Earlier this month, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, announced its list of winners for their astronomy photographers of the year awards. The photographs, which were published in the Guardian, show various perspectives of observing the cosmos. In the overall winning photograph created by a team of amateur astronomers, a huge plasma arc shines next to the swirling Andromeda galaxy. In the young astronomy photographer category, the Running Chicken Nebula is captured, a diffused glow of crimson, violet, and black gases shining amidst a cluster of white stars. The photographs taken from Earth show the unexpected manifestations of space seen in our sky, as one features rare cloud formations in Hungary and another captures the orbital rotation of stars forming an infinite circle in Lancashire, England. This week write a poem inspired by these photographs that meditates on your place in the universe. For inspiration, read Tracy K. Smith’s poem “My God, It’s Full of Stars.”

Before you go out to buy your Halloween pumpkin, consider submitting to Action, Spectacle’s Poetry & Prose Prize for a chance to win $1,000 and publication. English translations of works originally written in another language are accepted.

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Using only the online submission system, submit any number of poems totaling no more than 10 pages or up to 8,500 words of a novel or nonfiction excerpt, short story, or essay with a $20 entry fee by October 1. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Action, Spectacle is a biannual online magazine of art and culture based in Louisville, Kentucky, and Brooklyn, New York. The magazine has featured comics by Anne Carson, poetry by Douglas Kearney, and prose by Brandon Taylor, among other selections in art, commentary, fiction, interviews, memoir, verse, and reportage.

For centuries the autumn season has inspired writers to reflect on nature’s cycle of renewal. Temperatures drop, leaves change color and shed, and crops are harvested offering much to contemplate during the season about what it means to live. Poets are continually inspired by the season: Larry Levis writes about the “steadfast, orderly, taciturn, oblivious” yellowing of the leaves in “The Widening Spell of the Leaves;” John Keats reflects on the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” in “To Autumn;” and Marilyn Chin recalls how “all that blooms must fall” in “Autumn Leaves.” What comes to mind when observing the changing of seasons? Write an essay that reflects on how the days of autumn affect you.

“Cause that’s all the life of a painter is, the seen and gone disappearing into the air, rain, seasons, years, the ravenous beaks of the ravens. All we are is eyes looking for the unbroken or the edges where the broken bits might fit each other,” writes Ali Smith in her award-winning novel How to Be Both (Pantheon, 2014), in which one half of the book is narrated by the ghost of an Italian renaissance painter. The artist looks at the modern world through fifteenth-century eyes, offering artful descriptions as readers come to understand how the narrator of the other half of the book, a young woman living in present-day England, is connected. What benefit could inhabiting a voice from the past offer to invigorate your use of language? Try writing a short story in the voice of a ghostly visitor from another century. What is new through their eyes?

Sometimes the simplest repetition in a poem can bear enormous results. In Aracelis Girmay’s poem “You Are Who I Love,” many of the stanzas start with the word “you,” creating a tapestry of observations. “You, in the park, feeding the pigeons / You cheering for the bees // You with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding cats,” she writes. The poem begins with simple, charming observations and then the lines bloom with strangeness and urgency in both language and subject matter. “You cactus, water, sparrow, crow      You, my elder / You are who I love, / summoning the courage, making the cobbler, // getting the blood drawn, sharing the difficult news,” writes Girmay. This week visit a public space and make a list of image-driven observations of people. Use this list to create a poem that serves as a portrait of this place and its visitors.

Autumn begins with a bevy of contests for writers in all genres, including nineteen with a deadline of September 30. Half a dozen awards offer $5,000 or more and publication for full-length manuscripts of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and three have no entry fee. A prize of $15,000 is being offered for a book of fiction published during the current year; several prizes of $1,000 or more are offered for a single essay, story, or poem; and that’s not all! Good luck as you decide where to send your work!

Boulevard
Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers
A prize of $1,000 and publication in Boulevard is given annually for an essay by a writer who has not published a full-length book in any genre with a nationally distributed press. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $18.

California State University in Fresno
Philip Levine Prize for Poetry
A prize of $2,000, publication by Anhinga Press, and 25 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. The winner will also be invited to give a public reading at California State University in Fresno. Douglas Kearney will judge. Entry fee: $25.

Connecticut Poetry Society
Vivian Shipley Poetry Award 
A prize of $1,000 and publication in Connecticut River Review and on the Connecticut Poetry Society website is given annually for a single poem. Antoinette Brim-Bell will judge. Entry fee: $15.

Dzanc Books
Short Story Collection Prize
A prize of $2,500 and publication by Dzanc Books is given annually for a story collection. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $25.

Dzanc Books
Prize for Fiction
A prize of $5,000 and publication by Dzanc Books is given annually for a novel. Mark Dunn, Alan Grostephan, and Julie Ann Stewart will judge. Entry fee: $25.

Ghost Story
Supernatural Fiction Award
A prize of $1,500 and publication on the Ghost Story website is given twice yearly for a short story with a supernatural or magic realist theme. The winning work will also be published in Volume III of the 21st Century Ghost Stories print anthology. The editors will judge. Entry fee: $20.

Hackney Literary Awards
Novel Contest
A prize of $5,000 is given annually for an unpublished novel. Entry fee: $30.

Lascaux Review
Prize in Creative Nonfiction
A prize of $1,000 is given annually for an essay. The winner and finalists will also be published on the Lascaux Review website. Previously published and unpublished essays are eligible. Entry fee: $15.

One Page
Poetry Contest
A prize of $2,000 will be given annually for a single poem. A second-place prize of $1,000 will also be given. Mark Graham, Monique Jonath, and Ann Tinkham will judge. Entry fee: $25.

PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Award for Fiction
A prize of $15,000 is given annually for a book of fiction published during the current year. Four finalists each receive $5,000. The winner and finalists will also be invited to read in Washington, D.C., in May 2024. Entry fee: $75.

The Moth
Nature Writing Prize
A prize of €1,000 (approximately $1,092) and online publication in Irish Times is given annually for a poem, a story, or an essay that features “an exploration of the writer’s relationship with the natural world.” The winner also receives a weeklong stay at the Circle of Misse artist’s retreat in Missé, France. Kathleen Jamie will judge. Entry fee: $16.

Texas Review Press: The University Press of SHSU
George Garrett Fiction Prize
A prize of $1,000, publication by Texas Review Press: The University Press of SHSU, and 20 author copies is given annually for a short story collection or novel. Entry fee: $28.

Texas Review Press: The University Press of SHSU
X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize
A prize of $10,000, publication by Texas Review Press: The University Press of SHSU, and 10 author copies is given annually for a poetry collection. Richard Blanco will judge. Entry fee: $28.

University of Arkansas Press
Miller Williams Poetry Prize
A prize of $5,000 and publication by University of Arkansas Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Patricia Smith will judge. Entry fee: $28.

University of Iowa Press
Iowa Short Fiction Award
Two prizes of publication by the University of Iowa Press are given annually for first collections of short fiction. Entry fee: None.

University of Mississippi
Willie Morris Award for Southern Nonfiction
A prize of $12,000 is given annually for a book of nonfiction published during the current year that asks readers “to engage with or reflect on the complexities of the American South.” The winner will also receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Oxford, Mississippi, for the awards ceremony in April 2024. Entry fee: None.

University of Mississippi
Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction
A prize of $12,000 is given annually for a novel published during the current year that asks readers “to engage with or reflect on the complexities of the American South.” The winner will also receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Oxford, Mississippi, for the awards ceremony in April 2024. Entry fee: None.

University of Mississippi
Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry
A prize of $3,000 is given annually for a single poem that evokes the American South. The winner will also receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Oxford, Mississippi, for the awards ceremony in April 2024. Susan Kinsolving will judge. Entry fee: None.

Winning Writers
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest
Two prizes of $3,000 each, two-year gift certificates for membership to the literary database Duotrope, and publication on the Winning Writers website are given annually for a poem in any style and a poem that either rhymes or is written in a traditional style. Briana Grogan, Michal “MJ” Jones, and Dare Williams will judge. Entry fee: $22.

Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines, and check out the Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar for more contests in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and translation.

In a profile of Annie Dillard by John Freeman, published in the March/April 2016 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author demonstrates the generosity she is known for as a writer and mentor by speaking about how working in a soup kitchen can benefit a writer. “There are many unproductive days when you might hate yourself otherwise,” writes Dillard in a correspondence with Freeman. “You are eating the food, using the water, breathing the air—and NOT HELPING. But if you feed the hungry, you can’t deny you’re doing something worth doing.” Write an essay about a time in which an act of service added meaning to your creative practice. How did this intimate exchange help fuel you as a writer?

This week marks the birthday of famed mystery novelist Agatha Christie, who was born on September 15, 1890. Many of her murder mysteries revolve around their settings, which have made them popular for film adaptations. In Murder on the Orient Express, a murderer is among the passengers of a luxury train trapped in heavy snow; in And Then There Were None, ten strangers on an isolated island die one by one; and in The Body in the Library, a young woman’s body is found dead in a wealthy couple’s house. If you were to craft a murder mystery of your own, where would you set it up? In celebration of Christie’s birthday, write a story centered around a murder. Begin by outlining a cast of suspicious characters, and make sure to leave readers guessing until the end.

In “Tenants,” the opening poem of Hannah Sullivan’s hybrid collection Was It for This (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), the British poet contends with nursing a new baby a mile away from the Grenfell Tower in West London, a high-rise public housing building that tragically caught fire. The poem combines various viewpoints to address how local, public tragedies can affect private lives, such as accounts from firefighters, research from news reports, and descriptions of the building’s “crinkled, corrugated, lacy” façade. This week, research the local news of your city and write a poem centered around a recent headline. How does this news story affect your personal life? Does this exercise help you feel more connected to your community?