Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

I will be taking a short break while I'm at my graduation residency for my MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Hope you all have a safe and happy holiday season.

Look for more posts after the first of the year!

Call for Poems: Lunarosity

Call for Poems: Lunarosity

Lunarosity has changed some of its policies and procedures, updated
its design, and is calling for submissions of poetry for upcoming
months. Please check it out at the link above. Thank you.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Fiction, Essay, Poetry Competition: New Letters Awards

Call for Writing
New Letters: A Magazine of Writing and Art

$1,500: The New Letters Poetry Award
$1,500: The Dorothy Churchill Cappon Essay Award
$1,500: The Alexander Patterson Cappon Fiction Award

All entrants will be considered for publication and will receive a one-year subscription to New Letters.*

Deadline: postmark by May 18, 2010, or enter online

Simultaneous submissions are welcome. Please notify us if work is accepted elsewhere. Submit unpublished work only. No refunds will be issued.

Guidelines:

$15 for first entry; $10 for each entry after. Entry fee includes cost of a one-year (four issues) New Letters subscription, an extension of a current subscription, or a gift subscription. Make checks payable to New Letters Literary Awards. *Entries from outside the United States receive all contest privileges except the subscription.

Two cover sheets—the first with complete name, address, e-mail/phone number, category, and title(s); and the second with category and title(s) only. Personal information should not appear anywhere else on the entry.

A stamped, self-addressed postcard (optional) for notification of receipt and entry number.

A stamped, self-addressed envelope (optional) for a list of the winners.

Manuscripts will not be returned. No refunds will be issued. No substitutions or revisions.

Entries in fiction and essay are not to exceed 8,000 words. Poetry entries may contain up to six poems. They need not be related.

Multiple entries are welcome with appropriate fees.

Current students and employees at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and current volunteer members of the New Letters and BkMk Press staffs, are not eligible. All entries are considered for publication • First runners-up will receive a copy of a recent book of poetry or fiction from our affiliate BkMk Press • One winner and one runner-up will be selected in each category. •Winners will be announced mid-September 2010. • $1,500 prize money paid to each winner upon publication in our awards issue. •

New Letters is an international magazine of writing and art. Previous final judges include Philip Levine, Maxine Kumin, Gerald Early, Joyce Carol Oates, Rishi Reddi, Mary Jo Salter, Floyd Skloot, Carole Maso, Cornelius Eady, and Margot Livesey.

Submit electronically or mail entries to:

NEW LETTERS LITERARY AWARDS
University House, 5101 Rockhill Road
University of Missouri-Kansas City
Kansas City, MO 64110

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Literary Journal Seeking New Editor: Shape of A Box

After publishing 62 weekly issues, Shape of a Box (youtube.com/shapeofabox) is looking for a new editor or editors to take over the enterprise.

If you are interested please email current editor, Jessie Carty at shapeofabox(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @).

Ideally, Jessie would like someone to take over the online journal 100% but she would be willing to stay on and help with the transition.

If we are unable to find someone to take over the journal 100% then we would like to work with individualswho would be interested in
1 - handling the website, including assisting with registering the domain OR
2 - making videos from contributor supplied footage (any software to compile - iMovie, Movie Maker etc)

We will be taking interest on a first come first serve basis but we would like to announce our decision oneditorship/ownership of the project by January 15th. You can also stop by the wordpress blog here

Thanks for your interest!

staff of Shape of a Box

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Prairie Schooner Book Prize: Fiction and Poetry

The Prairie Schooner Book Prize Series welcomes manuscripts in poetry and fiction from all living writers, including non-US citizens, writing in English. Both unpublished and published writers are welcome to submit manuscripts. Writers may enter both contests. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but we ask that you notify us immediately if your manuscript is accepted for publication somewhere else.

Winners will receive $3000 and publication through the University of Nebraska Press.

Manuscripts should be mailed with a postmark between January 15th and March 15th, 2010 to:

Prairie Schooner Prize Series
Attn: Fiction or Poetry
201 Andrews Hall
PO Box 880334
Lincoln NE 68588-0334

Any questions, please send an email to Managing Editor James Engelhardt at or Prize Book Series Coordinator Cody Lumpkin at (replace at with @).

For information and a complete set of guidelines, please see our website

Friday, December 11, 2009

Glass Woman Prize: fiction or creative nonfiction

GUIDELINES FOR THE SEVENTH GLASS WOMAN PRIZE

The Seventh Glass Woman Prize will be awarded for a work of short fiction or
creative non-fiction (prose) written by a woman.

Length: between 50 and 5,000 words.

No entry fee.

The top prize for the seventh Glass Woman Prize award is US $600 and possible (but not obligatory) online publication; I will also award one runner-up prize of $100 and one runner-up prize of $50, together with possible (but not obligatory) online publication.

Subject is open, but must be of significance to women. My criterion is passion, excellence, and authenticity in the woman’s writing voice. Previously published work and simultaneous submissions are OK. Previous Glass Woman Prize winners are welcome to submit again. Copyright is retained by the author.

Submission deadline: March 21, 2010 (receipt date; anything received after that date will be considered for a future prize). Notification date: June 21, 2010.

The winners will be announced on this website. Submissions will not be returned, rejected, or otherwise acknowledged except for the winner announcement. I promise that every submission will be read with respect and with my commitment to the voices of women in this world.

One submission per person per prize submission period, by email, with "Glass
Woman Prize Submission" in the subject line and the text pasted in the body of
the email (no attachments!) to:

glasswomanprize(at)comcast.net (replace (at) with @)
or in hard copy and via regular mail, to:

Beate Sigriddaughter
333 East 16th Avenue, #517
Denver, CO 80203

IMPORTANT:
If submitting by email:
- "Glass Woman Prize Submission" in subject line
- Text in body of email
- Please put your email address in the body of the email as well
I will regretfully ignore and delete submissions of anything other than specified above, for example: submissions with any kind of attachment*, more than one piece of writing in a given prize reading period, more than 5,000 words, poetry, or submissions without "Glass Woman Prize Submission" in the subject line of the email.
*Please note that some fancy email stationery comes across as attachment; try to avoid using that, as you run the risk of having your entry deleted.

SOME ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Who judges the contest?

At the moment I am the final judge, but a number of women writers volunteer to read submissions and make selections. I am very happy about this because my personal tastes and passions will no longer be the sole criteria for selecting future winners.

How is the prize funded?

The prize is funded with ten percent of my personal income. It therefore has a chance of increasing in the future.

Why?

Because this is something I would have liked to have received for myself. Since I haven’t, at least not recently, and in order to make things right with the world all the same, I feel I have to offer it to someone else.

Why the name Glass Woman Prize?

I’ve been playing with the glass woman concept for a while. I want women to be able to acknowledge, transparently, who we are, and that who we are is not trivial and unimportant, despite the fact that it is not typically rewarded in a man-made and money-motivated world.

Here’s my original description of a glass woman as I would depict her if I were a visual artist: a woman of glass, with a blood system and gut system visible inside her, pipes and veins, and in those there would be bits of poetry, newspapers, roses, sentimental things, baby’s teeth, locks of baby hair, all kinds of lace bits, birds, and foxes, ice-picks, wedding rings, veils, and wedding cake doves, graduations gowns, tarot cards, sacred stones, pressed flowers, and a whole lot of joy and a whole lot of sorrow. She’d have a flute and a piano key, an ankh, everything, anger and joy, hope, hiking gear, rock climbing gear, motorcycle gear, dirt, fear, bras, lilacs, mirrors, underwear.

What about the brittleness of glass? I would make it unbreakable glass, of course: transparent, but shatter-proof.

Kathee from Golden provided the following additional food for thought about the mysterious quality of glass: Glass is tremendously mysterious, neither solid nor liquid; the scientific world, at least, still does not know quite what to make of it, but suspects that even beyond its practical and nurturing ability to allow light through yet keep the harsh elements out, glass promises further understanding regarding the very nature of how things interact:

--from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/science/29glass.html:“They’re the thickest and gooiest of liquids and the most disordered and structureless of rigid solids,” said Peter Harrowell, a professor of chemistry at the University of Sydney in Australia, speaking of glasses, which can be formed from different raw materials. “They sit right at this really profound sort of puzzle.”

--Philip W. Anderson a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at Princeton, wrote in 1995: “The deepest and most interesting unsolved problem in solid state theory is probably the theory of the nature of glass and the glass transition.”

Why no reading fee?

Because I absolutely hate the way every other journal or other entity nowadays uses reading fees for contests as fundraisers. I can see their point. I still hate it.

What am I trying to accomplish with this?

I want to help along the cause of women expressing themselves authentically and fearlessly and passionately. It has something to do with a contribution to justice and soul growing in the world.
One of my ex-husbands once said that women don't support each other. I want to either change that or prove it wrong. This is my small gesture of changing the world.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Poetry and Fiction Book Contest: BkMk Press

BkMk Press of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Announces

The G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction and The John Ciardi Prize for Poetry for the best book-length collections of poetry and of short fiction in English by a living author.

Postmark deadline: January 15, 2010

Prize: $1,000 and publication of winning book for each prize

Submissions:

• Manuscripts must be typed on standard-sized paper, in English. Poetry manuscripts should be approximately 50 pages minimum, 110 pages maximum, single spaced. Short fiction collections should be approximately 125 pages minimum, 300 pages maximum, double spaced.

• Entries must include two title pages: one with author name, address and phone number; and one with no author information. Any acknowledgments should appear on a separate piece of paper.

• Entries must include a table of contents.

• Author's name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript.

• Please submit your manuscript in loose pages, bound only with a clip or rubber band. We prefer that you do not staple or permanently bind your manuscript. Do not submit your manuscript by fax or e-mail.

• Simultaneous and multiple submissions are acceptable. Please notify us of acceptance elsewhere.

• A SASE should be included, for notification only. Note: No manuscripts will be returned.

A non-refundable reading fee of $25 in US funds (check made payable to BkMk Press) must accompany each manuscript. Entrants will receive a copy of the winning book in their genre when it is published.

• Manuscripts must be postmarked no later than January 15, 2010. Manuscripts will not be returned. No refunds will be issued.

Judging will be blind at all levels. Initial judging will be done by a network of published writers and editors. The final judging will be done by a poet and a fiction writer of national reputation. Winners will be announced in July 2010 and the winning entries will be published in 2011.

These competitions are held annually.

Address To:

John Ciardi Prize for Poetry or Sharat Chandra Prize for Fiction
BkMk Press
University of Missouri-Kansas City
5100 Rockhill Road
Kansas City, MO 64110-2499

(816) 235-2558
Fax (816) 235-2611
bkmk(at)umkc.edu (replace (at) with @)

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Call for CNF Submissions: Symposium on Place

Symposium on Place – Call for Entries

Center: A Journal for the Literary Arts invites submissions for a symposium on the importance of place in creative nonfiction, to appear in its next issue.

We encourage you to consider place from a variety of perspectives. What is its role in the essay? in memoir? in literary journalism? How do concerns about conveying a sense of place affect your own work? In what ways do you see issues of place animating the work of others? How is place specific or general? Must place be physical or is it temporal as well?

Submissions should be between 750 and 1000 words. Email your submission, in a .doc format with "symposium" in the header line, to:

cla(at)missouri.edu (replace (at) with @)

Please include a short bio in the body of the e-mail. Inquiries to:

barberse(at)missouri.edu (replace (at) with @)

The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2010.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Fiction and Poetry Contest: Meridian Editors' Prizes

Meridian Editors' Prizes

Just a reminder that Meridian is now accepting entries for its 2010 Editors’ Prize Contests in Fiction and Poetry. Please note the looming submission deadline: December 15, 2009.

For a $16 entry fee, you receive a one-year subscription to Meridian (entries from outside the U.S. will receive only the prize issue due to additional mailing costs). Of course, you're also in the running for the $1,000 prize in each genre.

Meridian expects to announce winners in early March 2010, and all submissions will be considered for standard publication in Meridian.

Fiction writers may submit one story of 10,000 words or fewer. Poets may submit up to 4 poems.

You may enter more than one time; however, in the past, entering multiple times has not significantly increased a contestant’s odds. Additional entries extend your Meridian subscription by one year.

Submit your work here. Make sure that your account includes a working e-mail (one valid through March of 2010).

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Call for Submissions: SLOPE

Issue 47: Submission Info

SLOPE is currently requesting submissions for Issue 47—works loosely or strictly related to and investigating the intersection of film and poetry—either loosely or strictly, in the form of film and video, poetry, essays, interviews, hybrids, ( ), ( ), and ( ).

Think of Cocteau's Orpheus Trilogy. Cocteau as Poet. Michel Gondry’s The Science of Sleep. Marianne Moore. Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, NY. Kurosawa’s Dreams. Blake’s The Tyger. Guilherme Marcondes' The Tyger. William Carlos Williams. Rabbit Light Movies. Leger's Ballet Mecanique. Zukofsky. Elizabeth Willis' Turneresque. Bergman's Wild Strawberries. Linh Dinh's What's Showing?Anne Carson's TV Men. HD the film critic. HD the actress. HD the Imagist. Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour. Frank O'Hara. FRANK O'HARA! Godard's Alphaville and Breathless. Stretch each connection to its most magnanimous.

Submission Period: 12/1/09 - 2/15/10
Send all submissions to:
slope.editors(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @)
with the words “Submission: Slope 47” in the subject line. Address all questions to the above email address,"Attn: 47 Editor."

Masthead
Guest Editor: Amber Nelson

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 .)

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Post-MFA Fellowship: Fiction

The University of Louisville is offering the Axton Fellowship in Fiction

Writers who have received their terminal degree within the last five years in Creative Writing are invited to apply for an Axton Fellowship in Creative Writing. The purpose of these fellowships is to provide recent graduates with time to further their own work, to associate them with a distinguished faculty, and to allow them to contribute to a vibrant creative writing community.

This year one fellow in fiction will be appointed for the academic years 2010-2011 and 2011-2012, and will be awarded a stipend and benefits. The fellow will give a reading in the Axton reading series during her or his tenure, will run a two-day literary seminar, and will teach one course each semester. Of these courses, one will be of the fellow’s design, another will be on the teaching of creative writing, and the other two will be creative writing or literature courses. The fellow will be expected to be in residence in Louisville during their fellowship period.

The fellowship will provide a stipend of $25,000 a year plus benefits for two years.

Candidates for the fellowship should submit the following documents:
a) a current CV
b) a one-page proposal for an undergraduate course
c) a writing sample-no more than 25 pages and
d) at least three letters of recommendation.

Applications must be postmarked by November 1, 2009.

Mail applications to:
Axton Fellowships
Jeff Skinner, Acting Director of Creative Writing
Department of English, Bingham Humanities 315
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Essay Competition: Middle and High School Students

ESSAY COMPETITION for Middle and High School Students
$100,000 in SCHOLARSHIPS and PRIZES

2009-2010 ENTRY GUIDELINES

INTRODUCTION
After disease, humanity’s deadliest scourge has always been hate…hate has killed hundreds of millions. It knows no season and no limit. It is irrational and it is deadly. It is in us all. And it will live forever—unless we choose to stop it.

The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage (MMJH) challenges students in grades 6-12 to take personal responsibility to combat hatred, discrimination and intolerance by participating in the 2009-10 Stop the Hate: Youth Speak Out! essay contest.

About the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage
The Museum, located in Beachwood, Ohio strives to open lines of communication between people of all races and religious backgrounds by focusing on the commonalities, rather than differences, of all who make up the American story. It is a museum of tolerance, diversity and collaboration and has taken great care to reflect upon the results of intolerance, not just against Jews, but against the weak, powerless, segregated and different in America and throughout the world.

About the Essay Contest
Established in 2008-09, the Stop the Hate! Youth Speak Out! essay contest is a yearly initiative of the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage that supports the Museum’s mission to build bridges of appreciation, tolerance and understanding of persons of all religions, races, cultures and ethnic backgrounds. It reflects Jewish values of responsible citizenship and respect for all humanity by challenging young people to consider the consequences of intolerance and hatred and the role of personal responsibility in affecting change. By rewarding outstanding essays with college scholarships and other prizes, the contest encourages civic responsibility as an integral part of American life.

The Stop the Hate! Youth Speak Out Essay Contest:

promotes discussion among middle and high school students about various forms of hatred, intolerance and discrimination and how young people can take a stand for change

strengthens students problem-solving and writing skills while emphasizing empathy for others
provides students with valuable practice in preparing for the written portion of SAT/ACT exams and college application essays

encourages participatory learning, special projects, reading assignments, community service projects, and cultural competency

addresses National Content Standards

CONTEST THEME: STOP THE HATE! YOUTH SPEAK OUT!
What would you do to fight discrimination? How will you combat hatred and intolerance to become an agent of change? How will you become part of the solution?

Essays must address three components:
1. Describe an act of discrimination—have you or someone you know been subjected to discrimination? Or have you seen or heard of acts of hatred and intolerance that disturbed you?

2. Reflect upon your response—why were you disturbed and what did you feel and/or do about what you experienced, saw or heard?

3. Commit to a plan of action—Stop the Hate! Youth Speak Out! What have you done already and/or what will you commit to doing in the future to stop hatred and intolerance and affect change in you, your school and/or community? How will you implement your plan of action?

Discrimination is defined as any act of prejudice or intolerance perpetrated upon one individual by another; a group against an individual; or one group against another group. For example, essays may respond to acts of discrimination based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, physical/mental challenges, economic status and/or less specific criteria such as bullying, name-calling, malicious gossiping, or ostracizing someone for unspecified reasons.

ELIGIBILITY:

The contest is open to all students in grades 6-12 in Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage, and Summit counties in Ohio.
Students may attend a public, private, religious, charter school or home-school
One entry per student; no group projects
Students who have entered in previous years, including past student winners, may enter again, but cannot re-submit any essay previously submitted
Immediate family members of the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, The Malrite Company and The Maltz Family Foundation staff and Board of Directors are ineligible to enter

ESSAY REQUIREMENTS:

Entries must be accompanied by the Official Entry Form—available on-line

Essays must address all three parts of the contest theme—describe, reflect, and commit

Entries are limited to 500 words; every word of the essay is counted with the exception of any bibliography and/or footnotes; please DO NOT title your essay
Essays must be original student work and free of plagiarism; quotations or copyrighted material used in the essay must be identified properly using MLA or similar standards
Failure to identify non-original material or plagiarism of any kind will result in disqualification
Entries must be typed, double-spaced, 12-point type, with one inch margins; no hand-written entries will be accepted
Do not use script, italicized, bold-faced type, decorative fonts or include graphics or photographs
DO NOT use student name, teacher name or school name anywhere on the essay
DO NOT use the real name of any actual person known to you; use a pseudonym in the first usage, such as “John, not his real name”

Entries that are incomplete, submitted after the deadline or do not comply with contest guidelines will not be accepted.

The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is not responsible for lost, late, misdirected or delayed entries, whether caused by mail/other delivery systems or human error which may occur in the processing of entries to this contest; or any problems/technical malfunctions of any computer equipment or software by either the applicant or the Maltz Museum. All entries become the property of the Maltz Museum, including the right to reproduce the essay or portions thereof in any promotional, reference, research, or official business materials without limitation; entries will not be returned. The Maltz Museum reserves the right to cancel, modify or delay the Contest

$100,000 in SCHOLARSHIPS and PRIZES:
All 11th and 12th grade entries are eligible for SCHOLARSHIP PRIZES (for qualified educational expenses—tuition, books, fees, room, board) at an Ohio college or university

Grand Scholarship Prize

$50,000 scholarship (up to $12,500 per year, renewable up to four years)

First Runner-Up

$25,000 scholarship (up to $6,250 per year renewable up to four years)

Second Runner-Up

$15,000 scholarship (up to $3,750 per year renewable up to four years)

7 Honorable Mentions

$1,000 cash prize

High School Division—cash prizes

9th grade winners: $300 First Prize/$200 Second Prize/$100 Third Prize
10th grade winners: $300 First Prize/$200 Second Prize/$100 Third Prize
A one-year Family Membership to the Maltz Museum for each winner
Book and video prize for each winner’s school library (one gift per school)
A free field trip to the Maltz Museum for each winner’s class

Middle School Division—cash prizes

6th grade winners: $300 First Prize/$200 Second Prize/$100 Third Prize
7th grade winners: $300 First Prize/$200 Second Prize/$100 Third Prize
8th grade winners: $300 First Prize/$200 Second Prize/$100 Third Prize
A one-year Family Membership to the Maltz Museum for each winner
Book and video prize for each winner’s school library (one gift per school)
A free field trip to the Maltz Museum for each winner’s class

DIRECTIONS FOR ENTERING:
Online entry is preferred. If students have limited access to the Internet, entries may be hand-delivered or mailed. Entries must be received electronically, by mail or hand-delivered by 12 Noon on the following dates. Late entries will not be accepted:

Entry Deadlines:

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 for students in grades 6-10
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 for students in grades 11-12

To enter online:

Go to here and follow the directions to prepare your official entry form and upload your entry

To enter by mail or hand delivery:

Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage—STH
2929 Richmond Road
Beachwood, Ohio 44122

SCORING AND DETERMINING WINNERS
How Entries Are Scored:

Entries are scored on the three required components of the essay, integration of the theme of personal responsibility, originality/creativity, student commitment to a plan of action, the potential for the plan to be implemented, and writing style/presentation. Each entry is assigned a number; readers and judges blind-score by number only; no names or school names are identified. Three readers score each essay using a numerical points scale

How Grades 6-10 Winners are determined:

Winners are determined for grades 6-10 by the highest number of points

How Scholarship Finalists are determined and Winners selected:*

Scholarship semi-finalists are determined by the highest number of points. Semi-finalist essays are read by a team of judges—each judge reads/scores all semi-finalist essays. Essays are scored using a numerical points scale. Judges’ aggregate scores narrow the field to no more than ten finalists.

Finalists must be present at the Awards Ceremony where they will read their essay and be scored on the quality of their oral presentation. The Grand Prize Winner, First and Second Runner-Up are determined by a combination of essay and oral presentation scores, with the essay score having the most weight in determining the outcome

THE AWARDS CEREMONY

Scholarship finalists, 6-10 grade winners, and their families will be invited to a special Awards Ceremony in March 2010 where specific prizes will be announced and students honored for their achievement.

11-12 grade scholarship finalists must be present at the Awards Ceremony to win.
Communicating your ideas to others is an important part of being an agent of change; finalists for scholarship prizes will read their essay and be scored on the quality of their oral presentation.

*SCHOLARSHIP REQUIREMENTS
· Scholarship finalists are required to submit additional information including GPA, ACT/SAT scores and letters of recommendation
· Financial need is not a consideration
· Scholarship winners are required to enroll as full-time students in a course of study leading to a degree in an accredited Pell-eligible, Ohio four-year college or university
· Scholarship winners must complete sufficient course hours each grading period to maintain status as a full-time student as defined by the institution and will be required to submit grades and verification of enrollment on a regular basis
· Scholarship prize is not transferable—if scholarship winner forfeits the prize before beginning school (selects an out of state school, accepts another full scholarship, unable to attend college)—prize is held in trust for future winners
· If scholarship winner transfers to an out of state school, drops out or is dismissed from school, remaining funds are held in trust for future winners

DISCLAIMER:
The administration of the Contest, including, without limitation, determining the eligibility of a student or essay, selecting of a reader or judge, evaluating any submitted essay, and awarding of the prizes, is within the sole and absolute discretion of the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage. No student or teacher, or person or organization related thereto, has a right to appeal, contest, dispute, or otherwise challenge any aspect of the administration of the Contest, and any decision of the Maltz Museum is final in all respects.

NONDISCRIMINATION POLICY:
In administering the Contest, the Maltz Museum will not discriminate in any manner, including on the basis of race, religion, national or ethnic origin, and each eligible essay submitted will be evaluated upon the merit of its contents as described in this document.

Call for Submissions: Big Lucks

Big Lucks is a fledging not-for-profit literary journal that plans to publish its first printed issue in January 2010. We seek unique voices in prose and poetry, and wish to highlight the finest visual art we can get our greasy little hands on.

FICTION: If your story fulfills the guidelines and expectations of a particular genre (horror, sci-fi, fantasy), then it probably (but not certainly) doesn't have a place in Big Lucks. We seek new and unique prose that moves its audience. We do accept multiple pieces; however, we ask than you submit no more than 3,500 words of prose at a time.

POETRY: You may submit up to five poems at a time. Strong voices and work that makes us think, feel, or wonder something different will be looked at fondly. An eighty-line limit is asked of all poetry submissions. Send all pieces in separate attachments in ONE single e-mail, stating the titles of the attached works in the body of your email, along with the information asked above for everyone.

VISUAL ART: Big Lucks seeks various visual art for publication within our magazine and for cover art. We currently accept color submissions; however, to keep costs down, we're forced to print all images in black and white. Some formats we're particularly fond of are:

photography (both film and digital)
mixed media & collage
prints
vector drawings
scans of paintings and sketches
Please send all submissions as JPEGs.

E-mail all submissions to:
editors(at)biglucks.com (replace (at) with @).

Please use "SUBMISSION" and the type of work you are submitting(fiction/poetry/art) as the subject line. Please use standard manuscript formatting, and be sure to include your name, e-mail address, and a short biography in the body of your email. As writers ourselves, we not only welcome simultaneous submissions but encourage it.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Call for Submissions: Shakespeare's Monkey Revue

Shakespeare's Monkey Revue
Submissions of all genres (under 3000 words) will be considered; however our primary focus is creative writing, with an emphasis on poetry and short prose. We are now accepting original poetry submissions for our next issue “Work.”

The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2009.
Submissions should not exceed 3000 words. All submissions should be submitted by email:

Submission(at)shakespearesmonkeys.com (replace (at) with @)


Please allow up to eight weeks for notification of acceptance.

Payment is $10 and 2 copies of issue in which the work appears as well as a 1-year subscription to the Revue.

For more information please see the submission guidelines.

Shakespeare's Monkey Revue is an international literary journal dedicated to excellence.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Poetry Contest: Alimentum

Alimentum announces its first Poetry Contest

Submissions open September 1st 2009

Deadline December 1st 2009

First prize $500 and publication for a single poem. Two second prizes of publication. Final judge internationally renowned poet Dorianne Laux.

RULES: Submit up to 3 unpublished poems related to the subject of food or drink. No simultaneous submissions. NoSASE. Winners will be contacted and announced on our website March 1st, 2010. $15 entry fee includes a one-year subscription.

Snail mail only:

Alimentum Poetry Contest
P.O. Box 210028
Nashville, TN 37221.

Note: Our regular poetry-reading period is closed this fall. All contest submissions will be considered for publication

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Call for novel submissions: Switchgrass Books

SWITCHGRASS Books, the fiction imprint of Northern Illinois University Press, seeks submissions of full-length literary novels set in or about the Midwest by authors with Midwestern ties. Mail manuscripts to:

Northern Illinois University Press
Switchgrass Books
2280 Bethany Rd.
DeKalb, IL 60115.

Read submission guidelines here

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Fiction Writing Contest: Tennessee Williams Festival

Fiction Writing Contest: win $1500, publication, a reading at the Festival, airfare and hotel and more!

Judge: Jill McCorkle

Grand Prize:
$1,500
VIP All Access Pass ($500 value) for the 24th annual Festival: March 24-28, 2010
Publication in the New Orleans Review
Domestic Airfare and Accommodations to attend the 2010 Festival in New Orleans Public Reading at the 2010 Festival

The top ten finalists' names will be published on www.tennesseewilliams.net

Eligibility and Guidelines:

Short stories, written in English, up to 7,000 words. Only open to writers who have not yet published a book of fiction. Only previously unpublished stories accepted. Unlimited entries per person. Simultaneous submissions accepted; please notify the Festival if your story is accepted elsewhere. Stories that won this contest in previous years are ineligible; their authors remain eligible but must submit new work. Stories submitted to this contest in previous years that did not place are eligible. Author's name should not appear on manuscript. Include a separate page with story title and name, address, phone, and email of author.

Deadline: November 16, 2009 (postmark). Winner will be announced by March 1, 2010.

Entry Fee: $25

Manuscripts will not be returned.

To enter by mail:

Send your manuscript and check or money order for $25 (made out Tennessee Williams Literary Festival ) to:

Fiction Contest
Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival
938 Lafayette Street, Suite 514
New Orleans, LA 70113

To enter online

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Mike's Writing Newsletter

The October issue of Mike's Writing Newsletter is now out. My column this month is on "Recognizing the Scams." Every issue of the newsletter is filled with interviews, articles, market information, and more. Subscriptions are FREE.

To receive your FREE subscription, please email your request to:

mgeffy (at) gmail (dot) com
Replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .

Mike's Writing Newsletter is one the best resources out there for writers!

Call for Submissions: The Broad River Review

The Broad River Review, the literary magazine of Gardner-Webb University, welcomes submissions of original and unpublished fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction for its next annual issue to appear in May 2010. The submission deadline is November 15, 2009.

Our publication is about 120 pages, perfect bound, with a full-color cover and an eight-page color art insert. At this time, we do not publish online.

Interested writers may submit up to 5 poems (up to 10 pages), one short story (up to 4,000 words), or one nonfiction piece (up to 4,000 words). Writers may submit in multiple genres, but please do not submit multiple times in any particular genre. Simultaneous submission are acceptable, as long as we are notified immediately should the submitted work be placed elsewhere.

Writers may submit by regular mail or by email, although we prefer email. In a cover letter, please include a brief biographical entry, as well as titles and genres of all submitted works. If submitting by email, please attach Microsoft Word or Rich Text files only.

Our mailing address:

The Broad River Review
P.O. Box 7224
Gardner-Webb University
Boiling Springs, NC 28017.

Our email address is broadriverreview(at)gardner-webb.edu (replace (at) with @)

For additional information or to ask questions, please email us or call (704) 406-3222.

Call for Submissions: Hot Metal Bridge

The University of Pittsburgh's creative writing journal, Hot Metal Bridge, is seeking submissions in all genres, but particularly poetry!

See our submission guidelines here.

Submit by Nov. 11 to be considered for our Fall issue!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Call for Food Writing: Connotation Press

Call for food writing: Connotation Press

The online arts and literary magazine Connotation Press is seeking food writing from the creative writer's perspective. If you're a creative writer in any genre who is also interested in food writing or who is currently involved in food writing, please submit your tasty morsels to:
Amanda McGuire
the Food and Wine feature editor at Connotation Press
amandamcguire(at)connotationpress.com (replace (at) with @). Bon Appetit!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Call for Submissons: American Diversity Report

The American Diversity Report, an online magazine reaching 1,000 unique viewers daily, is accepting articles, short stories and poetry for November and December issues.

The topic is seasonal holidays, religious or secular.

Accepted works will be listed in our free monthly e-newsletter to which you can subscribe.

Please use our automated form to submit your material.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Poetry Prize: Anderbo

Anderbo Poetry Prize

For up to six unpublished poems

Winner receives:

$500 cash
Publication on anderbo.com

Judged by William Logan

2009 Contest Assistant: Anderbo Poetry Editor Charity Burns

Guidelines:
–Poems should be typed on 8 1/2 x 11 paper with the poet’s name and contact information on the upper right corner of each poem
–Entries must be postmarked by November 1, 2009
–Limit six poems per poet
–Entrant must not have been previously published on anderbo.com
–Entrant must not be a current or former student of William Logan

–Mail submissions to:
Anderbo Poetry Prize,
270 Lafayette Street,
Suite 1412,
New York, NY 10012

–Enclose self-addressed stamped business envelope to receive names of winner and honorable mentions
–All entries are non-returnable and will be recycled
–Total reading fee is $10. Check or money order payable to RRofihe
–Winner and honorable mentions will be published on anderbo.com in February of 2010

Friday, October 9, 2009

Call for Submissions: Cerise Press

CERISE PRESS, an international online journal based in the United States and France, builds cross-cultural bridges by featuring artists and writers in English and translations, with an emphasis on French and Francophone works.

CERISE PRESS hopes to serve as a gathering force where imagination, insight, and conversation express the evolving and shifting forms of human experience. Published three times per year, each issue includes poetry, translations, prose, interviews, reviews, art, and photography.

Authors have included Tess Gallagher, Eleanor Wilner, Laura Kasischke, Ray Gonzalez, James Harms, Robert Kelly, Patricia Fargnoli, Karen An-Hwei Lee, Pura López-Colomé (translated by Forrest Gander), Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelshtam, Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva (translated by Tony Brinkley with Raina Kostova), Hai Zi (translated by Ye Chun), and Abdelwahab Meddeb (translated by Charlotte Mandell), among others.

Please visit our website for guidelines

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Open Reading Period: Tarpaulin Sky Press

During the month of October, Tarpaulin Sky Press will be reading full-length manuscripts of poetry, fiction, and cross-genre work. Manuscripts should be postmarked between October 1 and October 31, 2009. There is no need to query first; simply mail the manuscript according to the directions below.

Tarpaulin Sky Press publishes paperbacks as well as a literary journal that appears in online and paper editions. Our trade paperbacks are available though major retailers and independent booksellers alike, and are distributed by Small Press Distribution--where the majority of our full-length titles have appeared on the distributor's "Best Sellers" lists, sometimes for several months. In addition to being included in "Ten Great Titles from Underground Presses" in Time Out New York, Tarpaulin Sky Press and its titles are featured and reviewed in places such as Poets & Writers, American Book Review, Rain Taxi, Bloomsbury Review, and Bookslut, among others.

TO SUBMIT:

Send one copy of your manuscript along with two copies of the title page (note: the reading process is not "blind"--we ask for two title pages only so that we may keep one with the manuscript, and the other for reference/notes, etc). Be sure that your title pages include your name, address, telephone number, and email address.

Cover letters are read with interest. We like to know who your are, what you're up to, and where we can read more of your work.

We do accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you let us know immediately if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere. Individual pieces from the manuscript may have been previously published in magazines, anthologies, and short-run chapbooks, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished. Manuscripts will not be returned. Please do not send us your only copy.

Writers who have not been published in our literary journal should include a $20 reading fee in the form of a check or a money order made payable to Tarpaulin Sky Press.

Past contributors to Tarpaulin Sky may submit their manuscript with a $10 reading fee. Current subscribers to Tarpaulin Sky Press do not need to include a reading fee (you've already done plenty to support the press--thank you).

Everyone submitting a manuscript is welcome also to choose from any TSky Press trade paperback (sorry, no chapbooks)--just let us know which title you would like, and enclose with your submission packet a 9x12, self-addressed, stamped envelope with $2.64 in postage. We will ship the books separately from your notification SASE.

Mail your submission to

Tarpaulin Sky Press
PO Box 189
Grafton, VT 05146

For notification of decisions, include a business-size SASE. If you would like to receive acknowledgment of the receipt of your manuscript, please include a stamped, self-addressed postcard. Notification of decisions will be made in February 2010. Publication of accepted manuscripts will be in 2010 & 2011.

If you are not familiar with our press and the type of books that we publish, we encourage you to explore our work before submitting, by purchasing one of our titles.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Call for Essays on "Bad" books: American Book Review

American Book Review Call for Submissions - Bad Books

Richard Ford once said that it takes as much effort to produce a bad book as a good book.

And as disheartening as that sounds, what Ford’s assertion might raise, and what most everyone who has attempted the task of a book-length work already knows, is the notion that effort alone does not ensure a book’s success, and that there are probably more ways for a good book to be overlooked than a bad book to never make it into print.

That said, what constitutes a bad book? Is it an overrated “good” book? Can an otherwise good author produce a “bad” book? Is the badness in style, in execution? Or is it in theme or outlook?

In the spirit of such focuses as "100 Best Last Lines of Novels," "Why Teach Creative Writing?" and the most recent "Fiction’s Future," American Book Review seeks entries for consideration in an upcoming “Bad Books” focus. Whether it’s a novel, memoir, collection of poems, how-to or self-help book, select a book that you think belongs on the “Bad Books” list and accompany it with a 250-word essay illustrating just what’s bad about it.

Submissions are due by Nov. 1, 2009

Word count: 250 words

American Book Review
School of Arts & Sciences
University of Houston-Victoria
3007 N. Ben Wilson
Victoria, TX 77901

361.570.4101

Monday, September 28, 2009

Poetry Contest: Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College

THE POETRY CENTER AT PASSAIC COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE is pleased to announce a contest to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its founding The American Voice in Poetry: the Legacy of Whitman, Williams, and Ginsberg.

We are looking for poems rooted in the literary tradition that honors place, voice, and specificity. The winners will be invited to read their poems at a book launch for the anthology of winning poems to be held on Saturday, April 10, 2010 at the Poetry Center.

Contest Rules:

Two poems per person will be accepted for consideration.

Two copies of each poem should be submitted with name, address, phone number, and email on one copy of each poem. Poems should be no more than two manuscript pages.

PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT POEMS THAT IMITATE POEMS BY WALT WHITMAN, ALLEN GINSBERG AND WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS.

Only unpublished poems may be submitted to this contest.

Deadline: November 15, 2009

Please include SASE for list of winners. Winners will be contacted by email or by phone, if email is not available.

Please do not call our office in reference to the contest.

Send poems to:

Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Executive Director
Poetry Center
Passaic County Community College
On College Boulevard
Paterson, New Jersey 07506.

Our website

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Arthur Edelstein Prize for Short Fiction

SHORT STORY CONTEST: Arthur Edelstein Prize for Short Fiction 2009

THE INSPIRATION FOR THIS AWARD:
Arthur Edelstein passed away late in the summer of 2003. He spent most of his life teaching, and, particularly during his last two decades, encouraging fiction writers to perfect and value their craft. Those of us who knew him and studied under him, benefited not only from his knowledge, but from his patience and his humanity.

WE FELT IT MIGHT HELP SUBMITTERS IF WE ARTICULATED THE ELEMENTS WE CONSIDER DURING THE PROCESS OF JUDGING THE STORIES:

A successful story requires technical fluency (good writing), a well-rendered and engaging concept, and satisfying structure (beginning, middle, end) all of which work together to produce an artistic result greater than the sum of its parts.

Sponsored by writingsite.com.

Eligibility:
Previously unpublished short stories, 6000 words maximum
All writers, published or unpublished, writing in English

Prize:
One prize of $1000.00 will be awarded to the winner
Deserving stories will receive Honorable Mention

Deadline: October 31, 2009

The winner will be announced on-site on March 31, 2010

The winning story will appear on-site as our short story feature for May 2010

Submissions:

Manuscripts will be accepted only during the month of October 2009 by USPS

Entries remain the property of the author and may be submitted elsewhere

Guidelines

Manuscripts must be printed on white paper, one side only, double-spaced, 12 point font minimum, with pages numbered consecutively

Manuscripts must include Title Page with author name, mailing address, and e-mail address (if applicable). Author name should not appear on ms. pages

All manuscripts must have an October 2009 postmark

Send to:

writingsite.com

ATTN: Short Story Contest

P.O. Box 93

Pomfret Center, CT 06259

Include a 10.00 reading fee, check made out to The Arthur Edelstein Literary Fund, Inc.

Manuscripts will not be returned

Final judging will be done by an independent reader

In the event that an insufficient number of submissions is received to make the contest viable, entrants will be notified and entry fees will be returned

Call for Submissions: The Ambassador Poetry Project

Call for Submissions: The Ambassador Poetry Project

The Ambassador Poetry Project, a new online journal featuring poetry from and about Michigan and Ontario, is seeking submissions for the December and March issue.

To submit, please see the guidelines

Monday, September 21, 2009

Fiction or Nonfiction Contest: Flyway

Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment “Notes from the Field” Contest

Do questions of environment play a role in your writing? Have you discovered hidden or submerged evidence of the natural world in cityscapes and urban landscapes? Do you find yourself writing short stories and personal essays that have a focus on place, landscape, and the environmental imagination? If so, please submit your prose to Flyway’s “Notes from the Field” Contest: Making sense of the environment through short stories and creative nonfiction.

SUBMIT: Prose (Short Fiction or Creative Nonfiction) that demonstrates an environmental approach and interest.

WORD LIMIT: 5,000 words or less.

AWARD: $500 prize, plus an “America the Beautiful” National Parks pass (valued at $80). Winning piece will be published in Flyway: A Journal of Writing and Environment.

READING FEE: $10 per entry, or $24 for entry and two-year subscription. (Make check payable to Flyway.)

DEADLINE: October 15, 2009, postmark deadline

SUBMIT TO:

“Notes from the Field” Contest (Please specify “fiction” or “nonfiction” on your entry.)

Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment
MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment
Iowa State University
206 Ross Hall
Ames, IA 50011

Friday, September 18, 2009

Poetry Contest: The Rondeau Roundup

Autumn Rondeau Contest

No Entry Fee!

The Rondeau Roundup is looking forward to fall colors, warm sweaters, and mellow sips of cider by the fireplace. To welcome in Fall 2009, the Rondeau Roundup blog is having a contest for the best rondeau on the topic of AUTUMN submitted by October 2, 2009.

Contest Rules:

Only one rondeau may be submitted per person. No entry fee. Top five rondeaus will be published on the blog. The first place rondeau will also receive a $35 gift certificate from Amazon.com

For this contest, I'm looking for rondeaus that follow the standard definition, as given on poets.org

"The rondeau’s form is not difficult to recognize: as it is known and practiced today, it is composed of fifteen lines, eight to ten syllables each, divided stanzaically into a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet. The rentrement consists of the first few words or the entire first line of the first stanza, and it recurs as the last line of both the second and third stanzas. Two rhymes guide the music of the rondeau, whose rhyme scheme is as follows (R representing the refrain): aabba aabR aabbaR."

Examples of the form: "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae, "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

No other poetic form will be accepted for this contest. Non-rhyming rondeaus can be entered, but the blog moderator's preference is for rhymed and metered rondeaus.

To enter, send a single rondeau on the topic of AUTUMN to:

rondeauroundup(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @) by October 2, 2009.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Call for Poetry Film and Video: Split This Rock

Call for Poetry Film and Video

Deadline January 15, 2010

Split This Rock invites poets, writers, artists, activists, dreamers, and all concerned world citizens to submit original poetry films or videos for the 2nd Split This Rock Poetry Festival, to be held March 2010.

We are looking for artistic, experimental, and challenging film/video interpretations of poetry that explore critical social issues. Selected work will be screened during the Split This Rock Poetry Festival film program.

Entries can be up to 15 minutes long.

The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2010. See the guidelines and entry form for full details and submission requirements.

Guidelines

Entry Form

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Fiction and Poetry Book Contest: Prairie Schooner

The Prairie Schooner Book Prize Series welcomes manuscripts in poetry and fiction from all living writers, including non-US citizens, writing in English. Both unpublished and published writers are welcome to submit manuscripts. Writers may enter both contests. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but we ask that you notify us immediately if your manuscript is accepted for publication somewhere else.

Winners will receive $3000 and publication through the University of Nebraska Press. One runner up in each category will receive a $1000 prize.

For information and a complete set of guidelines, please see our website

Manuscripts should be mailed with a postmark between January 15th and March 15th, 2010 to:

Prairie Schooner Prize Series
Attn: Fiction or Poetry
201 Andrews Hall
PO Box 880334
Lincoln NE 68588-0334

Any questions, please send an email to:

Managing Editor James Engelhardt at jengelhardt2(at)unl.edu or

Prize Book Series Coordinator Cody Lumpkin at psbookprize(at)gmail.com (replace (at) with @).



Magnetic Poetry Site

Want to have some fun creating your own magnetic poems online? Check out this site. You can create poems, display your poems, and read the work of other contributors.

To play, go here.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Fiction and Poetry Contest: The Mississippi Review Prize

The Mississippi Review Prize

Awarding $1,000 each in fiction and poetry and publication in the print issue of Mississippi Review


Contest deadline October 1, 2009


Our annual contest awards prizes of $1,000 in fiction and in poetry. Winners and finalists will make up next winter's print issue of the national literary magazine Mississippi Review. Contest is open to all writers in English except current or former students or employees of The University of Southern Mississippi. Fiction entries should be 1000-5000 words, poetry entries should be three poems totaling 10 pages or less. There is no limit on the number of entries you may submit.

Entry fee is $15 per entry, payable to the Mississippi Review.

Each entrant will receive a copy of the prize issue.

No manuscripts will be returned. Previously published work is ineligible. Contest opens April 2. Deadline is October 1. Winners will be announced in late January and publication is scheduled for May next year. Entries should have "MR Prize," author name, address, phone, e-mail and title of work on page one.

Key dates:
Contest starts: April 1, 2009
Postmark deadline: October 1, 2009
Winners announced: Jan 2010
Issue publication: April 2010

Send entries to:
Mississippi Review Prize 2010
118 College Drive #5144,
Hattiesburg, Mississippi 39406-0001

Beginning Fiction Writing Class

Beginning Fiction Writing

I will be teaching a four-hour class on the basics of fiction writing on Sat., Sep. 19, 2009. We will cover plot and conflict, creating interesting characters, writing believable dialogue, the use of setting, and more. We will also discuss submission procedures and overcoming the terror of the blank page. There is a $2.00 supply fee for resource materials payable to the instructor at the start of class.

The details:

Fee: $35.00 Peoria residents; $40.00 non-residents
Time: 12:30--4:30 p.m. with short 15-minute break mid-afternoon
Date: Saturday, September 19, 2009
Location: Rio Vista Recreation Center, 8866 W. Thunderbird Rd., Peoria, AZ
Class Code: 54456
Tel Register: 623-773-7137
Online

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Fiction Contest: Marguerite McGlinn Prize

Philadelphia Stories is pleased to announce
the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction

Award $1,000
Judge: Elise Juska, author of One for Sorrow, Two for Joy; The Hazards of Sleeping Alone; and Getting Over Jack Wagner.

Special Contest Submission Guidelines:
Previously unpublished works of fiction up to 8,000 words.

There is a $10 reading fee for each story submitted (all entrants will receive a one-year subscription to Philadelphia Stories).

Multiple submissions will be accepted for the contest only. Simultaneous submissions are also accepted; however, we respectfully request that we be notified immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.

Authors currently residing in or originally from the United States are eligible.

Submission period: June 15, 2009 to October 15, 2009.

Submit your story online here

The winning story will be published in the Winter 2009/2010 issue of Philadelphia Stories. Submissions will only be accepted via the website.

Philadelphia Stories complies with the ethical guidelines for contests set forth by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. All entrants will receive a complimentary one-year membership to Philadelphia Stories.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Call for Submissions--Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies

Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary journal of scholarship, creative work, and personal essays.

Frontiers seeks creative writing that critically engages issues of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and place. We are interested in all kinds of creative work from poetry to short fiction to personal essays.

All correspondence, including submissions, should be addressed to:

Editors
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies
Department of History
Arizona State University
P. O. Box 874302
Tempe, AZ 85287-4302

Email:

frontiers (at) asu.edu (Replace at with @)


480-965-4787/3876
Fax: 480-965-0310

Deadline: Ongoing

Monday, September 7, 2009

Poetry Contest: Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred

Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred

What is poetry of the sacred?

Poetry that expresses, directly or indirectly, a sense of the holy or that, by its mode of expression, evokes the sacred. The tone may be religious, prophetic, or contemplative.

Contest Guidelines

Deadline for submissions: Received by December 31, 2009.

First Prize, $500; Three Honorable Mention Prizes, $100 each.

Winning Poems will be published in The Merton Seasonal, a publication of scholarly articles about noted spiritual leader Thomas Merton and will be posted on the Merton Institute web site

Only ONE unpublished poem type written in English may be submitted.

Please limit the poem to no more than 100 lines.

Type your name, address, phone number, FAX number, email address, and the title of your poem on a cover page. Attach (1) one copy of your titled poem to the cover page.

Submit your poem on a page with no identifying information. All identifying information should be on your cover page.

If you are submitting your poem via email, the poem must be sent as an attachment saved in Word 2003. Any other format will not be accepted.

Submit poem to:

Merton Institute

2117 Payne Street

Louisville, KY 40206

Or email to:
vhurst(at)mertoninstitute.org (replace (at) with @) as a Word 2003 document attachment.

No Faxed entries will be accepted.

No poems will be returned.

Poems will be judged on literary excellence, spirit
ual tenor, and human authenticity.

Winners will be announced by April 1, 2010. Please visit the Institute website for contest results.

All contestants will be notified via email of the contest results.