Monday, November 30, 2009

Essay Scholarship Competition: The Writer

2010 Sylvia K. Burack Scholarship competition is now open

Award : $500 and a year's subscription to The Writer

Judges: The Writer editors

Deadline: March 1, 2010

The Sylvia K. Burack Scholarship is a writing contest for full-time college students. The award is made in memory of Sylvia K. Burack, longtime editor-in-chief and publisher of The Writer. Burack was known for her dedication to helping writers and editors.

Requirements
You must be 18 or older and a full-time undergraduate student at a university or college in the U.S. or Canada at the time of entry. The winner will be asked to provide proof of enrollment.

Rules
• Submit 2 copies of a previously unpublished 600- to 800-word personal essay in English on the following topic: "Select a work of fiction or poetry that has influenced the way you view the world andthe way you view yourself. Discuss the work and explain how it affected you."

• Entries will be judged on the quality of the writing, including grammar, punctuation and expression of ideas. Only essays written on the specified topic (see rule 1) will be considered.

• Include a cover page with the essay title and word count, as well as your name, address, phone number and e-mail address. Contact information must be valid through July 2010. (See rule 9.) Also include the name and address of your school. Place only the title (not your name) at the top of each page of the essay. Entries must be typed and double-spaced on standard letter-size paper. Number each page. Paperclip the pages together.

• The award is open to students in the U.S. and Canada enrolled full-time in an undergraduate college or university at the time of entry.(Do not send transcripts with entries.) Employees of Kalmbach Publishing Co. are not eligible to participate.

• Only one entry per student will be accepted.

• Send entries to:
Sylvia K. Burack Scholarship, The Writer
21027 Crossroads Circle, P.O. Box 1612
Waukesha, WI 53187-1612

• Entries must be postmarked by March 1, 2010.

• Entries will not be returned. Do not send originals.

• If the winning entrant cannot be reached by July 1, 2010, the runner-up will be awarded the scholarship.

• The winner will be announced in July 2010 and will receive $500 and a year's subscription to The Writer.

Questions? Contact us at contest(at)WriterMag.com (replace (at) with @)

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Call for Submissions: Samhain Publishing

Samhain Publishing In a Bind Anthology

Tie them up, tie them down, use the ancient art of shibari or just plain old furry handcuffs, so long as someone’s being bound.

I’m very pleased to announce an open call for submissions for a new, yet-to-be titled Winter 2009 anthology. I’m looking for your super-hot bondage romance stories. Push the boundaries and push the bindings. I’m open to any genre, M/F, M/M, or multiples thereof. The only rule is bondage needs to be a main theme in the story and there needs to be a HEA (or HFN).

The anthology will include novellas from 20,000 to 25,000 words in length and will be released individually as ebooks in September 2009.

Submissions are open to all authors, published with Samhain or aspiring to be published with Samhain. All submissions must be new material; previously published submissions will not be considered. Additionally, manuscripts previously submitted, whether individually or for past anthologies, will not be considered. Please be aware that manuscripts submitted to this anthology cannot be resubmitted at a later date unless by invitation from an editor.

To submit a manuscript for consideration, please include:

The full manuscript (20,000 to 25,000 words) with a comprehensive 2-5 page synopsis. Please include a letter of introduction/query letter. Full manuscripts are required for this as it’s a special project.

As well, when you send your manuscript, please be sure to use the naming convention Bind_Title_MS or Bind_Title_Synopsis. This will ensure that your submission doesn’t get missed in the many submissions we receive, and makes it easy for me to find in my ebook reader.

Submissions are open until April 15th, 2009 and final decision will be made by April 30th, 2009.

Please send your submission to:

editor(at)samhainpublishing(dot)com Replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .)

Include In a Bind Anthology in the subject line. Questions and queries can be addressed to:

Laurie M. Rauch

laurie(at)samhainpublishing(dot)com (Replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .)

Friday, November 20, 2009

Call for Submissions: Writing Conference, Indiana University

We are issuing a Call for Submissions for scholarly and creative submissions for a National Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference entitled “The End?” to be held at Indiana University in Bloomington from March 25th-27th, 2010. We are especially interested in creative submissions!

We are looking for graduate student writers to give readings of their work that engage with the conference theme either thematically or formally (or both). Readings that challenge notions of endings, structure, or traditional formal boundaries, are all welcome, along with work that engages with the conference theme within the piece itself, through narrative or language. This conference hopes to examine how endings and limits are depicted, along with how we surpass (or are constrained by) them as writers.

Other topics might include, but are not limited to:

Endings as beginnings / beginnings as endings
The end of genre, crossing genre
Translation
The apocalypse and apocalyptic literature
The end of the human
Violence, death, grief, trauma
Moments of crisis
War
The ends of the earth
Fringe, margins, outlines
The future of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, etc.

We encourage proposals for individual projects as well as panel proposals organized by topic/theme/form. Again, we are committed to involving as much creative work as possible in the conference and representing a wide variety of writers.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words describing your work and its relation to the conference theme, as well as five representative pages of creative work and as a short description of yourself, by January 15th, 2010 to:

iugradconference(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @).

Graduate Student Advisory Committee
Department of English
Indiana University

Monday, November 16, 2009

Fiction Competition: Long Story Contest, International

THE LONG STORY CONTEST, International (formerly The Long Fiction Contest, International), now in its 17th year, has become the premier competition for writers of stories that don't fit the conventional limits imposed by the economics of small press publishing. Named for A. E. Coppard, one of the leading British writers of the 1920's, whose first story was rejected only because it was too long--12,000 words--the contest attracts writers from all over the world. In order to acknowledge and encourage entries from outside the United States, the word International has been added to the title. All submissions must be in English and entry fee in U.S. dollars.

Manuscript Length: 8,000-14,000 words (30-50 pages double spaced).

Manuscript Genre: Single story (may have multi- parts or be a self-contained novel segment)

Deadline: December 15, 2009 postmark. Winner announced by late Spring 2010.

Award: 2010 A. E. Coppard Prize for Fiction. Winner--$1000. and 25 copies, plus 10 press kits to news sources of choice. *** All entrants receive a copy of the prize chapbook.***

Entry Fee: $15. US funds. Additional MSS in same envelope $10. US each. Check made out to WECSP. Entry fee is not refundable.

Format: Cover Page with Title, Name, Address, Phone, E-mail. Second Title Page, no name. No name on MS. Easy to read type or print, double spaced. Do not bind MS.

Judging: Blind judging. All stories coded before judging.

Judge: Tom Smith, The Christmas Shopper

SASE for announcement only. Use #10 envelope. No manuscripts can be returned. They will be recycled.

Simultaneous Submissions OK. Multiple submissions are not a problem. Please let us know if story accepted elsewhere.

Unpublished (Previous publication of small parts of ms. OK with acknowledgments).

Published on the Internet is Published and cannot be considered.

NO Restrictions on style, method, or subject matter. We respect the full range of literary writing.

Mail to:

Long Story Contest, International
White Eagle Coffee Store Press
P.O. Box 383
Fox River Grove IL 60021

Use USPS First Class Mail.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Call for Submissions: Tattoo Highway

Tattoo Highway, an online journal of prose, poetry and art, is now reading
for TH/20: "Detours."

Deadline, Jan. 10, 2010.

GENERAL GUIDELINES: Our tastes are eclectic. We like fresh, vivid language, and we like stories and poems that are actually about something--that acknowledge a world beyond the writer's own psyche. If they have an edge, if they provoke us to think or make us laugh, so much the better. We strongly suggest reading a previous issue or two before submitting.

While we particularly welcome poetry and short "screen-reader-friendly" prose or cross-genre pieces (<> All readings are "blind" (authors' names and other identifiers are removed).

Writers may submit up to 5 poems, prosepoems or flash fictions (500 words max), or 2 longer prose pieces. While we prefer to see work that has not been previously published, we do consider work that has appeared in small-circulation print journals. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but please let us know promptly if you place a piece elsewhere.

As always, we're featuring our contest: "A Picture Worth 500 Words."
Details on website.

HOW TO SUBMIT: Email submissions to:

submissions(at)tattoohighway.org (Replace (at) with @)

Please send them as Rich Text Format (RTF) attachments or as plain text in the body of your message, and with TH20 in the subject line. For hypertext and Flash submissions, provide us with an URL where we may view the work online. Send graphics in .jpg format.

Call for NYC-area writers/performers for benefit reading

Join us for a benefit reading at Smalls jazz club (183 W 10th street, NYC) in the Village on Saturday December 5 starting at 5. We're looking for writers and other artists willing to donate their talent by reading or performing their work. We'll pass the hat and whatever donations are collected will go to local food pantries in need.

For further information please contact Camille at:

cdgoodison(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @)

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Fiction Competition: H.E. Francis Contest

H.E. Francis Contest

2009 Competition Guidelines

Sponsored by: The Ruth Hindman Foundation and the UAH English Department.
Judged by: A panel of nationally recognized, award-winning authors, directors of creative writing programs, and editors of literary journals.

Award: $1000 prize
Manuscripts must be unpublished and may not exceed 5000 words in length. Multiple submissions are acceptable so long as we are notified immediately in the event that a manuscript is selected by another competition or publication.

Deadline: December 31, 2009 (postmark)

Tax-deductible Entry Fee: Check or money order for $15.00 for each submission, made out to the Ruth Hindman Foundation, a philanthropic institution which awards scholarships nationwide to undergraduate and graduate students.

Format: All manuscripts must be free of any means of author identification. A cover sheet must accompany each submission. This cover sheet must indicate the title of the story, the author's name and address, and the approximate word count.

Mail submissions to:
Department of English, Morton Hall 222
H.E. Francis Contest
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL 35899

A submission is complete when it includes all of the following:

Entry fee
Cover sheet
Three copies of the manuscript
If desired, SASE for announcement of winner

Announcement of Winner: March 2010

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction Contest: 2010 Iowa Review Awards

THE 2010 IOWA REVIEW AWARDS

Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction
Brenda Hillman, Michael Cunningham, and Jo Ann Beard, judges
$1,000 to each winner
$500 to runners-up
Plus publication in our December 2010 issue


Submit during January 2010

Submit up to 20 pages of prose (double-spaced) or 10 pages of poetry (double or single; one poem or several). Work must be previously unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are fine assuming you inform us of acceptance elsewhere.

Manuscripts must include a cover page listing your name, address, e-mail address and/or telephone number, and the title of each work, but your name should not appear on the manuscript itself.

Enclose a $20 entry fee (checks payable to The Iowa Review). All entrants receive a yearlong subscription to the magazine.
Label your envelope as a contest entry, for example: "Contest: Fiction." One entry per envelope.

Postmark submissions between January 1 and January 31, 2010.

Enclose a #10 SASE for final word on your work. Enclose a SAS postcard if you wish confirmation of our receipt of your entry.
No electronic submissions.

The Iowa Review
308 EPB
Iowa City, IA 52242

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Call for Submissions: Grist

Call for Ten-Minute Plays, Fiction, and Poetry
Deadline: December 15th, 2009

Grist: The Journal for Writers is accepting unpublished ten-minute plays (8-12 pages) for their third issue. Note that this is an opportunity for publication only, not production. Grist is also accepting poetry and fiction for the third issue.

All submissions are due by December 15th to be considered for the third issue. Please send submissions to the appropriate editor: George Pate, Drama Editor; Joshua Robbins, Poetry Editor; Adam Prince, Fiction Editor at

Grist: The Journal for Writers
University of Tennessee, 301 McClung Tower
Knoxville, TN 37996.

For more information, go to the web site

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Fellowship: Writers and Artists

Winter Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA

For the last forty years, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, has run the largest and longest residency Fellowship in the United States for emerging visual artists and writers. Artists who have not had significant recognition for their work and writers who have not yet published a book with significant distribution are welcome to apply.

Fellows receive a seven month stay (October 1-May 1) at the Work Center and a $650 monthly stipend. Fellows do not pay or work in exchange for their fellowships in any way. Fellows are chosen based on the strength and promise of their work.

Former Visual Arts Fellows include Ellen Gallagher, Jack Pierson, Lisa Yuskavage, Angela Dufresne, Geoffrey Chadsey, and Lamar Peterson. Former Writing Fellows have won every major national award in writing including the National Book Award and six Pulitzer Prizes. The list of former Fellows includes Denis Johnson, Louise Glück, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Yusef Komunyakaa.

The postmark deadline for the 2010-11 Writing Fellowships is December 1,2009.

2010-2011 Visual Arts Fellowship applicants may apply online beginning December 1, 2009. Online submissions must be received by midnight February 1, 2010. FAWC will accept slide applications for one more year. Applicants submitting slides, must have their applications postmarked by February 1, 2010.

For details, please visit our site.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Call for Submissions: Silk Road Review

Silk Road Review, a Literary Crossroads, invites submissions of poetry, fiction and nonfiction for upcoming issues. The magazine will celebrate its fifth year of production and expand to two print issues per year in 2010. This is a great time to submit your work to the magazine.

We are interested in publishing compelling and finely crafted writing from locations around the world. We are also producing a special issue on “secret places” and welcome writing that would fit the topic.

Silk Road takes submissions through our online submissions system.

Visit Silk Road’s website for more information on the magazine and how to submit.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Second Annual Buy a Book, Save the World!

It’s that time again-the Buy a Book, Save the World! 2nd Annual International Holiday Bookstore Bookpush!

How can you participate? It’s easy. All you have to do is pledge to visit your local bookstore and purchase a book to give as a gift. Remember–try and give preference to independent stores if you can, though we love all our booksellers.

This year, we’re doing something a little different. Instead of kicking off on Black Friday, we’re getting started a little early. Tomorrow begins a Publishers Weekly–sponsored initiative called National Bookstore Day. One hundred and forty independent bookstores from around the nation are participating with raffles, author signings, and discounts to celebrate the occasion. What better time is there to start our International Holiday Bookstore Bookpush? Contact your local Indie and see if they’re participating. (If they're not, encourage them!)

So get out, invite all your friends, spread the word about Buy a Book, Save the World!, and enjoy National Book Day! Happy Shopping!!!

Read more about it here.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Call for submissions and essay contest

dislocate, a national literary journal publishing work in/across all genres (and hybrids thereof) by emerging & established writers, is accepting submissions through Decemeber 1. See the guidelines below for both general and contest submissions, and feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!
DISLOCATE #6 & THE CONTAMINATED ESSAY CONTEST

Reading Period: July 15 – December 1, 2009

What are we looking for? Send us your best work, of course. But send us your best work befitting the spirit of dislocate. Tear us out of our cushiony comfort zones. Ignore “no trespassing” signs; push the limits of form, genre, and subject matter. Dissolve extant boundaries and suggest new ones. Make us question our beliefs about what writing can and cannot do. Give us a little pain with our pleasure. Don’t confuse us. Enthrall us, engage us, surprise us. Be innovative and experimental with your ideas, form, and process. In short, blow our minds.

GUIDELINES FOR REGULAR SUBMISSIONS (no reading fee):

Poetry: Send 3-5 poems (no more than 1 per page).
Fiction: Send up to 6,000 words, double-spaced. Number your pages.
Nonfiction: Send up to 6,000 words, double-spaced. Number your pages.

Everything Else: Have something that doesn’t quite fit into these other categories, but you think it belongs in dislocate? We want to see it! Please, no scholarly articles, research papers, or interviews.

For electronic submissions, (preferred), send your work to the appropriate genre editor:

dislocate(dot)poetry(dot)editor(at)gmail(dot)com
dislocate(dot)fiction(dot)editor(at)gmail(dot)com
dislocate(dot)nonfiction(dot)editor(at)gmail(dot)com
dislocate(dot)everythingelse(at)gmail(dot)com
Replace (dot) with . and (at) with @.

Please email one attached document that includes all your work, in .DOC or .RTF format. Include a cover letter (either in your attachment or in the body of your email) with a short bio and the title(s) of your work(s).

If you’re submitting via snail mail, address your work to:

[Genre] Editor, dislocate
Department of English, University of Minnesota
1 Lind Hall
207 Church Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455

CONTEST: THE CONTAMINATED ESSAY

Your essay may be about contamination...To render impure by contact or mixture; to corrupt, defile, pollute, sully, taint, infect.

Contamination may be on a dramatic, mortal scale: smallpox-infected blankets; a nuclear meltdown; an outbreak of hallucinogenic rye fungus. It may be dramatically personal: the way love or a bad relationship infects a person. It may be banal and devastating: the drip drip water torture of a life based on lies, the unwitting and deadly inhalation of asbestos over the course of years.

Contaminate’s root is the Latin word tangere, “to touch,” and contamination usually refers to “touch that makes bad.” But there are ways that elements become stronger as a result of corruption: steel gets stronger when tempered in extreme heat, and chemotherapy purifies the body by nearly destroying it. In literature, stories are retold and recontextualized in an endless and productive series of contaminations. Perhaps, even, the limit toward which we speed is for every sphere of life to be contaminated by every other sphere. The question looms: How do people survive, and even thrive, within this contamination? You need not answer this question directly. But let the question contaminate your work.

Your essay may be contaminated in form...What happens to the essay when we contaminate it with heterogeneous elements? You might add photographs or screenshots from a PowerPoint presentation. You might mix up formal conventions, and make the piece extremely short, or especially lyric. You might transcend generic boundaries and integrate elements of fiction or poetry.

You may contaminate your process...Write under the influence of giardia, or in traffic jams, or in the presence of small, demanding children, and find ways to incorporate those impositions into your text.

Guest Judge: Award-winning poet and essayist Lia Purpura (King Baby, On Looking)
Length: Up to 3,000 words; fewer is fine
Deadline: December 1, 2009
Contest Fee: $15 (includes at 1-year subscription to dislocate)
1st Prize: $400, publication in dislocate #6, and 4 contributor copies
All entries will be considered for publication in dislocate.

Electronic Submissions (preferred): Your subject line should be “The Contaminated Essay.” In the body of the email, include your name, address, phone, email, title of your submission, and word count; a brief bio is optional. Attach your submission in .doc or .rtf format (title it something like "yourname_contaminated.doc”). Your name should NOT appear on the entry itself. Email your entry to:

dislocate(dot)nonfiction(dot)editor(at)gmail(dot)com by December 1, 2009. Replace (dot) with . and (at) with @.

Make your payments online, here, through Paypal; alternately, you may send a check or money order for $15 via snail mail, made out to dislocate with "The Contaminated Essay" in the memo line.

Snail Mail Submissions: Include a cover sheet with your name, address, phone, email, title of your submission, and word count; a brief bio is optional. Your name should NOT appear on the entry itself. Entries must be postmarked by December 1, 2009. Include a check or money order for $15 made out to dislocate with "The Contaminated Essay" in the memo line.

Address your work to:
Contaminated Essay Contest, dislocate magazine
Department of English, University of Minnesota
1 Lind Hall
207 Church Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455

For more information, email us:
dislocate(dot)magazine(at)gmail(dot)com
Replace (dot) with . and (at) with @

Or visit our website

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry Contest: Columbia

Calling all writers: Columbia has launched its 2010 contest in fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

We’re awarding up to $1,500 in prizes, plus publication in the print journal. The top works in fiction will be judged by Joshua Ferris (Then We Came to the End). Meghan Daum (My Misspent Youth) will judge nonfiction, and Dan Beachy-Quick (Mulberry) will judge poetry.

Judges will select a first-place winner from among the ten finalists in each genre. The finalists are chosen by Columbia journal staff.

Enter online

First-place winners in each genre will receive a $500 prize, and their work will be published in Issue 48 of the journal (Spring 2010). Winners and runners-up may be considered for publication on the journal's website.
The deadline for entry is January 1, 2010.

The entry fee is $12.
Contest submissions in fiction and nonfiction must be no longer than twenty double-spaced pages. Poets may send up to five individual poems for consideration, but they must be combined in a single document.

Please note: judges have full discretion and may choose not to award a first-place prize. Judges also may request edits of winning works. The contest is not open to current Columbia University students or those who have graduated within the last five years

Winter Wheat Writing Festival

Registration is now open for Winter Wheat: The Mid-American Review Festival of Writing, taking place on the campus of Bowling Green State University from Thursday, November 12 through Saturday, November 14.

Writing-related sessions begin on Friday afternoon and continue all day Saturday. Please visit our website

In addition to the sessions, join us for panels, an open mic night, and readings by Pamela Painter, Bruce Cohen, Alan Michael Parker, Khaled Mattawa, and James Braziel.

Winter Wheat is free and open to the public.

If you have any questions about Winter Wheat, feel free to contact Karen Craigo at: karenka(at)bgsu(dot)edu. (Replace at with @ and dot with .)