiction Award: A prize of $2,000, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 20 copies of the prize issue is given twice yearly for a short short story. Entry fee: $16

Gulf Coast Barthelme Prize for Short Prose: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Gulf Coast is given annually for a piece of short prose. Roxane Gay will judge. Entry fee: $18

Gulf Coast Prize in Translation: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Gulf Coast is given for a prose excerpt translated from any language into English. John Keene will judge Entry fee: $18

New Guard Machigonne Fiction Contest: A prize of $1,500 each and publication in the New Guard is given annually for a short story. Chris Abani will judge. Entry fee: $20

Red Hen Press Quill Prose Award: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Red Hen Press is given annually for a short story collection, a novel, or an essay collection by a queer writer. Ryka Aoki will judge. Entry fee: $5

Snake Nation Press Serena McDonald Kennedy Award: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Snake Nation Press is given annually for a short story collection or a novella. Entry fee: $25

Sustainable Arts Foundation Writing Awards: Awards of $5,000 each are given annually to fiction writers and creative nonfiction writers with children. Writers with at least one child under the age of 18 are eligible. Entry fee: $15

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

Poets! There are almost two weeks left to submit to the following poetry contests and grants, given for single poems, full-length manuscripts, and short samples of work. Each contest has a deadline of Thursday, August 31, and offers a prize of at least $1,000.

Aesthetica Creative Writing Award: A prize of £1,000 (approximately $1,290) and publication in Aesthetica will be given annually for a poem. The winner will also receive a subscription to Granta, books courtesy of Bloodaxe Books and Vintage Books, and a full membership to the Poetry Society in London. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $15

Black Lawrence Press St. Lawrence Book Award: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Black Lawrence Press is given annually for a debut collection of poems or short stories. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $25

New Guard Poetry Contest: A prize of $1,500 and publication in the New Guard is given annually for a poem. Mark Doty will judge. Entry fee: $20

Snake Nation Press Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Snake Nation Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Entry fee: $25

Sustainable Arts Foundation Writing Awards: Twenty awards of $5,000 each are given annually to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers with children. Writers with at least one child under the age of 18 are eligible. Entry fee: $15

Utica College Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize: A prize of $2,000 is given annually for a poetry collection published in the previous year by a resident of upstate New York. The winner will also give a reading and teach a master class at Utica College in April 2018. Entry fee: 0

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

Poets who like beer, we have just the contest for you! Submissions are currently open for the fifteenth annual Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. A prize of $500, publication by Broadkill River Press, ten author copies, and two cases of Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales are given annually for a poetry collection written by a poet living in the mid-Atlantic states. Destiny Birdsong, Christopher Salerno, and Michael Dwayne Smith will judge.

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Poets currently living in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, or Washington, D.C. may submit a manuscript of 48 to 78 pages by August 15. There is no entry fee.

The winner will be expected to attend a reading and award ceremony at the Dogfish Head Brewery in Lewes, Delaware, in December; lodging at the Dogfish Inn will be provided. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

The Academy of American Poets has launched the Ambroggio Prize, an annual award given for an unpublished poetry manuscript originally written in Spanish and translated into English by the poet or a translator. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication by Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe at Arizona State University.

The prize will be open for submissions from September 15 through February 15, 2018.  Poet Alberto Ríos will judge. Ríos is the state poet laureate of Arizona and had published several poetry collections, most recently A Small Story About the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 2015).

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“We are happy to be working with the Academy of American Poets, which has been honoring artistic excellence in poetry for many decades, on this new prize to celebrate poets in the United States writing in Spanish as an important part of our rich American poetic tradition,” says Luis Alberto Ambroggio, the sponsor of the prize. Jennifer Benka, executive director of the Academy of American Poets, agrees. “We are thrilled to expand our prizes to include one that recognizes the important place the Spanish language has in American culture,” she says.

The prize is the first of its kind in the United States to honor American poets whose first language is Spanish. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the United States, with the 2013 U.S. Census estimating that approximately 38.4 million people—or 13 percent of the population—speak Spanish at home.

The Academy of American Poets administers several other prizes, including the $100,000 Wallace Stevens Award, the $25,000 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the $5,000 Walt Whitman Prize, and the $5,000 James Laughlin Award. Cosponsor Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe publishes literary works, scholarship, and art books by or about U.S. Hispanics.

Submissions are currently open for Seneca Review’s inaugural Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize. An award of $2,000 and publication by Hobart and William Smith College Press will be given biennially for a lyric essay collection. The winner will also be invited to give a reading at Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, New York. John D’Agata will serve as final judge.

The contest accepts “cross-genre and hybrid work, verse forms, text and image, connected or related pieces, and ‘beyond category’ projects.” Using the online submission manager, submit a manuscript of 48 to 120 pages with a $27 entry fee by August 15. The contest is open to both emerging and established writers.

Sponsored by Seneca Review in conjunction with the TRIAS residency program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, the new biennial book series intends to “encourage and support innovative work in the essay.” Visit the website for complete guidelines.

For more upcoming prizes in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, visit our Grants & Awards Database and Submission Calendar.

Short fiction writers: The following contests—each offering an award of at least $1,000 and publication for a short story—are open for submissions until July 31. Additional prizes include a residency and an agency review.

Munster Literature Centre Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition: A prize of €2,000 (approximately $2,300) and publication in Southword, an online literary journal published in Cork, Ireland, is given annually for a short story. The winner also receives a weeklong residency at the Anam Cara Writer’s Retreat on the Beara Peninsula in West Cork. Entry fee: $20

Masters Review Short Story Award for New Writers: A prize of $3,000 and publication in Masters Review is given twice yearly for a short story by a writer who has not published a novel (writers who have published story collections are eligible). The winning story will also be sent to agents Laura Biagi (Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency), Victoria Marini (Gelfman Schneider/ICM Partners), and Amy Williams (Williams Agency). The editors will judge. Entry fee: $20

Narrative Spring Story Contest: A prize of $2,500 and publication in Narrative is given annually for a short story, a short short story, or an excerpt from a work of fiction. A second-place prize of $1,000 is also awarded. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $25

New Millennium Writings Awards: Two prizes of $1,000 each and publication in New Millennium Writings and on the journal’s website are given twice yearly for a short story and a short short story that have not appeared in a print publication with a circulation over 5,000. Entry fee: $20

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