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“I live in a hotel / with no rooms, just a lobby and lifts / leading to experiences.” In this video, Jon Sands reads Brenda Shaughnessy’s poem “Karaoke Realness at the Love Hotel” for the Ours Poetica series, sponsored by Complexly and the Poetry Foundation.
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.
“For me, giving language to something, finding a name for it, enacts a kind of metabolic process.” —Cintia Santana, author of The Disordered Alphabet
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 this virtual reading and conversation for the City Lights Live series, Douglas Kearney reads a series of poems in response to Fred Moten’s essay “Knowledge of Freedom” before introducing the poet who reads from his latest collection, Perennial Fashion Presence Falling (Wave Books, 2023).
In this event recorded at the Brooklyn Heights Public Library and hosted by Books Are Magic, Terrance Hayes discusses his new poetry collection, So to Speak (Penguin Books, 2023), and his new essay collection, Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry (Penguin Books, 2023), with poet and memoirist Mary Karr.
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?
“Just keep listening to the work, one poem at a time.” —Heather Lanier, author of Psalms of Unknowing
“Is it any wonder our lips feel so lonesome these long evenings?” Phil Kaye reads his poem “Summer / New York City,” which appears in his collection Date & Time (Button Poetry, 2018), in this 2021 event with accompaniment by The Westerlies at Little Island in New York City.
“Poetry is the tempo of one’s temperament.” In this 2015 event for the House of SpeakEasy’s “Seriously Entertaining” series, Rowan Ricardo Phillips talks to a live audience about the nature of poetry and his memories of the 1980 film Altered States. Phillips discusses his role as editor of the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets in a Q&A in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
