“I’ve always thought that art should ultimately be personal,” said artist Melvin Edwards in a 2017 interview published in Frieze magazine. “It may be validating for other people to find that your work reminds them of something else, but it’s much more important for me to keep myself alive creatively, to have the point of departure for whatever I develop be personal.” The first Black sculptor to have a solo art exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York with his provocative, abstract steel forms, Edwards died at the age of eighty-eight on March 30, 2026. This week, think about how you can create an abstract piece of writing. How can writing about something personal develop into expressing a theme, or multiple themes, about the world, whether societal or political? In what ways do inspiration and creative vigor begin with a personal point of departure?
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.