Submissions are open for the annual $40,000 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants, given to up to eight writers “in the process of completing a book-length work of deeply researched and imaginatively composed nonfiction for a general readership.” Administered by the Whiting Foundation, the grants are meant to provide writers with the time and resources required to research and compose “original, ambitious projects that bring writing to the highest possible standard.”

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Only books under contract with a U.S. publisher are eligible for the grants. In previous years, the foundation also required that books be under contract for at least two years at the time of application; this restriction has been lifted. 

Using only the online submission system, submit a résumé, a statement of progress, and three sample chapters totaling no more than 25,000 words. Applicants must also include a signed and dated contract with a U.S. publisher, the original proposal that led to the contract with the publisher, a letter of support from the book’s publisher or editor, an additional letter of support, and a list of all sources of funding received for the book to date. All materials must be received by April 20. There is no application fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines and eligibility. 

In 2019, eight writers were awarded grants: Wil S. Hylton, Channing Gerard Joseph, Jim Morris, Kristen Radtke, Albert Samaha, Damon Tabor, Walter Thompson-Hernández, and Ilyon Woo. Previous grant recipients also include Jess Row, the author of White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination (Graywolf Press, 2019); Jennifer Block, the author of Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution (St. Martin’s Press, 2019); and Sarah M. Broom, whose debut memoir, The Yellow House (Grove Press, 2019), won the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction. 

Founded in 1963, the Whiting Foundation believes in “identifying and empowering talented people as early as possible in their creative and intellectual development.” In addition to the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants, the organization honors emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama with the annual Whiting Awards, and print and online publications with the annual Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes. 

“Objects make love visible. They give us an archive, a timeline with clear milestones. They tell a story that would otherwise be almost impossible to see or even narrate,” Jenn Shapland writes in her Literary Hub essay “The Maggie Nelson Test for Lesbian Dating Success.” Shapland explores the value of shared and exchanged objects and artifacts between friends and lovers, with an emphasis on gifting books. Write an essay about a book that you gave or received from someone with whom you’ve had a significant relationship, perhaps at a particularly precarious turning point. Describe the book and set the scene, exploring what the exchange revealed about you and the state of the relationship.

“Infatuation is a solitary pursuit. Dante doesn’t want to be with Beatrice: he wants to be alone,” writes Anne Boyer in “The One and Only” in the journal Mal. “A real Beatrice stands with real desires on a real street in a real city in real shoes. This is inconvenient to any Dante.” Write a story in which your main character is in love with the idea of someone, perhaps a stranger in the neighborhood or an imagined being. What is it about not knowing the real or actual object of affection, and their mundane opinions and habits, that allows for fantasy to bloom? What are the consequences of keeping this sort of distance?

In the Cut, seventy-eight new emotions are introduced, inspired by a theory that emotions are not just objective, biologically measurable states but are constructed interpretations of sensations affected by our cultures, expectations, and language. Writers, including Greg Jackson, Sara Nović, and Bryan Washington, name and describe new emotions like jealoushy: “The feeling of being jealous of someone while also having a crush on them,” and heartbreak adrenaline: “The strange feats of strength that can be accomplished after a devastating breakup.” Write a poem that revolves around a newly named emotion of your own invention, perhaps involving love, lust, or heartbreak. How does giving new language to a feeling expand your perspective?

Submissions are open for the 6th annual Yemassee Poetry Chapbook Contest and the inaugural Yemassee Fiction Chapbook Contest. Sponsored by the literary magazine Yemassee, each contest awards a prize of $1,250, chapbook publication, and 25 author copies.

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Using only the online submission system, submit 20 to 26 pages of poetry or 20 to 40 pages of fiction with a $18 entry fee by February 15. Gabrielle Calvocoressi will judge in poetry and Sarah Gerard will judge in fiction. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Based at the University of South Carolina, Yemassee publishes two print issues each year as well as ongoing Monthly Spotlights featuring new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Previous winners of the journal’s poetry chapbook contest include Taneum Bambrick and Mick Powell.
 

In artist John Baldessari’s “Eight Soups: Corn Soup,” he borrows an image of a Henri Matisse painting of goldfish and writes the words “corn” and “soup” underneath it, while another piece includes a photograph of himself standing beneath a palm tree with a caption that says, “wrong.” In Deborah Solomon’s New York Times piece on Baldessari, who died earlier last month, she writes of a postcard the artist once sent from the Cincinnati Zoo to a friend: “The message bore no discernible relation to the photograph of the tiger cubs. In this way, it resembled his work. Text plus image and many possible paths between them.” As you go about your week, keep an eye out for readymade images—a photograph, a painting, an advertisement—and jot down words that immediately come to mind. Write an essay that uncovers, or makes discernible, the paths between the image and what it conjures up for you.

The inaugural Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry is open for submissions. Sponsored by Arrowsmith Press, in partnership with the Derek Walcott Festival and the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, the award will be given for a poetry collection written by a living poet who is not a U.S. citizen. Books published anywhere in the world during the previous calendar year, in English or translated into English, are eligible. The winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000, a reading at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, the publication of a limited-edition broadside by Arrowsmith Press, and a weeklong residency at one of Walcott’s homes in either St. Lucia or Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. If the winning work is a translated book, the prize money will be shared between the translator and the poet.

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Publishers may submit books published between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2019 with a $20 entry fee by February 15. Multiple submissions are permitted, but each book requires a separate submission and fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

The winner of the prize will be announced in May and will be invited to give a reading in Boston in October 2020. Glyn Maxwell, the editor of Walcott’s Selected Poems and a friend of the late poet, will judge. The prize was established by Walcott’s family to honor his lifelong support of emerging writers.

Photo: Derek Walcott