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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.
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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.
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Aimee Phan, author of The Reeducation of Cherry Truong, wrote in Writers Recommend, "I don’t intentionally scrapbook for inspiration, but that always ends up happening. I will see a graphic or image, or hear a song on the radio, and start to collect them for characters whose perspectives I am about to inhabit." Adopt Phan's practice as your own this week. Collect images, songs, magazine articles, matchbooks, etc., and begin to image how these items inform the perspective of a character you want to write about. After a week of collecting, write a character sketch.
This video by Gavin Edwards is one of the entries in an international competition, sponsored by The Literary Platform, for the best animation of a 1993 audio recording of the late British author Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) predicting the invention of the e-book.
The Twittersphere heated up this afternoon after news broke that no Pulitzer Prize would be awarded for fiction published in 2011. The finalists for the award, also revealed today, were Denis Johnson for Train Dreams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Karen Russell for Swamplandia! (Knopf), and the late David Foster Wallace for The Pale King (Little, Brown). No explanation has been given regarding the decision to withhold the prize, a move that last occurred in 1977, except that the choice was up to the Pulitzer board, and not this year's judges, Maureen Corrigan, Michael Cunningham, and Susan Larson.
On Twitter, Publishers Marketplace news editor Sara Weinman (@sarahw) inquired, where does the money go, if no prize is given? (Each winner receives ten thousand dollars.) Beatrice.com creator Ron Hogan (@RonHogan) bemoaned the perceived necessity of such a prize altogether, writing, "But, but, if we don't have a Pulitzer-winning novel, nobody will get the sales boost, and publishing will be DOOOOOMED! #waaah." Public relations maven Kimberly Burns (@kimberlyburnspr) offered a similar sentiment: "No #Pulitzer for fiction means go to an independent bookstore & ask a bookseller for a recommendation."
But amid the chatter over the Pulitzer in fiction, plenty of attention was sent the way of poetry prize recipient Tracy K. Smith, whose win for Life on Mars (Graywolf Press) came on, of all days, her birthday. The finalists in poetry, also published by small presses, were Forrest Gander for Core Samples From the World (New Directions) and Ron Padgett for How Long (Coffee House Press).
Stephen Greenblatt took the prize in general nonfiction for his National Book Award-winning The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Norton). The finalists were Diane Ackerman for One Hundred Names For Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing (Norton) and Mara Hvistendahl for Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (Public Affairs).
The Pulitzer Prizes are given annually for books published in the previous year by American authors.
In the video below, Smith discusses Life on Mars, including what Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey have to do with her winning collection.
The shortlist for the 2012 IMPAC Dublin literary prize was revealed today, highlighting ten authors with notable novels released in English in 2010. Among the finalists for the international honor, which annually awards one hundred thousand euros, are three Americans, Jennifer Egan, Karl Marlantes, and Willy Vlautin.
Egan is named a finalist for A Visit From the Goon Squad, which took both the National Book Critics Circle and the Pulitzer Prize last year. Marlantes makes the shortlist with his much-lauded debut, Matterhorn (Atlantic Monthly Press/El León Literary Arts) which won the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize in 2010. Vlautin joins the ranks with his third novel, Lean on Pete (Harper Perennial).
Among the international novels up for the award are Rocks in the Belly, the debut of British author Jon Bauer; The Matter With Morris by Canadian David Bergen; The Memory of Love by British and Sierra Leonean author Aminatta Forna; Even the Dogs by British author Jon McGregor; and Landed by British author Tim Pears. Two translations also made the list, Limassol by Yishai Sarid, translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav, and The Eternal Son by Cristovão Tezza, translated from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin.
The finalists were culled from a longlist of 147 titles nominated by libraries in twelve countries. The winner of this year's prize will be announced on June 13.
In the video below, Vlautin discusses the obsession behind his shortlisted novel—and sings a song about it.
In this video the Associated Press offers a summary of yesterday's announcement that the Justice Department is suing five major publishers and Apple on price-fixing charges. HarperCollins, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster settled the charges Wednesday, leaving Penguin, Macmillan, and Apple in what could be a protracted legal fight.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sportswriter, Independence Day, and The Lay of the Land speaks about his new novel, Canada, to be published by Ecco next month.
In partnership with the family of a Vietnam veteran known for his antiwar writing and activism, Iowa Review has launched a multigenre writing contest open to U.S. military veterans and active duty personnel. The Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award competition, which offers one thousand dollars and publication in Iowa Review, is accepting entries of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on any subject.
Pulitzer Prize winner and Vietnam veteran Robert Olen Butler will select the winning work from a pool chosen by the journal's editors (all finalists will be considered for publication). Butler, much of whose work is informed by his experiences in the U.S. military, served in Vietnam as an intelligence agent and a translator. He is the author of twelve novels, most recently A Small Hotel (Grove Press, 2011), six short story collections, and a nonfiction book on craft, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction (Grove Press, 2005).
Writers may submit their work with a fifteen-dollar entry fee via Submittable or postal mail (an extra ten dollars gets entrants a yearlong subscription to the magazine). The deadline is June 15. Visit the Iowa Review website for complete guidelines.
In the video below, Butler discusses how his time in the military led the former playwright to fiction, and how his experiences in Vietnam have shaped his work.
The associate art director at Knopf, who has designed covers of books by Bret Easton Ellis, Haruki Murakami, Cormac McCarthy, Michael Ondaatje, David Sedaris, Donna Tartt, and many others (as well as an issue of Poets & Writers Magazine), gave a hilarious talk at a recent TED conference. Check it out.
Conjure someone you haven't seen or talked to in over ten years. Imagine you receive a phone call from this person today. Why are they calling? What do they want? Write a story about it.
