Eastern Oregon University
MFA Program
Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction
La Grande, OR
Application Deadline:
Sun, 02/01/2026
Application Fee:
$50
Affiliated Publications/Publishers:
Genre: Fiction
Reinhardt University
MFA Program
Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction
Waleska, GA
Application Deadline:
Rolling Admissions
Application Fee:
$0
Affiliated Publications/Publishers:
James Dickey Review
Four Portraits of John Berger
Caption:
The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger is a documentary about art critic, novelist, essayist, painter, and poet John Berger, whose latest essay collection is Landscapes: John Berger on Art (Verso Books, 2016). Cowritten by Ben Lerner and Tilda Swinton, the film was released in August 2016.
Borrowing From Dickens
What do we mean when we call a story Dickensian? Often it is a lengthy work incorporating one or more of these elements: a dramatic and convenient twist of events, social-justice themes, a sentimental tone, a bustling city setting, a large cast of characters with vivid personality traits. Choose a memorable character from a Dickens story, such as Tiny Tim, Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, the Artful Dodger, Miss Havisham, or Abel Magwitch. Write a short story in which this character has been inserted into un-Dickensian circumstances—perhaps a solitary exploration of the wilderness, a contemporary technology-filled existence, or a supernatural landscape. How do you maintain a Dickensian feel while ensuring that this piece reflects your unique creative voice?
Corporeal Voices Launches Grant for Oregon Writers
Corporeal Voices has launched a new $10,000 grant for Oregon writers. The Voice is a Muscle Grant will be awarded annually to an Oregon poet, fiction writer, or nonfiction writer. The 2017 grant will be given to a writer of color; the 2018 grant will be given to a LGBTQ writer.
“We are dedicated to amplifying artistic voices by extending direct financial resources to writers,” write the staff of Corporeal Voices. “Your artistic labor is important and urgently needed. Art is the counter voice to cultural repression. Writers matter.”
Using the online submission system, writers of color may submit up to 20 pages of poetry or prose by December 5; there is no entry fee. Students enrolled in a degree-granting program are not eligible to apply. The winner will be notified by December 25.
The grant is administered by Corporeal Voices, a nonprofit foundation dedicated “to recognizing the voices, bodies, and lives of writers as socially vital to society.” Established by writer Lidia Yuknavitch, Corporeal Voices is “committed to non-hierarchical collaborations, to the body as a site of resistance and resilience, to new forms of storytelling, and to new relationships to the planet and to one another.”
Upcoming Prose Contest Deadlines
Do you write novels, short stories, or essays? Spend some time this weekend polishing those manuscripts; below is a round-up of prose contests with a deadline of November 15. These contests offer prizes ranging from $1,000 to $20,000, as well as publication.
For short prose writers looking to submit a full-length manuscript, the Pleiades Press Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose awards $2,000 and publication by Pleiades Press for a collection of short stories, flash fiction, essays, or lyric essays. Jenny Boully will judge. Submit a manuscript of 90 to 200 pages with a $25 entry fee.
Another opportunity for short prose writers—very short prose writers, that is—is Quarter After Eight’s Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, which awards a prize of $1,008.15 and publication in Quarter After Eight for a single prose poem, a short short story, or a micro-essay. Ander Monson will judge. Submit up to three pieces of no more than 500 words each with a $15 entry fee, which includes a subscription to Quarter After Eight.
In addition to $3,000 and publication in Writer’s Digest, the winner of Writer’s Digest’s Short Short Story Competition will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the Writer’s Digest Conference in August 2017 in New York City. Using the online submission system, submit a story of up to 1,500 words with a $20 entry fee; the entry fee goes up to $25 after November 15.
One of the world’s richest prizes for a collection of short fiction, the Story Prize annually awards $20,000 for a book published in the previous year. Two runners-up will each receive $5,000, and one entrant will receive the $1,000 Story Prize Spotlight Award, given for a collection that merits further attention. Larry Dark and Julie Lindsey will select the three finalists and the Spotlight Award winner; Harold Augenbraum, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, and Daniel Goldin will choose the Story Prize winner. Publishers, authors, or agents may submit two copies of a book published between July 1 and December 31, 2016 with a $75 entry fee. (The deadline for books published during the first half of the year was July 15.)
The Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award occasionally offers a prize of $1,000 for a fiction or nonfiction manuscript that has been rejected by a commercial publisher and “overlooked by today’s high-pressure, bottom-line publishing conglomerates.” An editor at a U.S. or Canadian publishing company must submit a formal letter of nomination. There is no entry fee.
Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines and submission details. For more upcoming contests, visit our Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar.
(In)Visibilities: Singaporean and American Writers on Race and Gender
Caption:
As part of the Singapore Literature Festival in New York City, Alfian Sa’at, Ovidia Yu, Naomi Jackson, and Jason Koo read from their work and discuss the invisibilities and visibilities of race and gender at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
Deadline Approaches for PEN/Catapult Fiction Prize
This Friday marks the deadline for editors to nominate stories for a new annual fiction prize. Sponsored by PEN America and Catapult, the inaugural PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers honors twelve emerging fiction writers for debut short stories published in the previous year. Twelve winning writers will each receive a prize of $2,000, and their stories will be included in an annual anthology, The PEN America Best Debut Short Stories, to be published by Catapult.
Debut stories published in online magazines, cultural websites, or print magazines distributed in the U.S. in 2016 are eligible. A debut story is defined by PEN as the writer’s first short story publication that has undergone an editorial review process and has been accepted and published by a publication with which the author is not professionally affiliated. Authors must be either U.S. citizens or permanent U.S. residents.
Using the online submission system, editors of participating publications may submit up to four stories of no more than 12,000 words each, along with the required eligibility and consent form, by Friday, November 11. Authors may not submit their own work. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
The winners will be honored at the annual PEN Literary Awards ceremony in New York City.
Launched this year, the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize aims to help launch the careers of new writers. The award is named for and supported by the family of Robert J. Dau, a Petoskey, Michigan–based arts advocate who passed away last year.
Survivor
The Saharan silver ant is able to survive in the extreme temperatures of the Sahara Desert, which often reaches almost 120 degrees Fahrenheit, with the help of physiological adaptations including highly reflective hairs that deflect the sun’s rays and longer legs, keeping them further above the hot sand. Write a short story that explores how a human character adapts when placed in a geographical location with extreme atmospheric conditions. Is your character alone or part of a pack? You may choose to write a story based in reality, or one that incorporates elements of the fantastic.
Jason Reynolds
Caption:
“When I think about what I’m going to write next, I’m like, where do we not exist?” Jason Reynolds, who won the Kirkus Prize for young readers’ literature for his novel As Brave As You (Caitlyn Dlouhy, 2016), speaks about growing up in Brooklyn and not seeing characters like himself in literature as a child.
Genre:
Pages
