Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Copernican

The Time Is Now
4.1.21

“In a flash I realized: I had to tell the story the way that my grandmother told hers.” In an excerpt from Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature (Simon & Schuster, 2021), published on Literary Hub, Angus Fletcher writes about this realization Gabriel Garcia Márquez had before writing One Hundred Years of Solitude. Fletcher likens Márquez’s realization to Nicolaus Copernicus discovering the heliocentric model, in which by relearning the old star tables fashioned by Arab astronomers, he saw the same coordinates from a new perspective, thus ushering in “a new world.” Write an essay telling a personal anecdote in the way a beloved family member would tell it. Can you trace back to when you first fell in love with a good story?

GalleyCrush: Seek You

by Staff
GalleyCrush
3.26.21
Close-up of the cover of Kristen Radtke's Seek You

Kristen Radtke’s Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness, forthcoming from Pantheon on July 6, 2021. Editor’s Note: This book’s publication date has been changed to July 13, 2021.

Notes

The Time Is Now
3.25.21

Bhanu Kapil’s “Notes Toward a Race Riot Scene” from her collection Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat Books, 2015) portrays—through a flurry of fragments, brief descriptions, anaphora, flashbacks, and flash-forwards—a moment in the speaker’s life before a race riot breaks out in London in 1979. Kapil captures the unease forming in the air before the riot breaks out with the second line: “It’s about a girl walking home from school at the exact moment that her neighbor laces up his Doc Martens, tight.” Write a brief essay that depicts the surrounding atmosphere before a significant event breaks out. How can descriptions of the landscape offer context for the event?

Nawal El Saadawi on Becoming a Writer

Caption: 

“You do not separate between dancing, music, writing, painting, it’s all one, it is expression of the self,” says Nawal El Saadawi about her journey to become a writer in this 2018 interview with Athena40’s Elizabeth Filippouli. The Egyptian writer and activist died at the age of eighty-nine on March 21, 2021.

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Creative Nonfiction
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Nawal El Saadawi
interview
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in memoriam

Deadline Approaches for Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing

G&A: The Contest Blog
3.19.21

The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing is accepting submissions. Established in 2016 to recognize and celebrate the talent of immigrant writers, the prize is awarded in alternating years for a debut book of fiction or nonfiction by a first-generation writer. The winning writer will receive $10,000 and publication by Restless Books. The 2021 award will be given in nonfiction.

Using only the online submission system, submit a complete manuscript or a sample of at least 25,000 words and a proposal by March 31. Writers who have not previously published a book of nonfiction in English are eligible. Writers Francisco Cantú and Shuchi Saraswat and Restless Books publisher Ian Stavans will judge. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

“At a time in which politicians and the media reduce immigrants to mere ciphers,” Stavans told Poets & Writers Magazine in a 2020 article about the prize, “the objective was clear-cut: to do what literature does best . . . by allowing emerging immigrant writers from anywhere and everywhere to tell their own stories.”

 

Getting Physical

The Time Is Now
3.18.21

“Writing for me is no different than playing basketball, it’s my body moving among and pushing up against and being moved by other bodies of language and the energy of language,” says Natalie Diaz in an interview with Brandon Stosuy in the Creative Independent, in which she talks about the physicality of writing and how her experience as a professional athlete and her Mojave culture affect how she writes. “I don’t only feel with my body, I think with it. Even text is a physical space for me.” This week, write a short essay describing what your writing process feels like. How does articulating the way you write help focus your process?

Upcoming Contest Deadlines

G&A: The Contest Blog
3.12.21

After a dreary winter, spring is finally on the horizon. With deadlines of March 14 or March 15, these contests include opportunities for poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers alike. One awards a monthlong residency in Slovenia. All offer a cash prize of $500 or more.

Airlie Press Airlie Prize: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Airlie Press is given annually for a poetry collection. The editors will judge. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $25.

Bellingham Review Literary Awards: Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Bellingham Review are given annually for works of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The 49th Parallel Award for Poetry is given for a poem or group of poems. The Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction is given for a short story. The Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction is given for an essay. All entries are considered for publication. Jessica Jacobs will judge in poetry, Kristiana Kahakauwila will judge in fiction, and Sarah Einstein will judge in creative nonfiction. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $20 ($10 for each additional entry).

Colorado Review Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction: A prize of $2,000 and publication in Colorado Review is given annually for a short story. T. Geronimo Johnson will judge. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: March 14. Entry fee: $15 ($17 for online submissions).

Fourth Genre Steinberg Essay Prize: A prize of $1,000 and publication in Fourth Genre is given annually for an essay. Xu Xi will judge. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $20.

Hidden River Arts Eludia Award: A prize of $1,000 and publication by Hidden River Publishing is given annually for a debut novel or story collection by a woman age 40 or older. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $20.

James Jones Literary Society First Novel Fellowship: A prize of $10,000 is given annually for a novel-in-progress by a U.S. writer who has not published a novel. Two runners-up will each receive $1,000. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $33.

Livingston Press Tartt Fiction Award: A prize of $1,000, publication by Livingston Press, and 100 author copies is given annually for a first collection of short stories by a U.S. citizen. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: none.

National Poetry Series Open Competition: Five prizes of $10,000 each and publication by participating trade, university, or small press publishers are given annually for poetry collections. The 2021 publishers are Beacon Press, Ecco, Milkweed Editions, Penguin Books, and University of Georgia Press. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $35.

Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prizes: Two prizes of $3,000 each and publication by University of Nebraska Press are given annually for a poetry collection and a short story collection. Kwame Dawes will judge. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $25.

Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation Poetry Prize: A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a single poem. Kim Stafford will judge. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $10.

The Word Works Washington Prize: A prize of $1,500 and publication by the Word Works is given annually to a U.S. or Canadian poet for a poetry collection. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $25.

Verse Tomaž Šalamun Prize: A prize of $500 and publication by Factory Hollow Press is given annually for a poetry chapbook. The winner will also receive a monthlong residency in summer 2022 in a private apartment at the Tomaž Šalamun Center for Poetry in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Prose poetry, hybrid works, and translations of works of poetry by living writers from any language into English are also eligible. Sawako Nakayasu will judge. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: $16 ($12 for students).

Washington College Hodson Trust–John Carter Brown Library Fellowship: A fellowship, which includes a stipend of $20,000, is given annually to a novelist or nonfiction writer working on a book relating to the literature, history, culture, or art of the Americas before 1830. The fellowship includes housing and university privileges for a two-month research period to be conducted at the John Carter Brown Library on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and a two-month writing term at the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Deadline: March 15. Entry fee: none.

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

Imperative Myth

The Time Is Now
3.11.21

“We lived in the imperative,” writes Donika Kelly at the start of her poem “Ars Empathica” from her collection The Renunciations, forthcoming in May from Graywolf Press. The collection maps resilience in the face of childhood trauma and a failing marriage, charting memories through myth-like poems that call back to the book’s epigraph by Anne Carson: “To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.” Poems such as “Portrait of My Father as a Winged Boar,” “Self-Portrait in Labyrinth,” and a selection involving the figure of “the oracle” mix the intensity of real life with the self-mythologizing one must do in order to survive. Write an essay that explores what it means to “live past the end of your myth” by recounting what occurred after a personal catastrophe. How does one’s sense of self begin to shift in the wake of a new life?

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that the title of Donika Kelly’s forthcoming collection is The Imperatives.

PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship Open for Applications

G&A: The Contest Blog
3.5.21

The deadline is approaching for the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship. While previously designated for Los Angeles writers, the fellowship is now open to poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers from across the United States. Twelves fellows will receive $1,000 and participate in a five-month mentorship program, which includes one-on-one mentorship, introductions to various industry leaders, professional development workshops, and more. Designed for “early-career writers from communities that are traditionally underrepresented in the publishing world,” the program is open to writers who have not yet published a book and who do not hold an advanced degree in creative writing.

Using only the online submission system, submit a series of personal statements, a writing sample, a curriculum vitae, and the contact information for two references with a $25 entry fee by March 17. A committee of established writers, former fellows, and PEN America staff will judge. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

The Emerging Voices Fellowship was first established by PEN America Los Angeles in 1996, with the aim to serve “writers seeking financial and creative support to pursue their craft professionally.” Last year the program was disrupted as the pandemic swept the country, and in August 2020, PEN America indicated it would not open the 2021 fellowship application. The following month, however, the organization announced it would be able to redirect funding to the program and reenvision it on a national scale.

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