Genre: Creative Nonfiction

The Value of Print

The Time Is Now
2.23.23

In 2011, Oakland-based artist Alexis Arnold began making art from the discarded books and magazines she continually came across on the street. Arnold transformed the scrapped volumes into sculptures by growing crystals on them. Some of the books she has crystallized include Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, as well as encyclopedias and dictionaries. The results evoke, as Arnold describes it, “geologic specimens imbued with the history of time, use, and memory.” Inspired by the rapidly changing landscape of print media, write an essay that reflects on your first memories with books and print magazines. Do they remain precious to you? For more on Arnold’s art, read “The Written Image: Crystallized Books” in the March/April 2023 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Submissions Now Open for the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant

G&A: The Contest Blog
2.17.23

Calling all nonfiction writers! Submissions have recently opened for the 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant. Up to ten grants of $40,000 each will be given to prose writers with book-length works-in-progress. Intended for multiyear book projects that are at “a crucial point mid-process,” these grants recognize that “works of deeply researched and imaginatively composed nonfiction require significant time and resources.” Works of history, biography, memoir, philosophy, food or travel writing, graphic nonfiction, and personal essays, among other categories of work, are eligible. Manuscripts must be under contract with a U.S., U.K., or Canadian publishing company by April 25. In acknowledgment of the additional obstacles many BIPOC writers face in securing institutional resources for such projects, writers of color are especially encouraged to apply.

Using only the online submission system, submit up to 25,000 words of the book-in-progress; the original proposal to publishers that led to the contract; a signed contract; a statement of progress; a plan for the use of funds; a list of grants, fellowships, or other funding received for the book-in-progress; a résumé; and a letter of support from the book’s editor or publisher by April 25. There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Past grantees include Sarah M. Broom (The Yellow House), Meghan O’Rourke (The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness), Akash Kapur (Better to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia), Albert Samaha (Concepcion: Conquest, Colonialism, and an Immigrant Family’s Fate), and Chloé Cooper Jones (Easy Beauty). For the eighth cycle of these grants, the foundation will host online information sessions on February 22 and March 23 at 12PM ET to answer questions about, and offer guidance on the application process. The 2023 grantees will be announced in the fall. Past grantees include Sarah M. Broom (The Yellow House), Meghan O’Rourke (The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness), Akash Kapur (Better to Have Gone: Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia), Albert Samaha (Concepcion: Conquest, Colonialism, and an Immigrant Family’s Fate), and Chloé Cooper Jones (Easy Beauty). For the eighth cycle of these grants, the foundation will host online information sessions on February 22 and March 23 at 12PM ET to answer questions about, and offer guidance on the application process. The 2023 grantees will be announced in the fall. 

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The Grants & Awards database includes details about every writing contest we’ve published in Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it, making the Grants & Awards database the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

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In the Rain

The Time Is Now
2.16.23

“Drenched by a summer downpour or softened by spring rain, I have felt an aspect of freedom,” writes Ama Codjoe in her essay “An Aspect of Freedom,” included in the anthology A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing From Soil to Stars (Milkweed Editions, 2023) edited by Erin Sharkey. In the essay Codjoe explores her relationship with rain through the lens of freedom, using personal anecdotes, historical events, and photographs taken during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. “In the rain, or in the ocean, or in a flood of people singing freedom songs and calling the names of our unjustly killed, I feel a part of nature, a part of nature’s self, which may be anything that gives nourishment and everything that breathes,” writes Codjoe. In expectation of the upcoming fertile season, write an essay that explores your relationship with spring rain. As you write, take inspiration from Codjoe’s essay and consider the question: When do you feel most free?

History of Love

The Time Is Now
2.9.23

Valentine’s Day is commonly known as a day to express affection for loved ones with greetings and gifts, but its origin remains a bit of a mystery. Some suggest that the holiday dates back to Lupercalia, a Roman festival to ward off evil spirits and infertility that was later banned in the fifth century, while others have said that the true origin of the day is related to a priest named Valentine who was martyred circa 270 CE by emperor Claudius II. According to one legend, the priest signed a letter “from your Valentine” to his jailer’s daughter. Other accounts tell the story of St. Valentine of Terni, a bishop who secretly married couples to spare husbands from war. What is your personal history with Valentine’s Day? Using these origin stories as inspiration, write an essay that explores your memories of this holiday of love.

Foretelling

The Time Is Now
2.2.23

Every year on February 2, thousands of spectators visit Punxsutawney, a small town in Pennsylvania, to watch whether a groundhog sees his shadow or not. The first Groundhog Day celebration at Gobbler’s Knob was held in 1887 and the tradition predicts how long the winter season will last. Similar superstitious traditions connected with animals include the ancient Greek art of ornithomancy, the practice of reading omens from the actions of birds, and the Woollybear Festival in Ohio, in which fuzzy woolly bear caterpillars predict the winter forecast. Do you participate in any superstitious traditions? Write an essay that reflects on your relationship to any rituals or superstitions you believe in.

Benedict Cumberbatch Reads for Letters Live

Caption: 

In this video, actor Benedict Cumberbatch reads an apologetic guest’s hilarious letter to a hotel involving pizza and seagulls for the Letters Live series which celebrates the power of literary correspondence. Inspired by Shaun Usher’s Letters of Note series, Letters Live is an initiative by publishing company Canongate and Cumberbatch’s production company SunnyMarch.

Genre: 
Creative Nonfiction
Tags: 
Letters Live
letter writing
Benedict Cumberbatch
2023

Hafizah Augustus Geter: The Black Period

Caption: 

“I try my hand at remembering. An origin story is what you make of it. It can be a culture, a treasured heirloom, or a history, reduced.” In this Center for Fiction event, Hafizah Augustus Geter reads from her book The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin (Random House, 2022) and speaks with New York Times Magazine staff writer and author J Wortham. For more from Geter, read “Twelve Ways to Create Space to Write No Matter Where You Are” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Genre: 
Creative Nonfiction
Tags: 
Hafizah Geter
The Black Period
Random House
2022
memoir
Center for Fiction
J Wortham
January/February 2023

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