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THE WINTER ANTHOLOGY WRITING CONTEST
Final judge: Srikanth Reddy 

Entry fee: $10
 
Deadline: January 31
 
Please send up to 50 pages in any genre (a book or book-length manuscript somewhat over 50 pages is acceptable). Send writings of which you are the sole author and that were not written earlier than 1999. Published and unpublished writings are equally welcome. Two or three poems or a single story or essay are as welcome as entire books. 

To get a sense of our aesthetics, see our previous volumes. All work will be read by the editors, with finalists judged by Srikanth Reddy. Multiple entries are welcome, as are entries including a mix of genres. We accept entries until January 31st. The final decision will be announced here in late winter 2015. In the event that none of the entries meets our standards, no winner will be declared. 

The winner will be published in Volume 5 of The Winter Anthology and receive a $1000 honorarium. Finalists will also be considered for publication.
To enter electronically, use our Submittable page.

Submissions are now being accepted for the twelfth annual issue, The Ochre Issue, of Fairy Tale Review. The Ochre Issue has no particular theme—simply send your best fairy-tale work along the spectrum of mainstream to experimental, fabulist to realist. 

We accept fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry, in English or in translation to English, along with scholarly, hybrid, and illustrated works (comics, black-line drawings, etc.).

The reading period will remain open until the issue is full—we predict closing it sometime in late spring or early summer. 

For full guidelines, visit our website.

Hopefully you enjoyed What Is It? Genre Part I, it’s now time to delve a little deeper.

Let’s take a look at the differences between: biography, autobiography and memoir? Often confusing, are they all the same?

A biography is the life story of a person written by someone else.

An autobiography is the life story of a person written by themselves.

A memoir is a collection of memories from a person’s life, told in the first person. It’s different from an autobiography, because it does not tell the entire life story.

Now that we’ve got that straight, what is the difference between an authorised or unauthorised biography?  An authorised biography is a biography written about a person with the subject or family’s permission.

An unauthorised biography is just that.  A biography that has no approval from the subject, which naturally means the subject has not contributed information or personal material to the biography.  A well known unauthorised biography is Oprah: A Biography by Kitty Kelley.

Just when you thought that was the end, I bring you fictional autobiography.  Essentially, it’s when an author creates a fictional character and writes a book as if it were a first person autobiography.  Sound confusing? A popular example of a fictional autobiography is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. This also brings us to the controversy of autobiographical fiction.  This is when an author will write a book and claim it is their autobiography, although it contains falsehoods and may not be true at all.  A great example of this is A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, originally sold as a memoir but later found to contain much fiction.

Many readers will suspend disbelief in order to enjoy a good fantasy or fairytale, but if an autobiography is found to contain false claims or fiction, is it any less enjoyable?  I like to know what I’m reading beforehand and resent it if I find out later that a book was not all I thought it was.  What about you?

Let’s look at a few more genres before I close off this What Is It? article on genre.

Gothic literature is very popular and includes such novels as Dracula by Bram Stoker and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.  Gothic novels contain some of the following elements: horror, secrets, romance, madness, death, ghosts, supernatural and gothic architecture including haunted houses and castles.  Characters in a gothic novel will often include: women in distress, tyrannical males, maniacs, heroes, magicians, angels, ghosts and much more.

Gothic horror or gothic literature is a great genre, but what about Tasmanian gothic literature?  Yes, you read right, there are a number of novels now classified as Tasmanian gothic literature and if this tickles your fancy, you may want to check some of them out: The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson, The Hunter by Julia Leigh and Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan.

Whatever your reading tastes may be, you are bound to enjoy some genres more than others and at some point in your reading life, continue to read from your favourites.  Just remember to keep exploring and venturing into new reading territories because you never know what you’ll find.

Fairy Tale Review Awards in Poetry and Prose

2014 Prose & Poetry Contest Guidelines

Fairy Tale Review is thrilled to announce the debut of an annual contest, beginning this year with Prose & Poetry awards. We’re interested in poems, stories, and essays with a fairy-tale feel—mainstream to experimental, genre to literary, realist to fabulist. Sarah Shun-lien Bynum will judge prose; Ilya Kaminsky will judge poetry. Both contests will award $1000, and all submissions will be considered for publication in The Mauve Issue. Reading fee: $10.

Submit online or to:

Fairy Tale Review, c/o Kate Bernheimer
Department of English
University of Arizona
Tucson AZ 85721

Deadline: July 15th, 2014

Awards: $1,000 each

Eligibility & Procedure

All submissions must be original and previously unpublished. For prose, please send works of up to 6,000 words. For poetry, no more than five poems and/or ten pages per entry. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but please withdraw your manuscript immediately upon acceptance elsewhere, and note that the reading fee is nonrefundable. Multiple submissions are acceptable, but please note that you will need to pay a reading fee for each submission.

Online submissions link.

Reading Fee: $10.00
Ten percent of your reading fee will be donated to Tucson Youth Poetry Slam as part of Fairy Tale Review’s interdisciplinary outreach efforts. (Fairy Tale Review has no official affiliation with Tucson Youth Poetry Slam.)

CLMP Contest Code of Ethics

CLMP’s community of independent literary publishers believe that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to 1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors; 2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines—defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public. This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.

Fairy Tale Review Annual Contest Selection Process

1st Round of Judging: Non-Blind Read by Genre Editor and Editor. Finalists (approximately 15 poems, 15 pieces of prose) will then be forwarded to the contest judges for the 2nd Round of Judging.
2nd Round of Judging: Blind Read by Contest Judges. Judges change on a yearly basis.
Conflicts of Interest: Students, faculty, staff, or administrators currently affiliated with University of Arizona are ineligible for consideration or publication. Anyone with a substantial personal or professional affiliation with a judge is ineligible to enter in that category; if you have questions as to your eligibility, please contact ftreditorial (at) gmail (dot) com, and we will assess the situation together. Upon learning the Judges’ selections, the Editor will assess any potential conflict of interest before finalizing the result. We ask that past winners of our contest refrain from entering until three years after their winning entry was published.

Fairy Tale Review was established in 2005 and is an annual publication of Wayne State University Press.

About the Judges

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of two novels, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker, Tin House, the Georgia Review, and the Best American Short Stories 2004 and 2009. The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Fellowship, she was named one of “20 Under 40” fiction writers by the New Yorker. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Otis College of Art and Design.

Madcap Review is currently accepting submissions for its inaugural issue.
Madcap Review was founded by alumni of the graduate writing program at Sarah Lawrence College, and is accepting submissions through May 31st. Our information may be found below. Thank you.

Madcap Review is a semiannual online journal of literature and art. As our name indicates, we embrace the impulsive, the reckless, and the lively, but we also have great respect for form and restraint. Founded in 2014 by a group of fiction writers, poets, and artists, Madcap Review is a platform for any and all forms of writing and art. We have no genre restrictions, because we believe that great writing isn’t easily categorized. The deadline for submissions is May 31st.
Visit our website for more information. Please feel free to contact us with any questions, comments, or concerns:

madcapreviewATgmailDOTcom (Change AT to @ and DOT to . )

Red Earth Review, a literary magazine published by the Red Earth MFA program at Oklahoma City University, is now accepting submissions for our second edition. Much like the MFA program at Oklahoma City University that shares its name and home, Red Earth Review is genuine, grounded, and fearless. Send us poetry or prose firm in foundation, steadfast in soul and in craft. Submission guidelines below. We look forward to reading your work.

We accept fiction, both literary and genre, creative nonfiction, poetry, and encourage new and emerging writers to submit. The deadline for submissions is November 30, 2013 and the target release date is July 2014. Submit one to five previously unpublished poems or one short story (fewer than 7,500 words) or one essay (fewer than 7500 words).

Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but if your submitted work is accepted elsewhere, please withdraw your submission using your Submittable account.

Payment is in copies. After first publication, all rights revert to the author/artist.

Submit to Red Earth Review using our Submittable page.