How to use this Page

2015 Summer Residency Contest

Entry Fee: $15.00 USD  

Since 1994, the Poetry Center’s Residency Program has offered writers an opportunity to develop their work. Beginning in Summer 2014, the Poetry Center will award one residency each summer for one poet to spend two weeks in Tucson, Arizona developing his/her work. The residency includes a $500 stipend and a two week stay in a studio apartment located within steps of the Center’s renowned library of contemporary poetry. The residency is offered between June 1 and August 31.
 
Deadline: December 15, 2015 by midnight, MST

Judge: Eduardo C. Corral is the author of Slow Lightning, winner of the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He’s the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. He teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University. 

GUIDELINES (Please read):

Writers at any stage of their careers may apply; emerging writers are welcome. This is a blind submission process.Friends, students, or family members of the judge are not eligible to apply. Current University of Arizona faculty, staff, students, and Tucson residents are not eligible to receive the residency. Due to financial limitations, this award is only open to U.S. residents. 

Paper submissions will not be accepted. Please make sure that the poems you submit are exactly as you want them to appear. Revisions will not be accepted while poems are under review. The Poetry Center will contact finalists to receive their CV/Resumes, as well as the contact information for three professional/personal references, before selecting a winner.

Entry link.

SUBMISSIONS SHOULD INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:

Work sample. No more than 10 pages of poetry. Please make sure your name and/or contact information is not included on the work sample or in the title of your submission.

We only accept DOC, DOCX, PDF, and RTF files.

The Robert Reeves $1,000 Prize in Comic Fiction, judged by distinguished author and editor, Daniel Menaker

Submit your short comedic fiction (no more than 5,000 words) to The Southampton Review’s first annual Robert Reeves Comic Fiction Contest! We won’t even try to tell you what we’re looking for. The comic impulse is so widely and variously expressed in fiction that it resists definition. But if your comic muse has led you to a story that you consider a match, throw caution to the wind and send it to us.

Entry fee is $15 per submission. Winners will be notified on or before January 15, 2015, and will be honored at the Manhattan launch of TSR: The Southampton Review’s Spring 2015 issue.

Submission Period: September 1st through October 31st. Submit here.

1st Place: $1000 and publication in the Spring 2015 issue of TSR: The Southampton Review. Finalist stories will be considered for publication in TSR Online.

Notably irreverent contest judge Daniel Menaker has been the fiction editor at The New Yorker, and Executive Editor in Chief of Random House. He is the author, most recently, of the memoir My Mistake.

The Department of English at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and GRASSROOTS,SIUC's undergraduate literary magazine, are pleased to announce the 2015 Devil's Kitchen Reading Awards.  

One book of poetry (book-length work or single-author collection of poems), one book of fiction (novel, novella, or single-author short fiction collection) and one book of prose nonfiction (literary nonfiction, memoir, or single-author essay collection) will be selected from submissions of single-author titles published in 2014, and the winning authors will receive an honorarium of $1000.00 and will present a public reading and participate in panels at the Devil's Kitchen Fall Literary Festival at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.   

The dates for the 2015 festival will be October 21-23, 2015. Travel and accommodations will be provided for the three winners. 

Entries may be submitted by either author or publisher, and must include a copy of the book, a cover letter, a brief biography of the author including previous publications, and a $20.00 entry fee made out to "SIUC - Dept. of English." Entrants wishing to submit entry fees electronically should e-mail a request to:

grassrootsmagATgmailDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

and they will be sent a link to pay by PayPal or credit card.

Entries must be postmarked December 1, 2014 - February 2, 2015. Materials postmarked after February 1 will be returned unopened. Because we cannot guarantee their return, all entries will become the property of the SIUC Department of English. Entrants wishing acknowledgment of receipt of materials must include a self-addressed stamped postcard.

Judges will come from the faculty of SIUC's MFA Program in Creative Writing and the award winners will be selected by the staff of GRASSROOTS. The winners will be notified in May 2015. All entrants will be notified of the results by e-mail in June 2015.

The three awards are open to single-author titles published in 2014 by independent, university, or commercial publishers. The winners must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents and must agree to attend and participate in the 2015 Devil's Kitchen Fall Literary Festival (October 21-23, 2015) to receive the award. Entries from vanity presses and self-published books are not eligible. Current students and employees at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and authors published by Southern Illinois University Press are not eligible.

The Waywiser Press is now accepting first and second book manuscripts for the tenth annual Anthony Hecht Poetry prize. The winning manuscript will be honored with £1750 or $3000, publication by Waywiser in both the UK and USA, and a reading with the judge at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

Past judges include Richard Wilbur, Mary Jo Salter, Charles Simic, and Heather McHugh.

For submission details, visit our website. 

The deadline is December 1, 2014.

Writers are invited to submit original poems inspired by five works of art linked to this website and on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH).

Entry guidelines.

This competition accepts poems in two separate age categories: adult (age 20+) and teens (age 13-19). The deadline for entries is midnight November 30, 2014.
 
Five independent judges – Robert Pinsky, David M. Parsons, Patricia Smith, Mary Szybist, and Roberto Tejada – will each select a winner and 7 seven finalists for one of the artworks, totaling five adult winners and thirty-five adult finalists. Writers In The Schools/WITS will judge our free teen competition and select five teen winners.

Please read the Guidelines and other information on this site before submitting your poems. All teens should read the Teen page for separate guidelines.

On April 23, 2015, in celebration of National Poetry Month, a free public program at the Museum will feature ARTlines2 winners in both age categories, as well as comments about each work of art by an art historian.

Poems by all Winners and Finalist will be published with the accompanying artworks in an ekphrastic poetry anthology for ARTlines2 

EKPHRASTIC POETRY may include literal descriptions of a work of art, the poet´s mood in response to a work of art, metaphorical associations inspired by a work of art, or personal memories about a work of art.
ARTlines2 is a national competition organized by Public Poetry in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH).

Eligibility: Adults (20+) and teens (13-19).
Deadline: November 30, 2014

The Lindenwood Review is currently accepting submissions of fiction, poetry, and personal essay for issue 5 through December 15, 2014. We are also accepting submissions for our free flash fiction contest through November 15.  

While current LU MFA students are not eligible, alumni are welcome to submit. 

Please visit our website for full submission guidelines and to read excerpts from previous issues.

Sequestrum is accepting submissions for our first annual Editor's Reprint Award! For complete guidelines, visit our website.
 
Contest Guidelines:

Open to reprints of fiction and nonfiction in any original format (electronic or print).

One $200 prize plus publication.
One runner-up prize including publication and payment (just above our usual rates). Finalists listed on the site.

$15 entry fee.
Tentative close date of April 30th. (See site for details)

Include the name and email address of the original publisher in your cover letter.
Length and subject are open.
Submit via our online submission system.
Manuscripts reviewed on a rolling-basis.
Multiple submissions allowed.

No identifying information should be on your manuscript.

Not previously published? No worries! We're always accepting general submissions. Send them here.

About Sequestrum:
We average 1,000+ readers a month, keep our archives free and open to the public, are a paying market, and pair all our publications with stunning visual arts created by outside artists or our staff. Our contributors range from award-winning novelists and poets (with other works featured in publications including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The American Scholar, The Kenyon Review, many other university periodicals, and Best American Anthologies) to emerging voices and first-time writers.


We're proud of our little plot on the literary landscape and the writers and artists we share it with. Come see why.

New Rivers Press Many Voices Project Prize for Prose and Poetry

New Rivers Press is now taking submissions for our Many Voices Project Prize for PROSE and POETRY. Deadline November 1, 2014. Each winner (one for prose, one for poetry) will win $1000, a standard book contract, national distribution, and complimentary copies. This year's finalist judges are Naomi Shihab Nye for poetry and Alan Davis for prose. Recent judges include John Dufresne, Leif Enger, Richard Hoffman, Tim Seibles, Debra Marquart, and Elizabeth Searle. 

The Many Voices Project is our distinguished annual competition (since 1981) to find new and emerging writers. (An emerging writer has not published more than two books of creative writing with a commercial, university, or national small press.)  

The submission period for the 2014 MVP competition, a search for book-length unpublished manuscripts by new or emerging writers, is Sept. 15 - Nov. 1, 2014. The prize is open to anyone writing in English. There is a $25 entry fee. The winning titles will be published in fall 2016 by New Rivers Press. 

Online submissions are being accepted now at our submissions portal.

To send your manuscript by regular mail, please visit our website for guidelines.

A Call for Submissions for CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW 

To submit to the Special Issue Feature Award, go here. (contest):

--POSTAL SUBMISSIONS OPEN FOR THIS ISSUE ON OCTOBER 1, 2014. THE DEADLINE FOR POSTAL SUBMISSIONS IS NOVEMBER 10, 2014. THIS IS A POSTMARK DEADLINE, SO THERE IS NO NEED TO EXPRESS MAIL, OVERNIGHT, OR FAX ANY SUBMISSION. PLEASE DO NOT EMAIL YOUR SUBMISSION. THANK YOU.--

Special Issue: 20 Years: Writing About 1995-2015

To celebrate twenty years of publication, CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW is seeking submissions for our Summer/Fall 2015 issue focusing on writing inspired or informed by the experiences, observations, and/or cultural and historical events of the following topic: "20 Years: Writing About 1995-2015." We are open to work that covers any of the ways our world and ourselves have changed due to the advancements, setbacks, tragedies, and triumphs of the last twenty years.

All submissions should be original, unpublished poetry, fiction, or literary nonfiction in English. Please inquire before submitting any translations. For general information about submissions, click the following link for our regular submission guidelines and subscription and single copy orders.

The submission period by postal mail for this issue is October 1 through November 10, 2014. (There will be an earlier date, August 15, for online submissions to our Special Issue Feature Awards, and these submissions close at the end of the day on November 1, 2014. All submissions for the Special Issue Feature Awards are also considered for publication in the Summer/Fall 2015 issue). We will be reading submissions throughout and hope to complete the editorial work on the issue by the end of January 2015. Writers whose work is selected will receive $25 (US) per magazine page ($50 minimum for poetry; $100 minimum for prose) and two copies of the issue. Mail submissions to:

CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW
The 20 Years issue
Faner 2380, Mail Code 4503
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
1000 Faner Drive
Carbondale, IL 62901
United States of America

2015 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction

Awarded to an outstanding, unpublished collection of short fiction.

Reading Fee: $30
 
Award: Publication of winning short story collection, $1,000 cash advance, travel expenses and lodging for a special reading and book signing party at Press 53 headquarters Winston-Salem, North Carolina, attendance to the 2015 Press 53/Prime Number Magazine Gathering of Writers, and ten copies of the book. 
 
Enter: September 1–December 31, 2014; finalists announced March 1, 2015; winner announced on May 3, 2015 (National Press 53 Day). Complete details at our website.

The Morton Marr Poetry Prize

Entry fee: $5.00 per poem paid online.

The Morton Marr Poetry Prize is an endowment by Marilyn Klepak of Dallas in honor of her father, whose love of poetry has encouraged her to pass this love on to others. The first prize is $1,000 and the second place prize is $500. Both prizes earn publication in Southwest Review pages.
 
Rules
Contest is open to writers who have not yet published a first book of poetry. Contestants may submit no more than six, previously unpublished poems in a "traditional" form (e.g. sonnet, sestina, villanelle, rhymed stanzas, blank verse, etc.). Poems should be printed blank with name and address information only on a cover sheet or letter. Entry fee of $5.00 per poem must accompany submission. Postmarked deadline for entry is September 30, 2015. Poems will not be returned. Winners will be notified in December. All entrants will receive a copy of the issue in which the winning poems appear. Entries sent by mail with a check or money order should be addressed to: 

The Morton Marr Poetry Prize
Southwest Review
P.O. Box 750374
Dallas, TX 75275-0374

Email entry to:

swrATsmuDOTedu (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

with "Marr Poetry Prize" in the subject line. Preferred format is a Word Document attached to the email, but can accept most basic file types.

HOWARD NEMEROV SONNET AWARD $1,000 PRIZE

Final Judge: R.S. Gwynn
Deadline: November 15, 2014
 
Sponsored by:
The Formalist and Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry

Competition Rules for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award:

1. Sonnets must be original and unpublished. No translations. Writers may enter up to twelve sonnets. Sonnet sequences are acceptable, but each sonnet will be considered individually. Entry fee: $3 per sonnet, checks payable to Measure Press. Entry fees from outside the U.S. must be paid in cash — U.S. dollars — or by a check drawn on a U.S. bank. Author's name, address, e-mail address, and phone number should be typed on the BACK of each entry.
2. Final Judge for the 2014 competition will be R.S. Gwynn. The winning poem and eleven finalists will be published in a 2015 issue of Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry http://www.measurepress.com/measure/.
3. Entries must be sent to the address listed below and postmarked no later than November 15, 2014. Enclose a SASE if you would like to be notified of the contest results. Entries cannot be returned.

All submissions should be sent to:

Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award
Creative Writing Department
University of Evansville
1800 Lincoln Avenue
Evansville, IN 47722

Click here to see a list of previous winners and judges.

Please note: these are the complete guidelines.

2014 Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize, Black Balloon's annual award of $5000 and a book deal for an outstanding fiction manuscript.  

We are accepting submissions October 1st - 31st, 2014, and we are hoping you and your department colleagues will share news of this prize with your faculty, students, alumni, and social media communities. There's no reading fee to submit, and any previously unpublished, original, and completed fiction manuscript over 50,000 words in length is eligible. There isn't another prize like this awarded by an independent publisher, and we are proud to help talented writers find their readership!

Next month, Black Balloon will publish Fat Man and Little Boy, the novel by Mike Meginnis that won the 2013 Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize. The book has already received great early buzz, with The Sisters Brothers author Patrick deWitt calling the novel “beguiling, strange, and strangely lovely,” Publishers Weekly proclaiming it "imaginative...both surprising and incisive," and the Brooklyn Book Festival naming Meginnis one of "the year's most impressive debut novelists." 

Details at our website.

StoryQuarterly is accepting submissions for our Fourth Annual Fiction Contest through October 31. The winner will receive $1000, the first runner-up $500, and the third $250. All three winners will be published in StoryQuarterly 48 (January 2015).

 Entry fee: $15.00

The contest will be judged by Elizabeth McCracken, author of Thunderstruck and Other Stories, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Niagara Falls All Over Again, The Giant's House, and Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry. 

Please visit our website for full guidelines and to submit your work.

The Great Plains Emerging Writer Prize, sponsored the Great Plains Writers’ Conference at South Dakota State University, is given annually to a writer of the Great Plains region who has not yet published a book, but whose work and career shows exceptional promise. The winner will receive a $1000 honorarium and a featured reading at the conference in Brookings, SD in March, 2015, as well as land travel and lodging.

Submissions open October 1, 2014. Postmark deadline December 1, 2014. All genres open; include a maximum of 15 pages of poetry or hybrid-genre work, or a maximum of 20 pages of fiction, nonfiction, drama, or screenplay. Work submitted may be previously published, but must be stripped of all information identifying the author or the venue. Judging will be blind. Entry fee $15. 

The Great Plains region is broadly defined as reaching from western Minnesota to eastern Montana and from the Canadian border to central Oklahoma. We consider writers to be “of” this region if they have resided here more than three years or have a demonstrable historical link to the region (e.g., you grew up here and moved away). Please state your relationship to the region in your cover letter.

For full guidelines visit our website.

Submit electronically here.

Philadelphia Stories Presents:

The SANDY CRIMMINS NATIONAL PRIZE in POETRY
Judge for 2015 is Jeffrey Ethan Lee

Deadline: November 15, 2014
 
Open to all poets residing in the U.S.

$12 reading fee includes a year's subscription to Philadelphia Stories (4 issues) 
 
Philadelphia Stories hosts the annual “Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize” to celebrate poets of all backgrounds, experience, and styles. Thanks to the generous support of Sandy’s family, we are proud to offer the following contest prizes:

● The first-place winning poet will receive a $1,000 cash award for an individual poem, an invitation to an awards event in Philadelphia and publication in the Spring issue.
● Three runners up will receive $100 cash awards for individual poems as well as publication in our Spring issue.
● The winning poet and runners up are invited to submit chapbooks to be considered for publication by PS Books.
● All submitted poems may be selected by the editors for publication in our Spring issue.

Visit PhiladelphiaStories.org for more information and to submit!

Notes from the Field is a non-fiction contest celebrating vivid writing about experience—whether abroad, at home, in your line of work, or in any other unexpected environment. Surprise us!

This year ecologist and author Cristina Eisenberg will be our guest judge. (An essay of hers is forthcoming in our October 15, 2014, publication cycle, so be sure to check it out.)

Deadline:
Submit online by midnight on November 10.
 
Submissions link.

Reading fee:
$12 (submission only) or $15 (submission + back issue)

Prizes:
Winner: $500 + a copy of the 2012 Flyway Anthology + publication in Flyway
Runner Up: $50 + publication in Flyway.

INKTEARS SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2014

Now open for entries.
Deadline: 30 November 2014
Type: Short story (UK + International)

Prizes:
Winner: £1,000
Runner-up: £100
4 x Highly Commended £25

All prizewinners will have their story published to the InkTears Readers and their Bio published on the InkTears website. Full results will be announced by 30 March 2015.

Fee: £6.00.

Length:1000-3500 words, any theme and open to age 18+.

NB: stories may have been previously published or unpublished – see website Rules 2 and 3 on our website for full details and how to enter.

Eldin Memorial Fellowship

Christine Elizabeth Eldin (1966-2012) was an aspiring middle grade author. Her passion for learning, and for sharing her knowledge with young people, inspired her to earn a master's degree in education and dedicate her life to writing young adult literature. She co-founded "Book Roast," an online book promotion site that spotlighted the recent releases of dozens of authors. She also maintained a popular blog and actively supported her community of fellow writers. She was a loving mother, sister, and daughter, and a dear friend to many.

Chris left this world too soon when her life took a tragic turn. Her gentle soul, creative spirit, and generous heart will forever be remembered by the many people whose lives she touched and inspired. *

The Christine Eldin Memorial Fellowship ("Eldin Fellowship") has two purposes:
1. Honor the memory of Chris Eldin.
2. Provide recognition and financial assistance to an unpublished middle grade fiction writer whose work-in-progress reveals potential for a successful writing career.

The Lascaux Review will host an annual contest to choose a "best" middle grade novel work-in-progress, along with a short list of finalists, among entries submitted. The contest will be conducted initially in 2014 (for award of the 2015 fellowship) and scheduled annually thereafter. A middle grade novel is understood to mean a work of fiction, typically a chapter book, for readers between the ages of eight and twelve.

Any unpublished middle grade manuscript, in whole or part, for which no publication contract exists at the time of submission, is eligible. Only English language submissions will be considered.

Contestants cannot be previously published in middle grade book-length fiction. Other types of previous publications are allowed. Previously self-published works are allowed. Contestants may be of any nationality and reside anywhere.

Judging takes place in two stages. In the first stage contestants submit the first 5000 words of their manuscripts, along with a synopsis. The synopsis may be of any length not exceeding 2000 words, and it should describe the entire story, including how it ends. Contestants submit digital files (doc, docx, pdf, rtf, etc.) via Submittable. The entry fee is $10. Readers selected by the Eldin Fellowship committee will choose the finalists.

In the second stage, a judge selected by the Eldin Fellowship committee selects a winner.

The first year's fellowship is $1000 and a trophy. The first year's judge is Louise Hawes.

Deadline for submissions is 31 December.
For more information contact:

lascauxreviewATgmailDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

To submit to the contest, click on the following link.

To contribute to a fundraiser presently underway, visit Indiegogo.

Gemini Magazine is now accepting entries for its fifth annual Poetry Open competition.

Details at our website.

The grand prize is $1,000. Second place wins $100 and four honorable mentions will each receive $25. All six finalists will be published online in the March 2015 issue of Gemini.

The entry fee is $5 for each batch of three poems. 

Email and postmark deadline: January 2, 2015.

We are open to any type of poetry, any subject matter, any length. Scroll down the Poetry Open page to see the broad range of work from previous winners and finalists.

2015 Summer Residency Contest

Judge: Eduardo C. Corral

Since 1994, the Poetry Center’s Residency Program has offered writers an opportunity to develop their work. Beginning in Summer 2014, the Poetry Center will award one residency each summer for one poet to spend two weeks in Tucson, Arizona developing his/her work. The residency includes a $500 stipend and a two week stay in a studio apartment located within steps of the Center’s renowned library of contemporary poetry. The residency is offered between June 1 and August 31.

Deadline: December 15, 2015

Family Shelter Service Writing Contest: "Stories of Resilience"

Wheaton, IL -- Family Shelter Service recently published a new book entitled Hope Grows Here, a compilation of stories and artwork by survivors of domestic abuse, available online through Amazon and CreateSpace.

In recognition of October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the greater community is invited to add their voices to this exploration through the "Stories of Resilience" contest. Submissions are being sought that reflect the broad impact of abuse — through stories, personal essays or poems. Submissions will be considered for Volume II of Hope Grows Here.

Bestselling author Adriana Trigiani, whose best-known books include The Shoemaker's Wife and Big Stone Gap, will judge the contest submissions.

The "Stories of Resilience" contest will offer a first prize of $500 and two second prizes of $100. Entries will be accepted through October 20th, 2014 and winners will be announced at an event on November 6th, 2014. For submissions and contest details, please visit our website.