Leanne Shapton’s second book, Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry (Sarah Crichton Books, 2009), takes the form of a fictional auction catalogue. The objects being sold—everything from furniture to photographs—present a chronology of an invented couple’s entire love affair from start to finish. How might the wider meaning of spring-cleaning as a transformative purge present an opportunity to use your possessions to tell a story about your own life? Jot down a list of objects that hold significance from a past relationship. Perhaps you’ve thrown them out or even hidden them because of their unpleasant associations. Think of them as objectively as possible, as if viewed in an auction catalogue, and write a personal essay using impersonal descriptions to reveal a series of events in your past that combine to form a larger story about this relationship.
Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.