“When you talk to strangers, you’re making beautiful interruptions into the expected narrative of your daily life—and theirs,” Kio Stark says in her 2016 TED Talk “Why You Should Talk to Strangers.” As children, we are often cautioned against talking to strangers, but as adults, this warning becomes nearly impossible to heed. Whether online or in person, many of our daily interactions are with people we may never see or speak to again. Once in a while, this anonymity can lead to a level of intimacy and honesty that is surprising and unparalleled even with close friends or family. Think about a time in your life when an unexpected moment with a stranger had a profound effect on you. Write an essay about this exchange, the circumstances surrounding it, and what it meant to you.

Submissions are currently open for the Robert Traver Fly-Fishing Writing Award. The award is given for a story or essay that engages with “the joy of fly-fishing, ecology, and humor regarding piscatorial friendships and fun on the water.” The winner receives $2,500 and publication in the Spring 2020 edition of the American Fly Fisher.

Fly-Fishing

Using the online submission system, submit a story or essay of up to 3,000 words with a $25 entry fee. Unpublished pieces and pieces published during the previous two years are eligible. The deadline is May 31. Visit the website for the required entry form and complete guidelines. The winner will be announced in September.

Writer Nick Lyons and the Voelker Foundation created the award in 1994 to encourage and recognize “distinguished original stories or essays that embody the implicit love of fly fishing, respect for the sport, and the natural world in which it takes place.” The Voelker Foundation is dedicated to the work and values of writer and fly-fisherman John Voelker.

Anna Wintour’s office, the United Nations’ Security Council Consultations Room, David Zwirner’s office, an IKEA design lab, a Fox News studio. Brent Murray’s New York Times piece “The Rooms Where It Happens” showcases photographs of these rarely seen spaces where powerful decision-making occurs. Write a personal essay about a room that has played an important role in your life. Describe the furniture, lighting, and paraphernalia, and consider the actions, behaviors, and thinking you’ve done in this room. Are there expected and unexpected correlations between the objects and actions?

Applications are currently open for the Vilcek Foundation’s Prizes for Creative Promise in Literature. Three prizes of $50,000 each are awarded to writers not born in the United States to recognize achievement early in their careers. Poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers who are thirty-eight years of age or younger and have published at least one full-length book are eligible. Winners will be notified in the fall and honored at an annual awards ceremony in New York City in Spring 2020.

Using the online submission system, submit a writing sample of up to twenty pages, a curriculum vitae, proof of your immigration status, five press clippings about your work, and contact information for two professional references by June 10. There is no application fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines and eligibility requirements.

The shortlist will be chosen by a jury of experts from the literary community who will evaluate the applicants based on their “excellence, innovation, and impact.”

Established in 2009, the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise aim to “encourage and support emerging to mid-career immigrant artists and scientists who have demonstrated exceptional achievements early in their careers.” The awards are given annually to biomedical scientists and in alternating years to writers, dancers, musicians, designers, fashion designers, theater artists, architects, visual artists, and culinary artists. The Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature was last awarded in 2011 to Dinaw Mengestu.

The Vilcek Prizes are sponsored by the Vilcek Foundation, which is dedicated to raising awareness of immigrant contributions to America. Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia, established the foundation in 2000.