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“It came to me one night as I was falling asleep / that I had finished with those amorous adventures / to which I had long been a slave.” In this video from the 2014 National Book Award finalists reading, Louise Glück reads her poem “An Adventure,” which appears in her National Book Award–winning collection Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014).
The author of peep offers an exercise in negative capability.
Tomorrow may be April Fools’ Day, but these contests with deadlines of April 13, 14, and 15 are no joke! Prizes include five $25,800 fellowships from the Poetry Foundation; $1,500 and publication for a single poem or group of poems, a short story, or an essay; a weeklong residency at an Italian castle for a short fiction writer; and more. All contests offer an award of at least $1,000, and one has no entry fee. Good luck, writers!
Desperate Literature
Short Fiction Prize
A prize of €1,500 (approximately $1,581), a weeklong residency at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation’s castle in the Umbria region of Italy, and publication in Desperate Literature’s prize anthology is given annually for a work of short fiction. Winners will also receive a consultation with literary agent Charlotte Seymour (Johnson & Alcock Literary Agency), an editorial meeting with the Literary Consultancy, and the opportunity to give readings at Desperate Literature in Madrid and Burley Fisher Books in London. Mariana Enríquez, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Tiffany Tsao will judge. Deadline: April 15. Entry fee: €20 (approximately $21) for first entry, €10 (approximately $11) for each additional entry, with a maximum of five entries per person.
Florida Review
Editor’s Prizes
Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Florida Review are given annually for a poem or group of poems, a short story, and an essay. The editors will judge. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: April 15. Entry fee: $25, which includes a subscription to Florida Review.
New Ohio Review
Literary Prizes
Three prizes of $1,500 each and publication in New Ohio Review are given annually for a poem or group of poems, a short story, and an essay. All entries are considered for publication. Deadline: April 15. Entry fee: $22, which includes a subscription to New Ohio Review.
Omnidawn Publishing
Single Poem Contest
A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a single poem. The winner also receives 10 copies of a letterpress broadside of the winning poem. Nathalie Khankan will judge. Deadline: April 13. Entry fee: $25 ($15 for each additional poem).
Poetry Foundation
Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships
Five fellowships of $25,800 each are given annually to U.S. poets between the ages of 21 and 31. Deadline: April 14. Entry fee: none.
Spoon River Poetry Review
Editors’ Prize
A prize of $1,000 and publication in Spoon River Poetry Review, prefaced by a judge’s introduction, is given annually for a single poem. Multilingual submissions accompanied by translations are eligible. Deadline: April 15. Entry fee: $20, which includes a subscription to Spoon River Poetry Review.
University of Arkansas Press
Etel Adnan Poetry Prize
A prize of $1,000 and publication by University of Arkansas Press is given annually for a first or second poetry collection by a writer of Arab heritage. Series editors Hayan Charara and Fady Joudah will judge. Deadline: April 15. Entry fee: $25.
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.
“Like most writers, I started out as a reader. Essentially, I’m a fan who became a professional.” Colin Channer speaks about his origins as a writer and how race and ethnicity factor into his practice in this video for Brown University’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. Channer is one of the honorees for the 2023 Poets & Writers Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award.
At a ceremony held this evening at the New-York Historical Society in New York City, the Whiting Foundation announced the ten winners of the 2023 Whiting Awards. The awards, now in their thirty-eighth year, celebrate exceptional emerging literary talent. Each winning writer receives a prize of $50,000 in support of their work.
This year’s winners are poets Tommye Blount and Ama Codjoe; poet and dramatist Emma Wippermann; fiction writers Marcia Douglas, Sidik Fofana, and Carribean Fragoza; nonfiction writers Linda Kinstler and Stephania Taladrid; dramatist Mia Chung; and graphic novelist R. Kikuo Johnson, who is the first graphic novelist to be recognized with the award.
The winners will read together at an event at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday, March 30 at 6:30PM. The event is free and open to the public and will also be livestreamed.
“Every year we look to the new Whiting Award winners, writing fearlessly at the edge of imagination, to reveal the pathways of our thought and our acts before we know them ourselves,” said the foundation’s director of literary programs Courtney Hodell in a press release. “The prize is meant to create a space of ease in which such transforming work can be made.”
Since its inception in 1985, the Whiting Awards have bestowed a total of $9.5 million on 370 celebrated writers. For many recipients, this financial support enables a “first chance to devote themselves to their own writing, or to take bold new risks in their work.” Previous winners include such luminaries as poets Don Mee Choi, Roger Reeves, and Ocean Vuong; fiction writers Denis Johnson, Ling Ma, Sigrid Nunez, and Colson Whitehead; nonfiction writers Elif Batuman and Jia Tolentino; and playwright Tony Kushner.
There is no application process for the Whiting Awards. Recipients are nominated by a rotating pool of writers, editors, professors, critics, and others working in the literary or dramatic arts. Final selections are made by a panel of “recognized writers, literary scholars, and editors.” The Whiting Foundation’s other initiatives include the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grants, which support the development of researched nonfiction books and are open for applications through April 25.
In Ada Limón’s poem “Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds,” which appears in her collection Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015), the speaker moves through the memories of exes and accidents, including how a friend is obsessed with plane crashes: “He memorizes the wrecked metal details, / the clear cool skies cut by black scars of smoke. / Once, while driving, he told me about all the crashes: / The one in blue Kentucky, in yellow Iowa. / How people go on, and how people don’t.” Write a poem about a specific detail or unexpected obsession of a loved one. How does this trait color the memories you have with that person?
Do you have a poetry or fiction manuscript in need of a home? Try submitting to Orison Books’ Prizes in Poetry and Fiction, which offer $1,500 for a book in each genre and publication by the press.
Using only the online submission system, submit a poetry manuscript of 50 to 100 pages or a novel, novella, or collection of short stories or flash fiction of at least 30,000 words with a $25 entry fee by April 1. Pádraig Ó Tuama will judge in poetry and David Heska Wanbli Weiden will judge in fiction. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Last year’s winner of the Orison Poetry Prize was Hussain Ahmed for Blue Exodus. Judge Rajiv Mohabir said the collection’s “lines ask the reader to interrogate all things in new vocabularies of anguish, born from the inheritor of a war—still being fought in the muscle memory of the people who lived through it.” M. C. Benner Dixon was the winner of last year’s Orison Fiction Prize for her novel, The Height of the Land. Judge Tania James called the book “a refreshing approach to the post-apocalyptic novel, showing us both the possibilities of collective action and the power of a single dissenting voice.”
Based in Asheville, North Carolina, Orison Books is a nonprofit literary press interested in writing that engages “the life of the spirit.” Taking its name from the archaic word for “prayer,” Orison seeks writers who “call us to meditate and contemplate, rather than asking us to adopt any ideology or set of propositions.”
“This name— / branded on my family—rises out of / the ashes in the wind. I can trace each syllable / back to our cantón: Buena Vista.” Cynthia Guardado reads from her collection Cenizas (University of Arizona Press, 2022) and speaks about ancestry, names, and family stories in this Poetry.LA interview with poet Douglas Manuel.
In this PBS NewsHour video, National Book Award-winning poet and professor Nikky Finney discusses the work of social justice activism and preservation in her community of Columbia, South Carolina, which includes opening a cultural arts center honoring her father’s legacy as the first Black chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court since the Reconstruction era.
In Charif Shanahan’s poem “Colonialism,” which appears in his second collection, Trace Evidence, out this week from Tin House Books, the poet captures a tense and tender moment of childhood rebellion in which the young speaker runs across a bustling four-lane street in Casablanca as his mother rushes after him, spanks him, and says: “Why / Would you do that to me?” Another poem from the book depicts a child in a department store fleeing and hiding from his mother as she searches and calls out for him. The poet’s rebellious, authoritative voice electrifies scenes from childhood while exploring themes of mixed-race identity, queerness, and belonging. Can you recall a childhood memory that, in hindsight, is tied to your identity? Write a poem that captures this scene in which you see a latent part of yourself on display. Try to draw a line, as Shanahan does, connecting your past self to your present self.
