In this 2018 interview with former Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, Dolly Parton speaks about how her father’s illiteracy inspired her to launch the Imagination Library, a book gifting program that has provided over 330 million books to children across the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, and Ireland. Parton died at the age of eighty on August 25, 2026.
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.