Welcome to Our November Newsletter
In this issue: Please enjoy an extract from Each in
His Narrow Cell, a graphic novel about the British conquest
of New France (Canada) by Julian Peters.
 Like what we do?
Please nominate us for the Writer's Digest list of the "101 Best
Websites for Writers". Send an email to writers.digest@fwmedia.com
with "101 Websites" in the subject line by December 1.
Include some brief comments on how Winning Writers helps you, and copy
us at adam@winningwriters.com
if you feel like it. Your efforts earned us a place on this list for
the past four years!
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Don't miss
these contests. All have cash prizes. At FanStory you can
enter all these contests with upgraded membership. Every week enter a
new contest with a cash prize. Find out more.
Faith Poetry
Contest
We are looking for poems that relate to faith. It doesn't matter if
it's spiritual, political, intellectual or emotional as long as faith
is clearly represented. Cash Prize!
Deadline: Nov 15 (today!)
Dialogue Only
Writing Contest
Write a story using only dialogue. No narration, descriptions, or
sentence tags. Any length. Cash prize to the winner.
Deadline: Nov 20 (five days!)
Haiku Poetry
Contest
Write a haiku to paint a mental image in the reader's mind. The
challenge is to convey the poem's meaning and imagery in only 17
syllables over three lines. This contest has a cash prize.
Deadline: Nov 28
Flash Fiction
Writing Contest
Write a flash fiction story that takes place during a hot summer night.
Limit: 500 words. Cash prize to the winner. Deadline: Nov 30
3-Line Poetry
Contest
Write a poem addressed to a loved one that has a syllable count of
either 5-7-5 or 5-7-7. This poem should not contain rhyme. Cash
prize for the winning entry. Deadline: Dec 1
I Can't
Write a poem that begins with the words "I Can't". You may
add words and change capitalization. For example: "I can't believe".
All poetry types accepted, any length. Cash prize to the winner.
Deadline: Dec 3
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Congratulations to Howard
Faerstein (featured poem: "I
Had Buckets"), Dean Kostos, Kaecey
McCormick (featured poem: "Thanks"),
Gary Beck, Diane Lockward,
William Huhn, Robert Walton,
Roberta George, Reggie Marra,
Judith Barrington, Cady
Vishniac, Jennie MacDonald, R.T.
Castleberry, Mike Tuohy, and James K.
Zimmerman.
Winning Writers Editor Jendi
Reiter's poems “Of Mice and Women”, “October Creed”,
“50 Years Later, a Poetry Critic Blogs About Fingering His Girlfriend”,
and “Rubber Poem” were published at Poetry
Hotel. Poetry Hotel is a project of Yossarian
Universal News Service, a “professional parody news and
disinformation service” co-founded in 1980 by poets Paul
Fericano and Elio Ligi.
Winning Writers fiction &
essay contest judge Dennis Norris II's story
“Last Rites” was published in the anthology Everyday
People: The Color of Life (Simon & Schuster,
2018), edited by Jennifer Baker. Notable contributors to this book
include Alexander Chee, Yiyun Li, Nelly Rosario, and Brandon Taylor.
Reviewing the collection on the Ploughshares
blog, Rajat Singh observed that Norris “created stunning
characters” that show how “queerness becomes a means of living outside
one's own body.”
Our past fiction & essay
contest judge Judy Juanita's book De Facto
Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland (EquiDistance
Press, 2016) was favorably reviewed at Online
Book Club: “The familiarity I found within Juanita's
compilation narrative is invaluable to me. I was able to find myself
again and again within her stories as a black woman, as a feminist, as
a human being.”
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Deadline: November 19
Creative Nonfiction, in partnership with the Center for Games &
Impact at Arizona State University, is looking for new work about the
role of games and play in our everyday lives. For this special issue,
we're seeking true stories that explore the ways our society integrates
games, and especially games whose impact transcends entertainment and
changes us in ways outside of the gaming context.
We're looking for stories that
illuminate the great variety of ways in which games have affected the
lives of diverse individuals and communities—offering opportunities to
fail forward within a safe context, play with possible selves and
futures, collaborate with people from different backgrounds, develop
professional or other skills, become protagonists in simulated worlds,
or collaborate with others on solutions to real-world problems.
Above all, we are looking for
vivid narratives—illuminative stories, rich with scene, character,
detail, and a distinctive voice—that offer unique insights into the
subject. We want evocative narratives that allow readers to step into
ideas, and stories should be grounded in factual occurrences and true
events. All essays submitted will be considered for publication; this
is a paying market.
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The Two Sylvias
Press Advent Calendar is filled with surprise prompts to help you write
new poems throughout December!
Our online virtual Advent
Calendar is easy to use—simply click on the calendar date and a prompt
appears. Each prompt is no more than three sentences in length, guiding
you with ideas and suggestions for a new poem.
Once you open a prompt, it
remains accessible, so no problem if you skip a day or two—the prompts
will be waiting for you. The calendar and all of the prompts will be
available through the month of January.
You will receive an access code
for the Advent Calendar's web page at the end of November. Your daily
surprise prompts will be ready for you to click on December 1st.
And, you can give our Online
Poetry Prompt Advent Calendar as a gift (see our website
for more details).
To see a sample
prompt and order your Advent Calendar, please visit Two
Sylvias Press.
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Deadline: December 1
Judge — Kim Addonizio
is the author of seven poetry collections, two novels, two story
collections, and two books on writing poetry. She is an NEA and
Guggenheim Foundation fellow, has won two Pushcart Prizes, and was a
National Book Award Finalist for her collection Tell Me.
Prizes — $1,500
& publication (winner);
$500 & publication (honorable mention); all finalists will be
published in the 2019 Spring/Summer awards issue. Submit up to 3 poems.
$20 entry fee includes copy of the awards issue.
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First Prize:
$3,500, publication in LitMag,
and agency review
Second Prize: $1,000 and agency review
Finalists: Five finalists will receive $100 each
Agency review by Sobel Weber
Associates (clients include: Viet Thanh Nguyen, Richard Russo, Laura
Lee Smith)
All finalists will be
considered for possible agency review.
All entries will be considered
for publication.
Deadline: December 15, 2018.
Contest Fee: $20.
Submission
Guidelines: Entries must
be short stories between 3,000 and 8,000 words. Please use 12-point
type, preferably Times New Roman, and submit your short story as either
a Word doc or a PDF. Only previously unpublished short stories are
eligible. Writers may submit multiple stories, each of which requires a
separate submission. Submissions through Submittable
only.
Notification: The contest will be judged by the editors of the
magazine. The winning short stories and finalists will be announced
publicly on our Web site and social media as well as by email to all
contestants in March of 2019.
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Deadline: December 31
WIN the GRAND PRIZE:
·
PUBLICATION IN BROKEN PENCIL: MAGAZINE of Zines and
Underground Writing
·
THE INDIE WRITERS MAKEOVER: Consultation with an Editorial
Director, Literary Agent, and Acclaimed Writer
·
$400 CASH
How it works:
·
This international contest is
open to all. Enter with ease at Submittable.
·
Submit original unpublished
works of fiction, up to 3,000 words.
·
The top 16 stories will be
selected by the Broken Pencil fiction team. These 16 stories will
compete in a weekend-long royal rumble. Readers will be able to vote
for one story every hour, and all 16 stories will share one
conglomerated comment feed. Whichever eight stories receive the most
votes will become the quarter-finalists and move on to the one-on-one
portion of the competition.
·
Finalists and winner will be
determined by voting on the Deathmatch website in a series of
one-on-one challenges between stories.
·
The top three finalists will
receive $100, a Broken Pencil Prize Pack worth $100, and publication in
the issue. The four remaining stories out of the Top Eight will receive
a Broken Pencil Prize Pack.
·
Entry fee is $28, which
includes a subscription to Broken Pencil.
·
All fees and prizes are quoted
in Canadian dollars.
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Deadline: January 15, 2019
The annual Rattle
Chapbook Prize gives poets something truly special. Every
year, at least one winner will receive: $2,000 cash, 500 contributor
copies, and distribution to Rattle's 7,000 subscribers.
In a world where a successful
full-length poetry book might sell 1,000 copies, the winning book will
reach an audience seven times as large on its release day alone—an
audience that includes many other literary magazines, presses, and
well-known poets. This will be a chapbook to launch a career.
And maybe the best part is
this: The $25 entry fee is just a standard subscription to Rattle,
which includes four issues of the magazine and all of the winning
chapbooks. Rattle is one of the most-read literary journals in
the world—find out why just by entering! For more
information, visit our
website.
We congratulate our three winners
from our 2018 contest:
·
Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, Tales
From the House of Vasquez (sample
poems)
·
Nickole Brown, To Those
Who Were Our First Gods (sample
poems)
·
Elizabeth S. Wolf, Did You
Know? (to be published in 2019)
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Deadline: February 25, 2019
We're looking stories that are
honest, accurate, informative, intimate, and—most importantly—true.
Whether your story is revelatory or painful, hilarious or tragic, if
it's about you and your life, we want to read it.
Submissions must be vivid and
dramatic; they should combine a strong and compelling narrative with an
informative or reflective element, and reach beyond a strictly personal
experience for some universal or deeper meaning. We're looking for
well-written prose, rich with detail and a distinctive voice; all
essays must tell true stories and be factually accurate.
Creative Nonfiction editors will award $2,500 for Best Essay
and two $500 prizes for runner-up. All essays will
be considered for publication in a special "Memoir" issue of
the magazine to be published in 2020.
Essays must be previously
unpublished and no longer than 4,000 words.
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Jendi Reiter's debut story
collection, An Incomplete
List of My Wishes, was runner-up for the 2017 Sunshot
Prose Prize and is now available from Sunshot Press/New
Millennium Writings. The stories in An Incomplete List of My Wishes
have won prizes from such journals as The Iowa Review, New Letters,
Bayou Magazine, Solstice Lit Mag, and American Fiction. These tales
explore the fraught relationships among queer and straight family
members, the search for a post-traumatic spirituality, and the fine
line between soulmates and intimate enemies.
"This short story
collection is the product of a wonderful mixing of novelist and poet.
For each of Jendi Reiter's stories, the tension is expertly built but
never released. By exposing the fraught nature of different relationships,
the reader must sit in their own discomfort, wondering about the things
never said."
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Some contests are best suited
to writers at the early stages of their careers. Others are better for
writers with numerous prizes and publications to their credit. Here is
this month's selection of Spotlight Contests for your consideration:
Emerging Writers
Frontier
New Voices Fellowship. Awards a $500 grant
to be used toward covering industry submission costs, multiple
publications (original poetry and prose) in the journal Frontier
Poetry, participation in their editorial community, and introductions
to agents and presses. For the Winter 2019 fellowship, applicants
should be poets who are from native nations and/or who identify as
indigenous writers. Due November 30.
Intermediate Writers
UNT
Rilke Prize. The University of North Texas
awards $10,000 for a published book by a mid-career poet. Prize
includes travel expenses for readings at UNT in April of the following
year. Entrants must have published at least two previous books of
poetry (excluding chapbooks) and be US citizens or legal residents. Eligible
books must have been published between November 1 of the preceding year
and October 31 of the deadline year. Due November 30.
Advanced Writers
Four
Quartets Prize. The Poetry Society of
America and the T.S. Eliot Foundation award a top prize of $21,000 for
a unified and complete sequence of poems, 14 pages minimum, published
in the US in a print or online journal, chapbook, or book during the
current year. Self-published, multi-author, or translated works are
ineligible. Due December 22.
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·
Peregrine
("diverse, unpretentious" poetry and short fiction - January
15, 2019)
·
OUT/CAST
(queer Midwestern literature - deadline extended to March 1, 2019)
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Julian
Peters writes, "On the morning of September 13, 1759, a
British army under the command of General James Wolfe defeated a French
army under the command of the Marquis Louis-Joseph de Montcalm just
outside the walls of Quebec City. Wolfe's victory at the Battle of the
Plains of Abraham, as it came to be known, would give the British
command of the city after a more than two-month-long siege, and greatly
contribute to the final conquest of New France one year later.
"The outcome of the battle
was largely a result of the surprise effect achieved by the British in
attacking the city from the cliff-lined westward side, rather than from
the more accessible eastern end, as Montcalm was convinced they must
do. This extract from my ongoing graphic novel project, Each in
His Narrow Cell, depicts the moment in which Wolfe first
conceived of the incredibly risky plan of sneaking his troops up the
cliffs along a narrow path leading up to the Plains of Abraham from the
Saint-Lawrence River. It should be explained that the young British
general is acting uncharacteristically spacey due to a temporary
laudanum addiction. Click
here to read the full 60-page sample section of the graphic novel that
I have completed so far."
Reprinted by kind permission of
Julian Peters. Learn more at Mr. Peters' website.
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Inner
Rings and Structureless Cliques
C.S. Lewis points out the universality of the discontent and self-blame
I felt in college–the intuition that someone, somewhere, has discovered
the secret of belonging in this community where you remain an outsider.
However, this intuition is illusory. You will never actually arrive at
the center of society because it doesn't exist: it is a
"place" wholly defined by your fear of missing out. "The
invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the
wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence."
Moreover, in the process of trying to get there, you will inevitably
make moral compromises to please higher-ups, and turn into someone you
never planned to be.
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