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“It was the first time that literature felt personal, relevant, urgent....” Laura van den Berg talks about the transformative experience of reading contemporary fiction and short stories during her first writing workshop in college. Van den Berg’s second novel, The Third Hotel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Vogue visits the set of HBO’s adaptation of My Brilliant Friend; musician Jeff Tweedy to publish memoir in November; PBS’s search for America’s favorite novel; and other news.
“When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz,” Ernest Hemingway once wrote of the hotel he often frequented with F. Scott Fitzgerald. The hotel is used in his novel The Sun Also Rises, and is also the setting of his story “A Room on the Garden Side,” written in 1956 and published for the first time in this summer’s issue of the Strand magazine. Think of a short story you’ve written in which the setting plays a significant role, and write a new story that uses the same locale. How do different characters’ perceptions of the same setting add new dimension to the space?
A fiction writer discusses five journals that published stories from his debut collection, Friday Black.
Finalists for 2018 Dayton Literary Peace Prizes announced; chatbot has written more that twelve million poems; MacDowell Colony executive director Cheryl Young to retire next year; and other news.
In this video, V. S. Naipaul accepts the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature and reads his speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm. Described by the Swedish Academy as “a literary circumnavigator,” the prolific author published more than a dozen novels and several nonfiction books. Naipaul died at the age of eighty-five on August 11, 2018.
How poets of color are changing contemporary poetry; writers on whether you need a creative writing MFA; revisiting Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetry; and other news.
Fiction writers, are you looking for places to submit your short stories and flash fiction pieces this month? Look no further: The following contests each offer a prize of at least $1,000 and publication. The deadlines are either August 26 or August 31.
TulipTree Publishing Stories That Need to Be Told Contest: A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a short story. The winning work will also be published in the contest anthology, Stories That Need to Be Told. Entry fee: $20. Deadline: August 26.
Aesthetica Creative Writing Award: A prize of £1,000 (approximately $1,290) and publication in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual is given annually for a short story. The winner also receives a consultation with the literary agency Redhammer Management, a subscription to Granta, and a selection of books from Bloodaxe Books and Vintage Books. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $15. Deadline: August 31.
Gemini Magazine Flash Fiction Contest: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Gemini Magazine is given annually for a short short story. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $5. Deadline: August 31.
Glimmer Train Press Fiction Open: A prize of $3,000 and publication in Glimmer Train Stories is given twice yearly for a short story. A second-place prize of $1,000 is also given. Entry fee: $21. Deadline: August 31.
Glimmer Train Press Very Short Fiction Award: A prize of $2,000 and publication in Glimmer Train Stories is given twice yearly for a short short story. Entry fee: $16. Deadline: August 31.
Gulf Coast Barthelme Prize for Short Prose: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Gulf Coast is given annually for a short short story. Entry fee: $18. Deadline: August 31.
Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines, and check out the Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more contests in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Ilya Kaminsky on returning to his hometown; Anthony Bourdain fan fiction; a bank robber’s debut novel; and other news.
Poet Anya Silver has died; Langston Hughes’s true birth year; the politics of erasure; and other news.
