As the end of the year approaches, Ann Patchett, author and owner of Parnassus Books, and Maureen Corrigan, professor and book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air, reveal their favorite books of 2025 for PBS Newshour, which include The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Hogarth, 2025) by Kiran Desai, The Antidote (Knopf, 2025) by Karen Russell, and A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction (Ecco, 2025) by Elizabeth McCracken.
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.