We found nearly four dozen excellent free poetry and prose contests with deadlines between May 15-June 30. This issue features e.e. cummings' "i thank You God for most this amazing" from Julian Peters' newly published Nature Poems to See By. Annie Mydla's column explores how to pump up your book's Page-Turning Energy.

Subscriber David Haddad has a warning about two self-publishing companies that gave him poor service. If you have a tip, recommendation, or warning, please email it to info@winningwriters.com.

Winning Writers Makes the "101 Best" List for 2026!
Winning Writers is one of the Writer's Digest "101 Best Websites for Writers" once again. Thanks for your nominations! This is our tenth appearance on this list (2015-2019, 2022-2026). The complete list of the 101 Best Websites appears in Writer's Digest's May/June 2026 issue. You can buy the digital edition in WD's shop.

Next Deadline
NORTH STREET BOOK PRIZE
Deadline: July 1. 12th year. Cash awards totaling $23,500, including a top award of $10,000. Many additional benefits from our co-sponsors. This year's categories: Mainstream/Literary Fiction, Genre Fiction, Creative Nonfiction & Memoir, Inspirational/Self-Help (new!), Poetry, Children's Picture Book, Middle Grade, Graphic Novel & Memoir, and Art Book. Accepting hybrid-published as well as self-published books. Fee: $95 per entry. All entrants who submit online via Submittable can choose to receive a brief commentary from one of the judges (5-10 sentences) at no extra charge. See the previous winners and enter here.

View past newsletters in our archives. Need assistance? Let us help. Join our 65,000 followers on Facebook and Bluesky. Advertise with us, starting at $20.

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Congratulations to Jason Prokowiew, Deborah Majors, Stephen Billias, Noah Berlatsky, Lesléa Newman, Ranjith Sivaraman, Ana M. Mahomar, Louisa Prince, Rosetta Dorsa, Patricia Lee Lewis, Eileen P. Kennedy, Michael Bondhus, and Robert L. Giron.

Learn about our subscribers' achievements and see links to samples of their work.

Have news? Please email it to jendi@winningwriters.com.

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NBCC and Lambda Literary Award finalist Joseph Osmundson chronicles his journey toward and away from parenthood to ask how we create and nurture queer families. He will be joined in conversation by Andrea Lawlor and Jendi Reiter. This free event will take place at 7pm on June 17 at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Learn more and RSVP here.

Since grade school, Joseph Osmundson dreamed of being pregnant. As he grew into the queer scientist he is today, the economic precarity of academia and the warming planet led to his decision not to reproduce. That is, until a couple he had known since college, two women, came to him with a proposition: would Joe be a bio-dad and would he co-parent alongside them?

Pre-order Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood.

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Deadline: May 31

• Judge: Kim Addonizio
• Prize: $1,000 and print publication by Two Sylvias Press, 20 copies of the winning book, and an amethyst Depression-era glass trophy (circa 1930)

The Two Sylvias Press Poetry Chapbook Prize is open to all poets (previously published or not). Manuscripts should be 17-24 pages long. Simultaneous submissions are accepted. All manuscripts will be considered for publication.

Kim Addonizio has authored over a dozen books of poetry and prose, most recently the poetry collection Exit Opera (W.W. Norton). Her collection Tell Me was a National Book Award finalist. Her honors include NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, and her work has been widely translated and anthologized. She teaches poetry workshops on Zoom.

Past Winners: Benjamin S. Grossberg, Zachary Kluckman, Andrew Robin, Majda Gama, Saúl Hernández, Meg Griffitts, Cecilia Woloch, Jasmine An, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Hiwot Adilow, Stella Wong, and Christopher Salerno.

Created with the belief that great writing is good for the world, Two Sylvias Press is an award-winning publisher that has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, NPR, and other noted outlets. It offers the Weekly Muse, a project to help poets write and publish more poems.

Click here for full guidelines for the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize

Thank you for your support of our indie press during this time! Looking forward to reading your poems!

PTE is not just for thrillers. Every successful narrative gives readers reasons to keep reading. I find it practical to talk about two main sources of page-turning energy. Questions make readers keep reading to get answers. Pleasurability gives readers something they'll keep reading to get more of. Building both into a manuscript creates unstoppable PTE. Read on.

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Deadline: June 15

Poet Hunt 31, judged by Nandi Comer, 2023–2025 Michigan Poet Laureate, awards $500 and publication to one Grand Prize winner, with up to two Honorable Mentions also recognized. All entrants will receive a copy of the issue that includes the winning poems.

Send up to 5 poems per $15 entry fee. Each poem should begin on a new page.

To preserve the anonymous review process, please only include your name, address (for mailing of your complimentary issue), and email (for the winner's announcement) on the cover page.

Enter via Submittable or mail your materials to: The MacGuffin • Attn: Poet Hunt 31 • 18600 Haggerty Road • Livonia, MI 48152. Please make checks out to Schoolcraft College.

See the complete rules.

Deadline: July 1—Sponsored by Winning Writers

There are lots of book contests to choose from. Here is why North Street is one of the best for your self-published or hybrid-published book:

Large cash prizes: $10,000 for the grand prize, $1,000 for each category winner. $500 for the honorable mention in each category.

Bonus awards: Winners receive additional services from Atmosphere Press, Book Award Pro, BookBaby, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Gatekeeper Press, Laura Duffy Design, Self-Publishing Made Simple, and Winning Writers to help market their books.

Feedback: Everyone who enters online can choose to receive a brief commentary from one of the judges (5-10 sentences) at no extra charge. This feedback is a popular feature!

Free gifts: All contestants receive free gifts from our co-sponsors.

Reasonable entry fee: $95 per book. Some other contests charge $100, $125, even $150.

No need to enter multiple categories: Choose one category for your book. If our judges feel it will do better in another category, they will reassign it.

Flexible criteria: Submit books published in any year, on any self-publishing or hybrid-publishing platform.

Pro-author attitude: Submit a non-qualifying book by mistake? A duplicate entry? We'll refund your fee.

Transparent: We have nine judges. Read about them on our guidelines page.

Lasting, in-depth publicity: With some contests, it's hard to find out much about past winners beyond the author's name and the book title. At Winning Writers, we publicize our winners through our website, in our newsletter (50,000+ subscribers), and in our social media channels (including 65,000+ Facebook followers). Our North Street contest archives feature critiques of the winning entries, excerpts from the books, and bios of the winners going back to the first contest in 2015.

No nickel-and-diming: Some contests charge winners for things like award seals. We provide those for free.

Recommended by industry leaders: The North Street Book Prize is recommended by Reedsy and the Alliance of Independent Authors. Winning Writers itself is one of the "101 Best Websites for Writers" (Writer's Digest, 2026).

Submit online via Submittable or by mail. Click to learn more about our contest.

Subscriber David Haddad writes,
"Two self-publishing companies that have been an absolute nightmare for me are American Publishers and Spark Leaf Publishing [not to be confused with IngramSpark - eds.] They said they could help me get my books on Amazon KDP. Turns out they knew nothing about formatting or grammar. They had no clue what my book was about. American Publishers misspelled the title of my book and couldn't find the error even after I told them it was on the cover. There were inconsistent fonts, blank pages, and wrongly formatted dialogue. Incredible misunderstandings and delays. I ended up asking for my money back from both of them."

Have a tip, recommendation, or warning? Please email it to us at info@winningwriters.com.

Deadline: Friday, July 3, 11:59pm Eastern US Time

Last time we checked, 77% of web-based fiction magazines pay their fiction writers nothing.

So did 60% of print-only fiction magazines!

If you'd like to try getting paid for your fiction, why not consider us? Since 2006, On The Premises magazine has aimed to promote newer and/or relatively unknown writers who can write creative, compelling stories told in effective, uncluttered, and evocative prose. We've never charged a reading fee or publication fee, and we pay between $75 and $250 for short stories that fit each issue's broad story premise. We publish stories in nearly every genre (literary/realist, mystery, light/dark fantasy, light/hard sci-fi, slipstream) aimed at readers older than 12 (no children's fiction).

The premise for our latest contest is "LESS".

For this contest, write a creative, compelling, well-crafted story in which one or more characters are trying to make something—anything—smaller in some way. Trying to change their behaviors ("I will ____ less") or their weight counts, and so does inventing a way to make something faster ("this process will take less time"). So does inventing a shrink ray.

In the spirit of the contest premise, you get less space to work with this time. Stories for this contest must be between 1,000 and 3,000 words long. Usually, you can go as long as 5,000 words, but not this time! This time you must work with LESS! One entry per author. No fee for entering.

No fiction aimed at readers younger than 12, no exploitative sex, no over-the-top grossout horror. Also, no stories that are obvious parodies of existing fictional worlds/characters created by other authors. (For the same reason, we do not accept "fan fiction".) Follow those rules and we'll take anything from the most super-realistic literary drama to crazy farces (real-world or otherwise) to any variant of science fiction or fantasy you can imagine. Read our past issues and you'll see!

Entry Fee: None.

Prizes: In US dollars, $250 for first place, $200 for second, $150 for third, and $75 for honorable mention.

Story Length: Between 1,000 and 3,000 words (three thousand is the limit for this contest only!)

Expected Publication Date: On or around Sunday, August 16, 2026. We will notify authors if the publication date changes significantly.

You can find details and instructions for submitting your story here. To be informed when new contests are launched, subscribe to our free, short, monthly newsletter by using the text box at the bottom of our home page.

Cheryl J. Fish, professor, editor, and author of several full-length poetry collections, chapbooks, and numerous poems published in journals, anthologies, and features, will read and offer supportive feedback for your poetry manuscript (44-80 pages of poems). Our service is best for collections that:

• Are written with commercial intent: finding a publisher, or maximizing sales in a self- or hybrid-publishing context
• Feel "stuck" or lack direction
• Keep getting rejected, but it's not clear what to do about it
• Lack a distinct style, voice, or overly rely on rhyme
• Contain poems that do not fully draw on poetic technique, such as figurative language and appealing to the senses
• Might contain dated, clichéd, or exploitative content, which the author wants help in identifying and removing

Learn more and order a critique today for $299. We guarantee your satisfaction!

Deadline: July 15

The annual Rattle Poetry Prize celebrates its 21st year with a 1st prize of $15,000 for a single poem. Ten finalists will also receive $500 each and publication, and be eligible for the $5,000 Readers' Choice Award, to be selected by subscriber and entrant vote. All of these poems will be published in the winter issue of the magazine.

With the winners judged in an anonymized review by the editors to ensure a fair and consistent selection, an entry fee that is simply a one-year subscription to the magazine—and a large Readers' Choice Award to be chosen by the writers themselves—we've designed the Rattle Poetry Prize to be one of the most inspiring contests around.

Past winners have included a retired teacher, a lawyer, and several students. It's fair, it's friendly, and you receive a print subscription to Rattle even if you don't win.

We accept entries online via Submittable. See Rattle's website for the complete guidelines and to read all of the past winners.

Please enjoy one of last year's finalist poems by Luisa Muradyan, published in Rattle #90, Winter 2025:

Paris

Sitting in the cafeteria at Costco, I break apart
my croissant slowly. In this rare moment
I am alone and imagine I am at a cafe
where the Eiffel Tower does the magical
thing that the Eiffel Tower always does
in movies about carefree love and wine
and fromage, where the characters might be
clumsy but in an endearing way and everyone
is hot in an objective way but I am
in my sweatpants and haven't showered in
days and I am not there for perfume but
for the family-sized package of children's Motrin
and you are back home ladling soup
and firing up the thermometer that blazes
red, which is an indication of desire and yes
there is a river of puke in the hallway that rivals
the canals and yes the snot on our toddler's face
has crystallized like the rim of a crème brûlée
but I still want you to meet me at the Champs-Élysées
and tuck a flower into my hair despite the fact that it
has been in a ponytail for weeks. Let us ride
down this street together for just a little
while longer, and remark about how the air smells
like freshly baked bread and when I get home
we can open this box of croissants and pretend
that the hallway covered in crayons
is a new exhibition at the Louvre and the stack
of dishes resembles the Arc de Triomphe
because one day we will go to Paris and stand
inside of Notre Dame and be amazed at how
much a toy car that is left on a prayer bench
reminds us of home, our own cathedral
that we built brick by metaphorical
brick alongside our untrained artists who know
nothing of Monet but everything about the color of
the sunset on the Seine that in this light
looks exactly like the orange cold
medicine in this plastic cup
that you hold in your hand.

Some contests are best suited to writers at the early stages of their careers. Others are better for writers with numerous prizes and publications to their credit. Here is this month's selection of Spotlight Contests for your consideration:

Emerging Writers
Indie Author Project Annual Contest. The American Library Association will award a top prize of $2,500, plus $500 prizes in each genre, for self-published, hybrid, and indie prose books by US or Canadian authors in the following genres: mystery/thriller, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, historical fiction, general/contemporary fiction, memoir, or YA. Enter online. No limit on publication date. Must be received by May 31.

Intermediate Writers
Blessing the Boats Selections. BOA Editions will award a $1,500 honorarium and publication with a standard royalties package to a US woman poet of color for a book-length manuscript, between 65-120 pages. Cis, trans, and nonbinary people who are "comfortable in a space that centers on women's experiences" are encouraged to enter. Must be received by June 15 (new deadline).

Advanced Writers
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Claremont Graduate University will award $100,000 for a published book of poetry by a US citizen or legal resident. This award is presented for a full-length work by a poet who is past the very beginning but has not yet reached the acknowledged pinnacle of their career. Books must have been published between July 1 of last year and June 30 of the deadline year. Winner must agree to spend a week in residence at Claremont Graduate University for lectures, workshops, and poetry readings in Claremont, CA and the greater Los Angeles area. Send 8 copies of book and entry form from website. Must be postmarked by July 1.

See more Spotlight Contests for emerging, intermediate, and advanced writers within The Best Free Literary Contests database.

Winning Writers finds open submission calls and free contests in a variety of sources, including Erika Dreifus' Practicing Writer newsletter, FundsforWriters, Erica Verrillo's blog, Authors Publish, Lit Mag News Roundup, Poets & Writers, The Writer, Duotrope, and literary journals' own newsletters and announcements.

• Audi Locus: "Yawp" Issue
(poetry and artwork about "the unfiltered sound of being alive" - May 31)

• The Metaworker
(poetry, prose, comics, artwork, audiovisual work, translations - May 31)

• Tint Journal: "Nurture" Issue
(creative writing on this theme by non-native English speakers - May 31)

• Mslexia: "Gold" Issue
(poems and stories by women on this theme - June 8)

• Superpresent: "Mapping" Issue
(poetry, prose, artwork, multimedia pieces on this theme - June 15)

• Mom Egg Review: 25th Anniversary Issue
(poetry, fiction, essays, and artwork about motherhood - July 15)

• Tiny Spoon Lit Mag: "Weathering" Issue
(experimental creative writing on resilience and mutual care - July 31)

This month, editor Jendi Reiter presents selected books that deserve your attention. There are many more in our Books resource section.

Alex Alberto
ENTWINED: ESSAYS ON POLYAMORY AND CREATING HOME
Literary form and subject matter are in sync in this eclectic memoir-in-essays by a nonbinary, polyamorous Canadian writer. In vignettes, thought experiments, and even a short play, Alberto recounts the gifts that their various relationships brought, without shying away from the challenges of putting together a found-family outside of mainstream roles and hierarchies.

Subhaga Crystal Bacon
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MY SEX LIFE
This lyrical, sensual autobiography in poems combines a mature voice and a youthful openness to self-transformation at any age. Bacon embraces queer elderhood as a strong and spacious container to hold what is difficult, from late-in-life recovered abuse memories, to the oppression of those who exceed the gender binary. Notwithstanding these wounds, this collection celebrates the body as our first resource for playfulness and pleasure.

torrin a. greathouse
DEED
A virtuoso of poetic form, greathouse is the inventor of the burning haibun, which uses erasure on the prose-poem section to excavate the closing haiku from its text. So, too, she has carved and sculpted a truer identity for herself as a trans woman who writes frankly about disability, sex work, and police brutality, but also about sacred intimacy and solidarity.

Nora Hikari
STILL MY FATHER'S SON
A blazing poetry collection, prophetic in the sense of speaking divine judgment against abusers, this book also holds an immense tenderness for all parts of the trauma-fractured self now coexisting as a system. Hikari writes her own theology to rename herself and God in language that no longer oppresses.

Garret Keizer
STARTING FROM PATERSON
This memoir-in-essays offers an antidote to the aggressive, cartoonish versions of American masculinity currently on display in our public square. A cultural commentator, poet, and former English teacher and Episcopal priest, Keizer traces his spiritual formation back to his New Jersey roots. His vision expands outward from his modest family life to such topics as labor history, the dangerous temptations of consumer capitalism, and the meaning of time in old age.

Daniel M. Lavery
MEETING NEW PEOPLE
A domestic comedy that takes a turn into spiritual examination of conscience, this witty novel is narrated by a middle-aged food-service worker in Brooklyn who is reeling from her ninth best-friend breakup. As it turns out, the rules for female socialization are not as explicit or reliable as The Joy of Cooking, but that doesn't stop her from trying to explain them to herself and the lucky reader who overhears her interior monologue.

Patricia Lee Lewis
THORNS OF THE MESQUITE
In this historical novel, a West Texas rancher's wife in 1938 builds an alliance to break the Klan's hold on her town. Poetically written, this story has a lot of heart and a rich sense of place. Difficult emotional topics such as racism, sexual assault, and domestic violence are held in a container of natural beauty and the coziness of home.

Comic artist Julian Peters offers a fresh twist on 24 famous poems in a stunning anthology about our relationship with the natural world. Available in ebook and hardcover formats. Order from the publisher or Amazon.

Please enjoy this poem from the book:

Read the text of this poem at Art & Theology.

Here's a prose poem from Introvert Pervert, my new collection from The Word Works. It's on sale at The Poetry Shop.

Doo Doo Doula

Over a bad connection my brother-of-choice says he's hired a burping coach. AirPods and parental instincts aren't all they're cracked up to be. In different ways we're motherless. Babies at midlife. My child's eleven now and his is negative seven months. He was better than me at calculus. I can see why we'd need training to be monkeys. To suckle and cleanse, to be better than wire dummies. A burping coach would tell us how hard to stroke the baby so it makes room in its body for food instead of noise. Decide when it's time for the baby to stop looking back over our shoulder at the dark bliss it came from and be reconciled to its human bed. My brother articulates No. A birthing coach, laughing. What does one do? Assemble the team that substitutes for your family. Accompany the push. Now you breathe. Now you bathe a small life without drowning.

Jendi Reiter is the editor of Winning Writers. Visit their website.