G&A: The Contest Blog

As the month of November winds down, the deadline approaches for several poetry contests. Whether you’re looking to submit a single poem or a full collection, here are contests with a deadline of November 30—all of which offer a prize of at least $1,000 and publication.

If you have a full-length poetry manuscript ready to send out, consider submitting to the National Federation of State Poetry Societies Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition; the White Pine Press Poetry Prize; the Bear Star Press Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, given to a writer residing in a state west of the central time zone; the Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Competition; or the Burnside Review Press Book Prize, judged by Ada Limón. The Cider Press Review Book Award is also open for submissions and will be judged by Anne Harding Woodworth; the winner will receive $1,500 and publication.

The University of Georgia Press is also accepting submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts to its Georgia Poetry Prize; in addition to $1,000 and publication, the winner will receive travel expenses to give readings at the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State University, with a $1,000 honorarium for each event. David Bottoms will judge.

For writers looking to publish their first book of poetry, the BOA Editions A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize is open for submissions. The winner will receive $1,500 and publication; Brenda Shaughnessy will judge. New Issues Poetry & Prose is also open to submissions for its annual Poetry Prize. The winner will receive $2,000 and publication; David Rivard will judge.

For poets over the age of fifty, check out the Two Sylvias Press Wilder Series Book Prize. Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy will judge.

The University of North Texas’s Rilke Prize is given for a poetry collection published in the previous year by a mid-career poet. The winner will receive $10,000 plus airfare and lodging to give readings at the University of North Texas and the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex in April 2017. U.S. poets who have published at least two previous poetry collections are eligible.

And if you only have a few polished poems, not to worry! Poetry International is accepting submissions for its annual C. P. Cavafy Poetry Prize, given for a single poem. The Munster Literature Center Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize, given annually for a poem, includes €1,000; publication in Southword; a weeklong residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, Ireland; and up to €600 in travel expenses, as well as lodging and meals, to give a reading at the Cork International Poetry Festival in Cork, Ireland, in February 2017. Mary Noonan will judge.

Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines and submission details. For more upcoming contests, visit our Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar.

The Lannan Foundation has announced the recipients of the 2016 Lannan Literary Awards and Fellowships. The awards honor writers who have made “significant contributions to English-language literature,” while the fellowships recognize writers of merit who demonstrate outstanding potential. This year the foundation awarded a total of $850,000 in awards and fellowships to a group of seven poets and fiction writers.

The 2016 award recipients are fiction writers Kevin Barry and John Keene, and poet Tyehimba Jess.

Kevin Barry is the award-winning author of the novels Beatlebone (Doubleday, 2015) and City of Bohane (Graywolf, 2011), and the story collections Dark Lies the Island (Graywolf, 2012) and There Are Little Kingdoms (Stinging Fly, 2007). John Keene is the author of the fiction collection Counternarratives (New Directions, 2015), the novel Annotations (New Directions, 1995), and the poetry-art collection Seismosis (1913 Press, 2006). Poet Tyehimba Jess is the author Olio (2016) and Leadbelly (Wave Books, 2005), winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. 

The fellowship recipients are poets Don Mee Choi, Craig Santos Perez, Solmaz Sharif, and Ocean Vuong.

Don Mee Choi’s published works include the poetry collections Hardly War (Wave, 2016) and The Morning News Is Exciting (Action, 2010), as well as several translations of Korean poet Kim Hyesoon. Craig Santos Perez is the coeditor of two anthologies of Pacific Islander literature and the author of three poetry collections, most recently the American Book Award–winning from unincorporated territory [guma’] (Omnidawn, 2014). Solmaz Sharif’s debut collection, Look (Graywolf, 2016), was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her other honors include an NEA fellowship and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. Ocean Vuong’s debut collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, was published by Copper Canyon in 2016. He has received the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets, as well as honors from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the Academy of American Poets.

Candidates for the awards and fellowships are first nominated by a group of writers, publishers, editors, and literary scholars. The Lannan Foundation’s literary committee selects the winners. There is no application process.

The annual Lannan Literary Awards and Fellowships program aims to expand the audience of contemporary poetry and prose and to inspire the creation of more English-language literature. Visit the website for more information about the awards and winners.

Last night in New York City the National Book Foundation announced the winners of the 2016 National Book Awards. Daniel Borzutzky won in poetry for his collection The Performance of Becoming Human (Brooklyn Arts Press), and Colson Whitehead took home the fiction award for his novel The Underground Railroad (Doubleday). Ibram X. Kendi won in nonfiction for his book Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, and John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell won in young people’s literature for the graphic memoir March: Book Three (Top Shelf Productions/IDW Publishing). Each winner receives $10,000.

The ceremony was hosted by comedian Larry Wilmore, who along with award judges, winners, and presenters returned to the power and importance of literature, particularly in the current political climate. “Books give us hope,” said Lisa Lucas, the executive director of the National Book Foundation. “There’s no better way to start conversations about the world than reading. Let’s change the world one book at a time.”

The winners reinforced the idea that books can both advance and record social change. In his acceptance speech, poetry winner Daniel Borzutzky said, “Literature and poetry can serve as the means of preserving social and historical memory.” Fiction winner Colson Whitehead, whose book The Underground Railroad follows the story of two slaves trying to escape via the Underground Railroad, accepted the award and urged everyone to “be kind to everybody, make art, and fight the power.” Nonfiction winner Ibram X. Kendi, whose book details the history of racist ideas in America, said, “In the midst of racism there is the human beauty of the resistance to racism. That is why I have faith.”

“Let me tell you something,” Wilmore said after Kendi’s speech. “The National Book Foundation is woke.”

Congressman John Lewis, who along with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell won in young people’s literature for the third installation of March—which chronicles Lewis’s activism during the Civil Rights Movement—took the opportunity to note how the social climate in America has changed. To explain the award’s significance to him, Lewis, who is the congressman for Georgia’s fifth congressional district, spoke through tears of being denied a library card growing up in a segregated Alabama. “I love books,” said Lewis. “Thank everyone, thank you, National Book Foundation.”

Earlier in the evening, the foundation gave the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community to the nonprofit Cave Canem. Established twenty years ago by poets Cornelius Eady and Toi Dericotte, the nonprofit works to advance African American poetry. Poet Terrance Hayes presented the award, and cited the Latin meaning of Cave Canem—“beware the dog”—to explain the importance of the organization’s work, especially in the face of ongoing discrimination. “Cave Canem is the fortification of your language, your history, your future,” said Hayes. “We must be the dog that guards the house.”

The foundation also honored biographer Robert Caro with its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Caro has written several notable biographies, including The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Knopf, 1975), and a set of four biographies about Lyndon Johnson.

The finalists for the awards were announced in October; each receives $1,000. The annual awards are given for books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and young people’s literature published in the previous year. Interviews with the winners and finalists, as well as the full video from last night’s ceremony are available on the National Book Foundation website.

Established in 1950, the National Book Awards are among the literary world’s most prestigious prizes. The 2015 winners were Robin Coste Lewis in poetry for Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf), Adam Johnson in fiction for Fortune Smiles (Random House), and Ta-Nehisi Coates in nonfiction for Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau).

Photo (left to right): Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell, Congressman John Lewis, Daniel Borzutzky, Colson Whitehead, Ibram X. Kendi

Corporeal Voices has launched a new $10,000 grant for Oregon writers. The Voice is a Muscle Grant will be awarded annually to an Oregon poet, fiction writer, or nonfiction writer. The 2017 grant will be given to a writer of color; the 2018 grant will be given to a LGBTQ writer.

“We are dedicated to amplifying artistic voices by extending direct financial resources to writers,” write the staff of Corporeal Voices. “Your artistic labor is important and urgently needed. Art is the counter voice to cultural repression. Writers matter.”

Using the online submission system, writers of color may submit up to 20 pages of poetry or prose by December 5; there is no entry fee. Students enrolled in a degree-granting program are not eligible to apply. The winner will be notified by December 25.

The grant is administered by Corporeal Voices, a nonprofit foundation dedicated “to recognizing the voices, bodies, and lives of writers as socially vital to society.” Established by writer Lidia Yuknavitch, Corporeal Voices is “committed to non-hierarchical collaborations, to the body as a site of resistance and resilience, to new forms of storytelling, and to new relationships to the planet and to one another.”

Do you write novels, short stories, or essays? Spend some time this weekend polishing those manuscripts; below is a round-up of prose contests with a deadline of November 15. These contests offer prizes ranging from $1,000 to $20,000, as well as publication.

For short prose writers looking to submit a full-length manuscript, the Pleiades Press Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose awards $2,000 and publication by Pleiades Press for a collection of short stories, flash fiction, essays, or lyric essays. Jenny Boully will judge. Submit a manuscript of 90 to 200 pages with a $25 entry fee.

Another opportunity for short prose writers—very short prose writers, that is—is Quarter After Eight’s Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, which awards a prize of $1,008.15 and publication in Quarter After Eight for a single prose poem, a short short story, or a micro-essay. Ander Monson will judge. Submit up to three pieces of no more than 500 words each with a $15 entry fee, which includes a subscription to Quarter After Eight.

In addition to $3,000 and publication in Writer’s Digest, the winner of Writer’s Digest’s Short Short Story Competition will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the Writer’s Digest Conference in August 2017 in New York City. Using the online submission system, submit a story of up to 1,500 words with a $20 entry fee; the entry fee goes up to $25 after November 15.

One of the world’s richest prizes for a collection of short fiction, the Story Prize annually awards $20,000 for a book published in the previous year. Two runners-up will each receive $5,000, and one entrant will receive the $1,000 Story Prize Spotlight Award,  given for a collection that merits further attention. Larry Dark and Julie Lindsey will select the three finalists and the Spotlight Award winner; Harold Augenbraum, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, and Daniel Goldin will choose the Story Prize winner. Publishers, authors, or agents may submit two copies of a book published between July 1 and December 31, 2016 with a $75 entry fee. (The deadline for books published during the first half of the year was July 15.)

The Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award occasionally offers a prize of $1,000 for a fiction or nonfiction manuscript that has been rejected by a commercial publisher and  “overlooked by today’s high-pressure, bottom-line publishing conglomerates.” An editor at a U.S. or Canadian publishing company must submit a formal letter of nomination. There is no entry fee.

Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines and submission details. For more upcoming contests, visit our Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar.

This Friday marks the deadline for editors to nominate stories for a new annual fiction prize. Sponsored by PEN America and Catapult, the inaugural PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers honors twelve emerging fiction writers for debut short stories published in the previous year. Twelve winning writers will each receive a prize of $2,000, and their stories will be included in an annual anthology, The PEN America Best Debut Short Stories, to be published by Catapult.

Debut stories published in online magazines, cultural websites, or print magazines distributed in the U.S. in 2016 are eligible. A debut story is defined by PEN as the writer’s first short story publication that has undergone an editorial review process and has been accepted and published by a publication with which the author is not professionally affiliated. Authors must be either U.S. citizens or permanent U.S. residents.

Using the online submission system, editors of participating publications may submit up to four stories of no more than 12,000 words each, along with the required eligibility and consent form, by Friday, November 11. Authors may not submit their own work. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

The winners will be honored at the annual PEN Literary Awards ceremony in New York City.

Launched this year, the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize aims to help launch the careers of new writers. The award is named for and supported by the family of Robert J. Dau, a Petoskey, Michigan–based arts advocate who passed away last year.

Last night at a ceremony in Austin, Texas, Kirkus Reviews announced the winners of the third annual Kirkus Prize. Three awards of $50,000 each are given for a book of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature published in the previous year.

C. E. Morgan won the fiction award for her second novel, The Sport of Kings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Fiction writer Claire Messud, bookseller Annie Philbrick, and Kirkus Reviews critic Gene Seymour judged.

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Susan Faludi took home the nonfiction prize for In the Darkroom (Metropolitan). Writer Jim Piechota, bookseller Chris Schoppa, and journalist and novelist Héctor Tobar judged.

Jason Reynolds won the young readers’ literature prize for his novel As Brave As You (Caitlyn Dlouhy). Bookseller and author Elizabeth Bluemle, Kirkus critic and librarian Deborah D. Taylor, and National Book Award–winning author Jacqueline Woodson judged. 

The winners were selected from 1,154 titles that received a Kirkus starred review between November 1, 2015, and October 31, 2016, for fiction and nonfiction, and between October 1, 2015, and September 30, 2016, for young readers’ literature.

One of the world’s richest literary awards, the Kirkus Prize was established in 2014 to honor the eighty-first anniversary of Kirkus Reviews, a publication that today provides review coverage of more than seven thousand commercially published books, as well as more than three thousand self-published books, each year. For more information about the prize, as well as a list of finalists in each category, visit the Kirkus Reviews website.

(Photos from left: C. E. Morgan, Susan Faludi, Jason Reynolds)

The deadline approaches for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, given annually for a book of poetry or fiction published in English in the previous year by an author between the ages of 18 and 39. The winner will receive £30,000.

Publishers may submit ten copies of a book published between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2016, along with the required entry form, by Friday, November 4. Entries should be mailed to the International Dylan Thomas Prize, c/o Dr. Elaine Canning, Research Institute for Arts and Humanities, Keir Hardie Building, Room 405c, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK.

There is no entry fee. Translations and self-published books are ineligible. E-mail or visit the website for complete guidelines.

The International Dylan Thomas Prize was established in 2006 in honor of Dylan Thomas, who, according to the website, was: “the quintessential adolescent writer, ideally suited to serve as an inspiration to young writers everywhere. The freshness and immediacy of his writing were qualities that he never lost. The Prize seeks to ensure that readers today will have the chance to savour the vitality and sparkle of a new generation of young writers.”

Recent winners of the prize include Max Porter for his novel, Grief Is a Thing With Feathers (Graywolf, 2016), Joshua Ferris for his novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (Little, Brown, 2014), and Claire Vaye Watkins for her story collection Battleborn (Riverhead, 2012).

The 2017 winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in Swansea, Wales, in May.

Poet, children’s book author, and translator Marilyn Nelson has won the 2017 Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature. The biennial award recognizes a “storied career exploring history, race relations, and feminism in America,” and carries with it a $25,000 purse.
Ohio-born Nelson, who currently serves as professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, has written or translated more than a dozen works, and has received honors including the Newbery Honor, the Coretta Scott King Honor, and the Pushcart Prize. In addition to her awards, Nelson has served as the poet laureate of Connecticut, and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Poetry Society of America.

Robert Con Davis-Undiano, the executive director of World Literature Today who oversees the prize, said in a press release of Nelson’s work, “Her engaging, lyrical style builds awareness around sensitive issues through human, and even humor storytelling that both children and adults can relate to.”

Established in 2003, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature honors a living writer or author-illustrator who has made significant achievements in the field. Funding for the award is provided by Nancy Bercelo, Susan Neustadt Shwartz, and Kathy Neustadt, and the prize is sponsored by World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma–based magazine of international literature. Previous winners include Vera B. Williams, Virginia Euwer Wolff, and Naomi Shihab Nye.

Are you a nonfiction writer? Looking to publish an essay, or in search of funding to finish your book? If so, there’s a writing contest for you—and several of them have deadlines within the next few days. So get to work this weekend, and check out these contests with November 1 deadlines.

If you’re an emerging writer looking for experience and mentorship in New York City, A Public Space’s annual Emerging Writer Fellowships might be right for you. Each fellowship includes $1,000, publication in A Public Space, a six-month mentorship with an established author, and optional workspace in the journal's Brooklyn, New York, office from March 2017 to September 2017. There is no application fee.

Looking to publish an essay? Reed Magazine’s Gabriele Rico Challenge in Creative Nonfiction offers an annual prize of $1,333 and publication of an essay of up to 5,000 words (with a $15 entry fee). Similarly, the Briar Cliff Review offers an annual prize of $1,000 and publication for an essay of up to 5,000 words (with a $20 entry fee).

Want to travel abroad to finish your book? There’s a contest for that. The American-Scandinavian Foundation offers annual writing fellowships of up to $23,000 and grants of up to $5,000 to creative nonfiction writers for study and research in Scandinavia. The application fee is $60. Meanwhile, the American Academy in Rome’s annual Rome Prize— which includes a $28,000 stipend, lodging, workspace, and most meals—allows writers to spend eleven months at the American Academy in Rome. It’s open to nonfiction writers who have published either a book or at least five essays or memoir excerpts in two or more literary journals, magazines, or anthologies. The application fee is $40.

For study in the United States, Washington College’s Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship confers a nine-month fellowship, which includes a stipend of $45,000, at the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, to a nonfiction writer working on a book that addresses the history or legacy of the American Revolution and the nation’s founding ideas. There is no application fee.

Visit the contest websites for complete guidelines and submission details. For more upcoming contests, check out our Grants & Awards database and Submission Calendar.