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We found over
three dozen excellent free poetry and prose contests with
deadlines between June 15-July 31. In this issue, please enjoy "'Hope' is the
thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson, illustrated by Julian
Peters.
Last Call!
NORTH
STREET BOOK PRIZE FOR SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS
Deadline: June 30. 7th year. Co-sponsored by Carolyn
Howard-Johnson, author of The Frugal Book Promoter, and BookBaby.
Prizes increased to $13,750, including a top award of $5,000. This
year's categories: Mainstream/Literary Fiction,
Genre Fiction, Creative Nonfiction &
Memoir, Poetry, Children's Picture Book, Graphic
Novel & Memoir, and Art Book (new!)
Fee: $65 per entry. Jendi
Reiter and Ellen
LaFleche will judge, assisted by Annie
Mydla and Sarah
Halper. See the
previous winners and enter here.
Also open now, our Tom
Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest will award $8,000 in
prizes, including two top awards of $3,000 each. Deadline: September
30.
View past newsletters in our archives.
Need assistance? Let us
help. Join our 135,000 followers on Twitter and
find us on Facebook.
Advertise
with us, starting at $40.
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Deadline: July 31
·
Win $1,000 and publication in
the Connecticut River Review
·
Up to four finalists will also
be identified
·
$15 reading fee
·
Submit up to three poems via Submittable
·
Text, audio, or video files are
accepted
·
No identifying information on
entry
Submissions may
include poems composed using 1) an entirely new form; 2) an existing
form that is considered experimental; or 3) a radical subversion of a
traditional form. Your
innovation should be apparent to a serious but non-academically trained
reader and should be in the service of ingenuity and piercing the armor
of expectations.
 This contest will be judged by Richard Deming,
Director of Creative Writing at Yale. Mr. Deming is a poet, art critic,
and theorist whose work explores the intersections of poetry,
philosophy, and visual culture. His collection of poems, Let's
Not Call It Consequence (Shearsman, 2008), received the 2009
Norma Farber Award from the Poetry Society of America. His most recent
book of poems, Day for Night, appeared in 2016. He is also the
author of Listening on All Sides: Toward an Emersonian Ethics of Reading
(Stanford UP, 2008), and Art of the Ordinary: the Everyday Domain of
Art, Film, Literature, and Philosophy (Cornell UP, 2018).
He contributes to such magazines as Artforum, Sight & Sound, and
The Boston Review. His poems have appeared in such places as Iowa
Review, Field, American Letters & Commentary, and The Nation.
Also coming soon from the
Connecticut Poetry Society, the Vivian Shipley Poetry Award, which accepts unpublished poems in any style.
Submit during August 1-September 30. Learn more on the CPS
website.
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Congratulations to Julie Irigaray
(featured poem: "Tales
of the Woodcock"), Tammy Delatore,
Kath Gifford, Gary Beck, Claire
Denson, Konstantin Nicholas Rega, Ellaraine
Lockie, Sally Bellerose, Tamara
Kaye Sellman, Risa Denenberg, Rene
Mullen, Shobana Gomes, Karin
Aurino, and Joseph Stanton.
Learn
about our subscribers' achievements and see links to samples of their
work.
Have news? Please email it to jendi@winningwriters.com.
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NEW THIS YEAR: Guest Poets Diane Seuss & Jennifer Givhan!
WHAT YOU NEED: Access to email and a desire to write new poems.
WHAT WE
PROVIDE: Poem prompts, sample poems, a
Two Sylvias Press publication, a PDF of PR for Poets: A Guidebook
to Publicity & Marketing by Jeannine Hall Gailey (this
book has been named #3 of the "Best New PR Books" by Book
Authority, as featured on CNN, Forbes, and Inc.) as well as reflection
questions/activities to guide and inspire. All prompts, writing
exercises, and inspiration sent daily or weekly to your email (your
choice!)
AND—at the end of the retreat,
an award-winning poet will critique one of your poems and offer ideas
on where to submit them! (Summer participants choose critiques from
Diane Seuss, Traci Brimhall, January Gill O'Neil, Jennifer K. Sweeney,
and Jennifer Givhan! Or if you choose the October retreat, receive
critiques from the editors of Two Sylvias Press!)
·
Space is limited (and already
filling fast!)
·
All levels of poets are welcome
(from beginning writer to published author)
·
Register now
for the July, August, or October Retreats
Praise for Two
Sylvias Press Online Poetry Retreat
"I decided to take the Two Sylvias Press Online Poetry Retreat as
a way to reignite my passion for writing poetry and reconnect with my
'poet's mind' after not writing poetry for several years. The format
was perfect for me—it enabled me to work alone and at my own pace while
still feeling connected through daily prompts and encouragement. The
result: I wrote more poems in that four-week period than I had written
in as many years and new poems are still coming. The feedback I
received was insightful and improved the poems while still showing
respect for the essence of the work."
—Cathy J. (read other
testimonials here)
Click here to
learn more and register.
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Deadline: June 30
There are lots
of contests for self-published books. You can find them listed at the Alliance
of Independent Authors and BookBub
among other places. Here is what makes our North Street Book Prize one
of the best:
·
 Large cash
prizes: $5,000 for the grand prize, $1,000 for each category
winner.
·
Bonus awards: Winners
receive additional services from BookBaby, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, and
Winning Writers to help market their books.
·
Free gift: All
contestants receive a free digital copy of Great Little Last-Minute
Editing Tips for Writers by Carolyn Howard-Johnson.
·
Reasonable entry fee: $65 per
book. Many other contests charge $85, $95, and up.
·
No need to enter multiple
categories: Choose one category for your book. If our judges
feel it will do better in another category, they will reassign it.
·
 Flexible
criteria: Submit books published in any year, on any
self-publishing platform.
·
Pro-author attitude: Submit a
non-qualifying book by mistake? A duplicate entry? We'll refund your
fee. We issued nearly 100 refunds in 2020.
·
Transparent: We have four
judges. Read about them on our guidelines
page.
·
Lasting, in-depth publicity: With some
contests, it's hard to find out much about past winners beyond the
author's name and the book title. At North Street, we publicize our
winners through our website (300,000+ visitors in 2020), in our newsletter
(50,000+ subscribers), and in our social media channels (including
135,000+ Twitter followers). Our contest
archives feature critiques of the winning entries, excerpts
from the books, and bios of the winners going back to the first contest
in 2015.
·
 No
nickel-and-diming: Some contests charge winners
for things like award seals. We provide those for free.
·
Recommended by industry
leaders: The North Street Book Prize is recommended by Reedsy
and the Alliance
of Independent Authors.
Enter online
via Submittable or by mail. Click to
learn more and submit.
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Deadline: July 15
Submissions are now open for
the Francine Ringold Awards for New Writers, which honor the work of
writers at the beginning of their careers. The Francine Ringold Awards
are open only to writers whose work has not appeared or is not
scheduled to appear in more than two publications in the genre in which
they are submitting. $500 prizes will be awarded in both the fiction
and poetry categories, and the winning work will appear in the spring
issue of Nimrod. Work by all finalists will also be
published, and finalists will be paid at a rate of $10/page, up to
$200.
Established in 1956, Nimrod
is dedicated to the discovery of new voices in literature, and the
Francine Ringold Awards are a special way to recognize talented new
poets and fiction writers.
• Poetry: Up to 5 pages of
poetry (one long poem or several short poems)
• Fiction: 5,000 words maximum (one short story or a self-contained
excerpt from a novel)
• Submission Fee: $12 per entry (plus $1.70 admin fee when submitting
online); includes a copy of the spring issue
• No previously published works or works accepted for publication
elsewhere.
Author's name must not appear
on the manuscript. Include a cover sheet containing major title(s),
author's name, full address, phone, and email. Entries may be mailed to
Nimrod
or submitted
online. Open internationally.
For complete
rules, visit Nimrod's website.
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Deadline: July 15 (11:59pm
Pacific Time for online entries)
The annual Rattle
Poetry Prize celebrates its 16th year with a 1st prize of
$15,000 for a single poem. Ten finalists will also receive $500 each
and publication, and be eligible for the $5,000 Readers' Choice Award,
to be selected by subscriber and entrant vote. All of these poems will
be published in the winter issue of the magazine.
With the winners judged in a
masked review by the editors to ensure a fair and consistent selection,
an entry fee that is simply a one-year subscription to the magazine—and
a runner-up Readers' Choice Award to be chosen by the writers
themselves—the Rattle Poetry Prize aims to be one of the most
writer-friendly and popular poetry contests around.
We accept entries online and by
mail. See Rattle's
website for the complete guidelines and to read all of the
past winners.
Please enjoy the 2021
Readers' Choice Award winner by Kitty Carpenter,
published in Rattle #70, Winter 2020:
FARM SONNET
The barn roof sags like an
ancient mare's back.
The field, overgrown, parts of it a marsh
where the pond spills over. No hay or sacks
of grain are stacked for the cold. In the harsh
winters of my youth, Mama, with an axe,
trudged tirelessly each day through deep snow,
balanced on the steep bank, swung down to crack
the ice so horses could drink. With each blow
I feared she would fall, but she never slipped.
Now Mama's bent and withered, vacant gray
eyes fixed on something I can't see. I dip
my head when she calls me Mom. What's to say?
The time we have's still too short to master
love, and then, the hollow that comes after.
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Deadline: July 31
The Press 53
Award for Poetry is awarded annually to an outstanding,
unpublished collection of poems. This competition is open to any
writer, regardless of his or her publication history, who is 18 years
of age or older, provided the manuscript is written in English and the
author lives in the United States or one of its territories.
Submit a manuscript that is
approximately 60 to 120 pages in length. Entry fee: $30.
Award includes: Publication by
Press 53 of the winning poetry collection as a Tom Lombardo Poetry
Selection; $1,000 cash advance; 50 copies (total prize valued at
$2,000). The winner will be announced on or before November 1.
Press 53 Poetry Series Editor Tom
Lombardo will be the only judge for this contest; the
contest will be judged solely on the strength of the poems as a
collection.
Learn more and
submit online or by mail.
We congratulate our most recent
winner, Chanel Brenner. Lombardo said of Brenner's
manuscript, "Smile or Else
is a masterpiece in the elegiac genre, a collection that examines a
mother's mourning over the death of her son, and chronicles her
recovery through the life of her surviving younger son. There is deep
grieving, but also a contrasting sense of hope. The poet weaves through
her collection excellent poems of mourning, separation, and
recovery."
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Deadline: Friday, September 3,
11:59pm EDT
Last time we checked, 77% of
web-based fiction magazines pay their fiction writers nothing.
So did 60% of print-only
fiction magazines!
If you'd like to try getting paid
for your fiction, why not consider us? Since 2006, On The
Premises magazine has aimed to promote newer and/or
relatively unknown writers who can write creative, compelling stories
told in effective, uncluttered, and evocative prose. We've never
charged a reading fee or publication fee, and we pay between $75 and
$250 for short stories that fit each issue's broad story premise. We
publish stories in nearly every genre (literary/realist, mystery,
light/dark fantasy, light/hard sci-fi, slipstream) aimed at readers
older than 12 (no children's fiction).
The premise of
our 38th contest is "Monster". For this contest, write a creative, compelling,
well-crafted story between 1,000 and 5,000 words long in which someone
or something is considered to be a monster...and maybe that's accurate!
Maybe you're writing a straightforward horror story. Or maybe the
"monster" label is terrible and undeserved. Or is the truth
somewhere in between? That's entirely up to you.
Any genre except children's
fiction, exploitative sex, or over-the-top gross-out horror is fine. We
will not accept parodies of another author's specific fictional
characters or world(s). We will accept serious literary drama, crazy
farces, and any variation of science fiction and fantasy you can
imagine. Read our past issues
and see!
You can find
details and instructions for submitting your story here.
To be informed when new contests are launched, subscribe
to our free, short, monthly newsletter.
"On The Premises"
magazine is recognized in Duotrope, Writer's Market, Ralan.com, the
Short Story and Novel Writers guidebooks, and other short story
marketing resources.
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Winner,
Poetry, 2020 North Street Book Prize
Caleb "The Negro
Artist" Rainey's concise and high-impact poetry collection Look,
Black Boy has the rhythmic verve and immediacy of spoken-word
poetry, yet loses nothing in its transition to print. Rather, Rainey
takes advantage of the visual medium to experiment with line spacing,
punctuation, and layout in ways that add dramatic tension to his
accounts of Black struggle and joy.
In blunt, powerful words that
reminded me of Danez
Smith's second collection, Rainey dedicates his book to
"everyone who showed me that I was meant to be more than
dead." He comes out swinging with the opening poem, a
self-examination of times he acquiesced in white people's perceptions
of him as an N-word in order to survive. (Rainey writes out the word in
question, but as a white reviewer, I will refrain.) An image toward the
end of the poem encapsulates the normalization of his erasure:
Because zero equals Black.
In fact,
the cops taught me that
when the bullet hit
a brotha's back in front
of the blue house I used
to memorize my first address.
—Jendi Reiter, North Street
judge (see the
complete remarks)
Read an excerpt
from Look, Black Boy (PDF)
Buy
this book on Amazon
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For information on pricing,
please email Mr. Brooks at cliffordbrooks@southerncollectiveexperience.com
and specify "CCB3 Poetry Bundle" in the subject line. Learn
more about Mr. Brooks and read excerpts from his work on his website.
Mr. Brooks is
available to critique poems. Submit up to five poems here
and you'll receive your critique within two weeks.
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As an independent author or
self-publisher, you want to control the entire process from start to
finish, including creating your own book covers, interiors, and
merchandise products. You don't know where to begin—the struggle is
real!
Do you feel
like you're in over your head when it comes to designing your own books
and merch? Do you want to learn how to independently design your
products, but have no idea where to start?
Get useful step-by-step tips
for creating book covers, interiors, merchandise products, and more! Easy Graphics
is the one-stop channel on YouTube for solving your graphics conundrum
as a self-published author.
Learn how to use the tools of
the trade to create your own graphics for your self-published business.
Your followers will wonder what graphic designer you hired to make such
a difference in your content.
View our snappy
YouTube tutorials—they're free!
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 Tania
Stephanson is
a self-published Indie Author who loves networking with other writers.
On her podcast, Tania's
Writing Realm, she shares writing contest details, discusses
writing and self-publishing topics, and offers fun writing prompts!
Find her podcast on most major platforms including Spotify, Apple
Podcast, Podbean, Google Podcasts and more. You can also find her on YouTube
under the same title. Writing may be a solitary existence, but that
doesn't mean you have to feel alone. Check out the
Tania's Writing Realm podcast today!
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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
Blue
Mountain Arts Poetry Card Contest. Awards
prizes up to $350 and web publication for poems suitable for a greeting
card. No length limit specified, but shorter poems (one page) are
probably best. Due June 30.
Intermediate Writers
GLCA New
Writers Awards. The Great Lakes Colleges
Association awards a reading tour of 13 Midwestern colleges, with a
$500 honorarium per visit, for a US or Canadian author of a book of
poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction that is the author's first
published book in that genre. One winner in each category. Publisher
should submit 4 copies of book along with publicity materials.
Publisher may enter only one work in each genre. Self-published titles
accepted. Books must have been published in the US or Canada and bear a
publication imprint of 2020 or 2021. Selection process favors
recipients of major first-book awards. Due June 25.
Advanced Writers
Kingsley
Tufts Poetry Award. Claremont Graduate
University awards $100,000 for a published book of poetry by a US
citizen or legal resident. This award is presented for a full-length
work by a poet who is past the very beginning but has not yet reached
the acknowledged pinnacle of their career. Books must have been
published between July 1 of last year and June 30 of the deadline year.
Winner must agree to spend a week in residence at CGU for lectures,
workshops, and poetry readings in Claremont, CA and the greater Los
Angeles area. Due July 1.
See more
Spotlight Contests for emerging,
intermediate,
and advanced
writers within The Best Free Literary Contests database.
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Winning Writers finds open
submission calls and free contests in a variety of sources, including Erika
Dreifus' Practicing Writer newsletter, FundsforWriters,
Trish
Hopkinson's blog, Erica
Verrillo's blog, Authors
Publish, Lambda
Literary, Lit Mag
News Roundup, Poets
& Writers, The
Writer, Duotrope,
Submittable,
and literary journals' own newsletters and announcements.
• Black
Lawrence Press: June Open Reading Period
(manuscripts of poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, biography
and cultural studies, or German-English translation - June 30)
• Fat
Coyote Literary Arts
(poetry, prose, art, and comics by neurodivergent creators - June 30)
• Four Way
Books: June Open Reading Period
(book-length poetry collections, story collections, novellas - June 30)
• Willowherb
Review
(literary essays about nature, place, and environment, by writers of
color - June 30)
• Mom Egg
Review: "Mother Figures" Issue
(poetry and short prose on iconic real or fictional mothers - July 15)
• Voices
of Lincoln Poetry Contest
(poems on the theme "If Life Were A Game Show, What Would Poets
Say?"; adult and youth categories - July 20)
• Uncharted
Magazine
(speculative, mystery, and horror short fiction - July 31)
• Subnivean:
Summer Open Reading Period
(poetry and short stories - August 1)
• Flowers
& Vortexes
(poetry - August 30)
• The Best
New True Crime Stories: Unsolved Crimes and Mysteries
(narrative journalism about cold cases - September 1)
• Aesthetic
Press
(commercial fiction novels and novellas by writers of color - January
1, 2022)
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Condensed from a post
at ProLiteracy:
Regardless of how a font looks,
it's important to consider whether it is actually easy to read for
someone at a low level. Also, take a look at the overall layout of a
page. Is it cluttered? Is there enough white space to make it easy to
focus on the text?
Marjorie Jordan, the co-founder
of Readability
Matters—a nonprofit organization that strives to use
technology to create a world where everyone can read with ease—said
that, in general, many people don't put much thought into how text
features can impact readability.
The best reading format is not
one-size-fits-all. She says research has shown that preferences vary by
individual.
"Some readers respond well
to fonts with extra character spacing, others to fonts with wider
character width...Early results indicate large numbers of readers
perform well with the free Google fonts Noto Sans and Garamond. Another
set of readers do very well with Montserrat," she said.
Readers can
play with a complete set of text features in Readability Matters' Readability
Sandbox.
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This month, editor Jendi Reiter
presents some of the best self-published books that have come through
our North
Street Book Prize competition. There are many more in our Contest
Archives.
MIND YOUR HEAD
Jordan Cosmo
Honorable
Mention, Creative Nonfiction, 2016
This witty coming-of-age memoir re-creates the absurdity and trauma of
growing up as a butch lesbian in a family of evangelical Christian
missionaries.
GLIMMER
Tricia Cerrone
Honorable
Mention, Genre Fiction, 2015
An exciting YA techno-thriller with a diverse cast of characters, this
novel is the first in a series about a genetically enhanced teenager
fleeing government scientists who want to use her superpowers as a
weapon.
TRADING FOURS
Angela Carole Brown
First
Prize, Literary Fiction, 2018
This poignant novel follows a group of hard-working jazz musicians in
Los Angeles as they struggle to keep their creative passions alive in
obscurity.
BODHISATTVA
Omaha Perez
Honorable
Mention, Graphic Novel & Memoir, 2020
In this edgy black-and-white graphic novel, the residents of a seedy
mental hospital in San Francisco are pawns in a battle between deities
of compassion and destruction.
LITTLE MOSS,
BIG TREE
Melissa Yap-Stewart
Honorable
Mention, Children's Picture Book, 2019
Enhanced with colorfully painted woodland scenes, this gentle picture
book is an allegory of maintaining friendship through changes and
distance.
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Reconsidering
Zionism
I simply wasn't aware what a "Jewish state" meant in
practice. I was taught it meant: the one place that Jews could be
secure, where we'd never be a persecuted minority. But a state
designated as "for" one ethnic or religious group is likely
to become a state that disadvantages every other group. The more I
learned about the treatment of Palestinians as second-class citizens,
the worse it seemed.
Read
more
Jendi
Reiter is the editor of Winning Writers.
Follow
Jendi on Twitter at @JendiReiter.
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