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.
Find a home for your poems, stories, essays, and reviews by researching the publications vetted by our editorial staff. In the Literary Magazines database you’ll find editorial policies, submission guidelines, contact information—everything you need to know before submitting your work to the publications that share your vision for your work.
Whether you’re pursuing the publication of your first book or your fifth, use the Small Presses database to research potential publishers, including submission guidelines, tips from the editors, contact information, and more.
Research more than one hundred agents who represent poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers, plus details about the kinds of books they’re interested in representing, their clients, and the best way to contact them.
Find publishers ready to read your work now with our Open Reading Periods page, a continually updated resource listing all the literary magazines and small presses currently open for submissions.
Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.
Our series of subject-based handbooks (PDF format; $4.99 each) provide information and advice from authors, literary agents, editors, and publishers. Now available: The Poets & Writers Guide to Publicity and Promotion, The Poets & Writers Guide to the Book Deal, The Poets & Writers Guide to Literary Agents, The Poets & Writers Guide to MFA Programs, and The Poets & Writers Guide to Writing Contests.
Poets & Writers lists readings and other literary events held online and in person. Whether you are an author on a book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.
Research newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications that consistently publish book reviews using the Review Outlets database, which includes information about publishing schedules, submission guidelines, fees, and more.
Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Poets & Writers Directory.
Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.
Find a writers group to join or create your own with Poets & Writers Groups. Everything you need to connect, communicate, and collaborate with other poets and writers—all in one place.
Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Poets & Writers Directory.
Find information about more than two hundred full- and low-residency programs in creative writing in our MFA Programs database, which includes details about deadlines, funding, class size, core faculty, and more. Also included is information about more than fifty MA and PhD programs.
Whether you are looking to meet up with fellow writers, agents, and editors, or trying to find the perfect environment to fuel your writing practice, the Conferences & Residencies is the essential resource for information about well over three hundred writing conferences, writers residencies, and literary festivals around the world.
Poets & Writers lists readings and other literary events held online and in person. Whether you are an author on a book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.
Discover historical sites, independent bookstores, literary archives, writing centers, and writers spaces in cities across the country using the Literary Places database—the best starting point for any literary journey, whether it’s for research or inspiration.
Establish new connections and enjoy the company of your peers using our searchable databases of MFA programs and writers retreats, apply to be included in our directory of writers, and more.
Each year the Readings & Workshops program provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops. Learn more about this program, our special events, projects, and supporters, and how to contact us.
The Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award introduces emerging writers to the New York City literary community, providing them with a network for professional advancement.
Find information about how Poets & Writers provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops.
Bring the literary world to your door—at half the newsstand price. Available in print and digital editions, Poets & Writers Magazine is a must-have for writers who are serious about their craft.
View the covers and contents of every issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, from the current edition all the way back to the first black-and-white issue in 1987.
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.
Every day the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine scan the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know.
In our weekly series of craft essays, some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary literature explore their craft in compact form, articulating their thoughts about creative obsessions and curiosities in a working notebook of lessons about the art of writing.
The Time Is Now offers weekly writing prompts in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. Sign up to get The Time Is Now, as well as a weekly book recommendation for guidance and inspiration, delivered to your inbox.
Ads in Poets & Writers Magazine and on pw.org are the best ways to reach a readership of serious poets and literary prose writers. Our audience trusts our editorial content and looks to it, and to relevant advertising, for information and guidance.
Start, renew, or give a subscription to Poets & Writers Magazine; change your address; check your account; pay your bill;
report a missed issue; contact us.
Poets & Writers is pleased to provide free subscriptions to Poets & Writers Magazine to award-winning young writers and to high school creative writing teachers for use in their classrooms.
Read select articles from the award-winning magazine and consult the most comprehensive listing of literary grants and awards, deadlines, and prizewinners available in print.
Writing with a specific reader in mind helps clarify a writer’s voice—we all know how to tell stories to our friends, and we all intuitively understand the points and details of the story that will interest them the most. Borrowing Jack Kerouac’s method from On the Road, write a fictional story in the form of a long letter to a friend. Choose someone you know well, but also be sure to choose a person who has no knowledge of the setting or plot of your story (so you don’t take any details for granted).
A consortium of indie outfits—the Journal of Experimental Fiction, the press Civil Coping Mechanisms, and trade publisher Pig Iron Press—are reintroducing the Kenneth Patchen Award, given for a novel that echoes the innovative spirit of the late fiction writer and poet. Created in the 1990s by Pig Iron, the prize offers one thousand dollars, publication of the winning novel manuscript, and twenty author copies to boot.
Submissions opened on January 1 and will be accepted until July 31. Entries should be sent as a Word document or PDF via e-mail, and must be accompanied by a twenty-five-dollar entry fee payable through PayPal; for complete guidelines, e-mail the Journal of Experimental Fiction. The winner, selected by Ukrainian American avant-garde writer Yuriy Tarnawsky, will be announced in September.
In the video below, Patchen reads his poetry amidst images of the writer's New York City. A contemporary of John Cage, T. S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams, Patchen is the author of more than forty books of poetry, prose, and drama including Before the Brave (1936), Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer (1945), and The Journal of Albion Moonlight (1941).
This short film, directed by Alex Markman, starring Tom Shillue, and produced by Electric Literature, takes a look at how well the big books of 2010 would protect you in the event of a shooting.
Check back on Thursday, January 6, for our first fiction writing prompt. We'll post a new fiction prompt or exercise every Thursday to keep you writing all year long!
Haiti Noir, a collection of stories edited by Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat, is one of the latest in Akashic Books’ series of noir fiction anthologies from around the world.
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Solid Objects, the New York City–based independent press that publishes "short, self-contained works that might not otherwise find their way into book form because of their length."
This short film, written and directed by David Spies and produced by Phil Seneker, is about a writer who is pressured by his literary agent to find his muse.
This documentary about a wannabe poet who sets off on a quest for answers about writing, featuring interviews with literary figures such as Nick Flynn, D.A. Powell, George Saunders, and David Sedaris, opened in select cities on Friday.
After years of planning, Google eBooks, the e-bookstore that's been described as an "open ecosystem" that will eventually offer more than three million books, is finally here. See for yourself in this promotional video.
In this clip from the 2003 documentary Alfred Eisenstaedt: Photographer, the award-winning photographer describes his experience shooting Ernest Hemingway for Life magazine in 1952. One of Eisenstaedt's photos appeared on the cover; inside was Hemingway's new story, "The Old Man and the Sea."
