"Number 1: Don't write what you know. Start with what you don't know, what you don't understand." In her craft talk at the 2012 Colgate Writers' Conference, novelist Dana Spiotta explains how she wrote Stone Arabia (Scribner, 2011) in six (not-so-easy) steps. Her new novel, Innocents and Others (Scribner, 2016), explores a friendship between two female filmmakers.
Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.