Until the end of September, nine literary journals are running competitions open for entries of individual poems, stories, and essays. Each will offer its winners publication and monetary prizes of five hundred dollars or more.

Here's a roundup of upcoming opportunities to submit your standout work. The type of work accepted is indicated beneath the prize name. 

August 31 
Glimmer Train Press
Very Short Fiction Award
Story
Prize is twelve hundred dollars and publication in Glimmer Train Stories

Margie
Editor’s Prize
Poem
Prize is one thousand dollars and publication in Margie: The American Journal of Poetry

September 1
American Literary Review
Literary Awards
Poem, story, essay
Prizes are one thousand dollars each and publication in the American Literary Review

September 8
13th Moon
Poetry and Fiction Contests
Poem and story
Prizes are one thousand dollars each and publication in 13th Moon: A Feminist Literary Magazine 

Bear Deluxe Magazine
Doug Fir Fiction Award
Story
Prize is one thousand dollars and publication in Bear Deluxe Magazine

September 10
Hunger Mountain
Creative Nonfiction Prize
Essay
Prize is one thousand dollars and publication on the Hunger Mountain Web site

September 15
Greensboro Review
Robert Watson Literary Prizes
Poem and story
Prizes are five hundred dollars each and publication in Greensboro Review

Literal Latté
Ames Essay Award
Essay
Prize is one thousand dollars and publication in Literal Latté

September 30 
Glimmer Train Press
Fiction Open
Story
Prize is two thousand dollars and publication in Glimmer Train Stories

Red Hen Press
Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award
Poem
Prize is one thousand dollars and publication in Los Angeles Review

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced yesterday that it has awarded sixteen translators Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects to work on specific literary endeavors. Six fellows were awarded grants of $25,000, and ten will receive $12,500 to work on English translations of works in Croatian, Turkish, and Catalan, among other languages.

The fellowships for poetry went to Olga Broumas to support translations from the Greek of works by contemporary poet Kiki Dimoula, author of twelve volumes of verse; Eléna Rivera for a translation from the French of Bernard Noël’s collection The Rest of the Voyage; Richard Tillinghast for a translation from the Turkish of selected pieces by experimental poet Edip Cansever; and Russell Valentino for a translation from the Rovignese, a rare Istro-Venetian dialect, of Conversations with Filip the Seagull in this Corner of Paradise by Ligio Zanini, who died in 1993. Each translator will receive $12,500.

Fellows in fiction are Charlotte Mandell, who will be working on a translation from the French of the five-hundred-page, single-sentence novel Zone by Mathias Énard, published in 2008; Daniel Shapiro for a translation from the Spanish of the short story collection Missing Persons, Animals and Artists by contemporary Mexican writer Roberto Ransom; and Martha Tennent for a translation from the Catalan of approximately forty stories from the lesser-known collections of Mercè Rodoreda. They each will receive $25,000.

Also given $12,500 awards in fiction were Ellen Elias-Bursac for a translation from the Croatian of the novel The Goldsmith's Gold by August Šenoa; Tina Kover for a translation from the French of Manette Salomon by brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who wrote in the mid- to late-nineteenth century; and Tess Lewis for a translation from the German of Alois Hotschnig’s short story collection Die Kinder Beruhigte das Nicht (That Didn't Reassure the Children), published in Germany in 2006.

The nonfiction fellows are Brian Henry for a translation from the Slovenian of Ales Steger’s essay collection, Berlin; and Sandra Kingery for her translation from the Spanish of the memoir We Won the War by Esther Tusquets. Henry received $25,000 and Kingery received $12,500.

Eugene Ostashevsky received a $12,500 award for a translation from the Russian of a the philosopher Leonid Lipavsky’s Conversations, a portrayal of his talks with the OBERIU, a group of Russian avant-garde poets. Three playwrights, Diane Arnson Svarlien, Chantal Bilodeau, and Nahma Sandrow also received fellowships.

The fellowships, given annually by the NEA, have supported such projects as Natasha Wimmer’s translation of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction last year. The next application deadline is January 7, 2010.

Two of this year’s fellows, Lewis and Shapiro, also recently received three-thousand-dollar Translation Fund Grants from PEN American Center to support the translations mentioned above.

Folger Poetry, a program of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., announced yesterday that it will award Juliana Spahr its nineteenth annual O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize. She will receive the ten-thousand-dollar award and give a reading at the library on October 9.

The prize, named for poet, teacher, and former Folger director O. B. Hardison, is awarded to recognize poets' work as writers and their service as educators. Spahr, who teaches at Mills College in California, most recently published The Transformation (Atelos Press, 2007), a lyric memoir. Claudia Rankine and Joshua Weiner selected her for the honor.

Past winners of the poetry prize are:
2008 Mary Kinzie
2007 David Wojahn
2006 David Rivard
2005 Tony Hoagland
2004 Reginald Gibbons
2003 Cornelius Eady
2002 Ellen Bryant Voigt
2001 David St. John
2000 Rachel Hadas
1999 Alan Shapiro
1998 Heather McHugh
1997 Frank Bidart
1996 Jorie Graham
1995 E. Ethelbert Miller
1994 R. H. W. Dillard
1993 John Frederick Nims
1992 Cynthia MacDonald
1991 Brendan Galvin

A prize of one thousand dollars and publication in Bear Deluxe Magazine out of Portland, Oregon, is being offered for a short story that addresses the environment, sense of place, and the natural world. The magazine is published by Orlo, a nonprofit that supports creative arts that explore environmental issues.

The judge for this year’s prize will be Portland writer Jon Raymond, whose most recent book is the story collection Livability (Bloomsbury, 2009), two pieces from which have been adapted for film. The 2006 film Old Joy was based on the story of the same title, and "Train Choir" became the 2008 movie Wendy and Lucy. Raymond has also written and edited for locally-based literary magazine Tin House.

Writers may submit stories of up to 5,000 words by September 8. The contest charges a $15 entry fee, which includes a copy of the prize issue.

Last year’s winner, Justin Blessinger of Madison, South Dakota, had his story "Winter Count" published in the Summer 2009 issue of the magazine. The judge was Katherine Dunn, also a Portland resident and the author of Geek Love (Knopf, 1989).