We found over four dozen excellent free poetry and prose contests with deadlines between March 15-April 30. In this issue, please enjoy the fourth installment of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot, illustrated by Julian Peters.
Last Call!
WERGLE FLOMP HUMOR POETRY CONTEST - NO FEE
Deadline: April 1. 21st year. $3,500 in prizes, including a top award of $2,000. Final judge: Jendi Reiter. Both unpublished and previously published work accepted. See last year's winners and enter here.
Deadline Next Month
TOM HOWARD/JOHN H. REID FICTION & ESSAY CONTEST
Deadline: April 30. 30th year. $8,000 in prizes, including two top awards of $3,000 each. Fee: $20 per entry. Judge: Mina Manchester. Both unpublished and previously published work accepted. See last year's winners and enter here.
Coming in next month's newsletter: We'll announce the winners of our 19th annual Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. View past newsletters in our archives. Need assistance? Let us help. Join our 135,000 followers on Twitter and find us on Facebook. Advertise with us, starting at $40.
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NEW DEADLINE: March 31
$1,000 Fiction | $1,000 Nonfiction | $1,000 Poetry
Regular entry fee: $15 | All-Access entry fee: $30
Submit one piece of fiction or nonfiction up to 8,500 words or up to 10 pages of poems. Enter online or by mail. Winners receive a cash prize, publication, promotion, and a celebration in their honor. Submit stories, poems, and essays that engage in evocative ways with health and medicine. All entries considered for publication.
Each entrant receives a one-year subscription to the Missouri Review in digital format (normal price $24). All-Access entrants receive the same subscription plus access to the last decade of TMR digital issues, which are accompanied by audio recordings of each issue's features. Learn more here. Check out the prizewinners and finalists from last year's contest here. Winners will be announced in late 2022.
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Congratulations to Samantha Terrell, Alice McVeigh, Chris Stark, James A. Ross, Mark Scheel, Ryan Poirier, Nancy Shiffrin, Naila Moreira, Mark Fleisher (featured poem: "Navigation"), and Gail Thomas.
Winning Writers Editor Jendi Reiter will be reading from their new poetry collection, Made Man (Little Red Tree Publishing), with Steven Riel, launching his new collection, Edgemere (Lily Poetry Review Books), on Saturday, April 9, at 7:00pm at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York City. Sign up on EventBrite. The event will also be livestreamed on the Bureau's YouTube channel and recorded for later viewing.
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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Atmosphere authors have sold thousands of books across five continents, received starred or featured reviews with Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, and have even appeared on a giant billboard in Times Square. Atmosphere has had books with 1,000+ first-month sales in four different genres, and their Author Connect program unites their authors with each other like no other press. And they're just getting started.
Atmosphere Press currently seeks great manuscripts, and they'll be the publisher you've always wanted: attentive, organized, on schedule, and professional. They use a model in which the author funds the initial publication of the book, but retains 100% rights, royalties, and artistic autonomy. From an exceptional editorial team through book design and into promotion, partnering with Atmosphere is the way to do your book right.
So, send your manuscript their way. Submissions are free and open to everyone and in all genres.
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Rolling deadline
Rattle is proud to announce Prairie Moon Dalton's "Grandmother", which appeared in issue #72, is the winner of the 2022 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor.
We established the Neil Postman Award for Metaphor in honor and remembrance of Neil Postman, who died on October 5, 2003. The intention of the award is simple and two-fold: to reward a given writer for their use of metaphor, and to celebrate (and, hopefully, propagate) Postman's work and the typographical mind.
Each year, the editors choose one poem that was published from regular submissions to Rattle during the previous year. There are no entry fees or submission guidelines involved. The author of the chosen poem receives $2,000.
For more information and to read all fifteen previous winners, please visit the award's webpage. To submit your own poems, choose any free submission option on our Submittable page.
GRANDMOTHER
by Prairie Moon Dalton
Georgia was hot and she was so small
she slept inside a dresser drawer.
Hair like gossamer, legs like a bird's.
When she was eight a movie was eight
cents. When she was eight she watched
her brother kill her sister
with a metal license plate.
Now she is flesh folded heavy
against a chair, TV flashing
pale on the trailer's walls.
Her pictures, pills, jewelry
surrounding her like treasure.
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First Prize, Graphic Novel & Memoir, 2021 North Street Book Prize
A superhero origin story about a group of wannabe heroes who find their powers (and problems) at the bottom of a bottle of contaminated fruit juice.
When a disgruntled employee at a fruit juice factory contaminates a new product with a secret formula for their diabolical means, it accidentally results in a city-wide supernatural outbreak! It's up to the factory's owner and a new team of amateur heroes to save Maple City and stop the superpowered pandemic from spreading beyond its borders.
In this comedic satire take on the superhero genre, with an anthropomorphic cast of characters, The Herd is a fun and easy read for any age.
Read an excerpt from The Herd (PDF)
Read the Winning Writers critique
#followtheherd to accidentalcreations.ca!
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Back by popular demand: Write 30 new poems for NaPoWriMo!
Celebrate National Poetry Month with 30 NEW prompts delivered directly to your inbox each day in April from Two Sylvias Press.
Each prompt is a small paragraph, guiding you with ideas and suggestions for a new poem. Write a poem a day or save up your prompts until the weekend and have a marathon writing session. Use these prompts according to your own schedule. Write at home or on the go—you just need access to your email. (Each prompt will be sent to you in a PDF).
Below is an example from last year's April poetry prompts:
CLICK HERE to learn more & sign up for our April Poetry Prompts to be sent to you!
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Winner of the Grand Prize in the 2021 North Street Book Prize competition
Three years of war.
Forty years of silence.
Thirty years of forgetting.
One day of remembering.
Inheriting Our Names portrays a family trauma inherited from the Spanish Civil War, suppressed from memory, and passed through successive generations and across continents until one woman returns to Seville to reconstruct—and reclaim—her family's history. A richly layered and lush exploration of transgenerational trauma, grief, and release.
"I love that this book is described as 'an imagined true memoir' and, indeed, it is both searingly honest and richly imagined. I was utterly engrossed by this lyrical, profound story of secrets and revelations, trauma and transformation, and am so glad to have discovered this writer."
—Abigail DeWitt, author of three novels: Lili (WW Norton), Dogs (Lorimer Press), and News of our Loved Ones
"An intensely rich and beautiful book written with the poetic touch of a writer whose heart unmistakably beats with Andalusian blood. This is a story of grief and pain, but also of healing and identity, of three women separated by time and war who weave together in a stunningly passionate examination of hidden history and its effects on the past, present, and future."
—SPR Publishing Review
Read an excerpt from Inheriting Our Names (PDF)
Read the Winning Writers critique
Buy now from Amazon and other fine booksellers worldwide.
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Deadline: March 27
Every year The Masters Review opens submissions to produce our anthology, a collection of ten stories and essays written by the best emerging authors. Our aim is to showcase ten writers who we believe will continue to produce great work. The ten winners are nationally distributed in a printed book with their stories and essays exposed to top agents, editors, and authors across the country. Our third volume was awarded the Silver Medal for Best Short Story Collection through the INDIEFAB Awards in 2015, and our fourth volume was an honorable mention for best anthology.
Emerging Writers Only. Writers must not have published a novel-length work at the time of submission (authors of short story collections and self-published titles can submit as can authors with novels or memoirs with a low distribution—about 5,000 copies)
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10 winners will receive $500 each and publication
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Submit unpublished works of fiction and narrative nonfiction
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Up to 7,000 words
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$20 fee per entry
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Submit here via Submittable
Our Judge
Peter Ho Davies' most recent books are the novel A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself and his first work of nonfiction, The Art of Revision: The Last Word. Other books include the novels, The Fortunes, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and The Welsh Girl, long-listed for the Booker Prize, as well as two acclaimed collections of short stories. His fiction has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and Granta and been anthologized in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories.
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Deadline for short stories and articles: March 31—last call!
Deadline for book-length submissions: August 31
Eaton Literary Agency has been helping authors since 1984. Our Annual Awards Program attracts quality manuscripts that we can present to publishers on behalf of our authors. We award an annual prize of $2,500 for book-length work (10,000+ words) and $500 for short stories and articles (fewer than 10,000 words).
Entries may be fiction or nonfiction, and must be unpublished. To enter, please email your submission as an attachment in .doc, .docx, or .pdf format to eatonlit@aol.com. Alternately, you may mail a printed copy of your work to Eaton Literary Agency, P.O. Box 49795, Sarasota, FL 34230.
Winners will be notifed in the month after the contest deadline. For more information, please visit our website.
Testimonials from our clients:
"I have been trying for a long time to put my ideas on paper. Using Eaton Literary was the best move I have made. Richard Lawrence and his staff have been instrumental in getting me a publisher for one of my books. Mr. Lawrence has used his considerable talent and contacts in the industry to find me an excellent and generous contract with a highly respected publisher.
"He and his staff have shown a great amount of patience in dealing with my struggles. His method of having the books edited is praiseworthy. I have learned a lot from his letters and comments. A pleasure to deal with an honest man who delivers what he advertises. No false promises, no rush jobs.
"Eaton Literary spells out all requirements in their contracts and letters. Nothing is left to doubt, unlike some I have heard of. This is refreshing. I honestly believe, if given the chance, this company could represent you very well if you are able to meet their requirements."
—J.H.
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Deadline: April 1
The 44th annual Nimrod Literary Awards—the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction—are open. The Awards offer first prizes of $2,000 and publication and second prizes of $1,000 and publication. Winners will also take part in a virtual Awards Ceremony and Reading in fall 2022. All finalists and selected semi-finalists will be published at a rate of $10 per page up to $200.
Guidelines:
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Poetry: 3-10 pages
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Fiction: 7,500 words maximum
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Fee Per Entry: $20 payable to Nimrod, includes a one-year subscription
No previously published works or works accepted for publication elsewhere. Author's name must not appear on the manuscript. Include a cover sheet containing major title(s), author's name, full address, phone, and email. Entries may be mailed to Nimrod or submitted online. Open to international submissions.
For complete rules, visit Nimrod's website.
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Postmark deadline: April 15
Now in its 29th year, all Dancing Poetry Festival prize winners will receive a prize certificate suitable for framing, a ticket to the 2022 Dancing Poetry Festival at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and an invitation to read their prizewinning poem at the festival. (The festival may be held online if circumstances require.)
Three Grand Prizes will receive $100 each plus their poems will be danced and filmed. Many smaller prizes. Each Grand Prize winner will be invited onstage for photo ops with the dancers and a bow in the limelight.
See video and pictures from our Dancing Poetry Festivals that show the vast diversity of poetry and dance we present each year. For poetry, we look for something new and different including new twists to old themes, different looks at common situations, and innovative concepts for dynamic, thought-provoking entertainment. Please do not feel constrained to submit a poem about dancing. The entry fee is just $5 for one poem and $10 for three. We look forward to reading your submissions. See the complete contest rules and enjoy "The Beauty Road" by Cynthia West, winner of a Grand Prize in 2021.
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Deadline: May 1
DECEMBER MAGAZINE seeks submissions for our 2022 Curt Johnson Prose Awards in fiction and creative nonfiction. Prizes each genre—$1,500 & publication (winner); $500 & publication (honorable mention). All finalists will be listed in the 2022 Fall/Winter awards issue. $20 entry fee includes a copy of the awards issue. Submit one story or essay up to 8,000 words.
For complete guidelines and judge information visit our website.
december magazine was founded in Iowa City in 1958 by a group of poets, writers, and artists who declared, "We are humanists…far more concerned with people than dogmatic critical or aesthetic attitudes." december was a pioneer in the "little" magazine and small press movement, publishing cutting-edge fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and art. By 1962, the founding editors had left Iowa City; one of them, Jeff Marks, took december to Chicago and turned it over to Curt Johnson, an award-winning short story writer and novelist. Johnson edited and published december for the next 46 years until his death in 2008.
december's writers who published their first or very early work in the journal include:
• 5 U.S. Poets Laureate
• 6 Pulitzer Prize winners
• 8 National Book Award winners
• 3 National Book Critics Circle Award winners
• 6 state poets laureate
• 9 Guggenheim fellows
• 10 NEA fellows
• 3 Poet's Prize winners
• 5 O. Henry Award winners (totaling 10 awards)
• 2 Pen/Faulkner Award winners
• 3 Pushcart Prize winners
• 5 selections in Best American Short Stories
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Deadline: May 5, 2022 | No entry fee
Submissions are now being accepted for Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, the annual climate fiction contest from Fix, Grist's solutions lab. There is no fee to enter. Submit your short story by May 5, 2022 at 11:59 p.m. PST.
Imagine 2200 seeks original short stories of 3,000 to 5,000 words that envision the next 180 years of clean, green, and just futures. Judges include Hugo Award-winning writer Arkady Martine, esteemed editor and author Sheree Renée Thomas, and professor Grace L. Dillon, who coined the term "Indigenous futurism". Imagine 2200 draws inspiration from Afrofuturism, as well as Indigenous,
Latinx, Asian, disabled, feminist, and queer futures, and the genres of hopepunk and solarpunk.
While we're looking for hopeful stories, we also don't expect you to be overly optimistic or naive. One hundred and eighty years of equitable climate progress will require hard work, struggle, and adaptation, and we invite you to show those as well.
In addition, we're especially interested in cultural authenticity (a deep sense of place, customs, cuisine, and more), rich characters with intersecting identities, and stories that challenge the status quo in which wealth and power are built on extraction, oppression, and violence.
The top three winners will be awarded $3,000, $2,000, and $1,000 respectively, and nine finalists will receive a $300 honorarium. Those 12 authors will be published in an immersive digital collection this fall. Conjure your wildest dreams for society—all the justice, resilience, and abundance you can imagine—and put those dreams on paper.
There's no fee to enter, so if you're ready to get writing, you can find our submissions portal here. If you'd like to get in touch, you can reach us at imaginefiction@grist.org.
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Submit by the early-bird deadline of May 1 for a reduced entry fee.
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Deadline: May 15
 MoonPath Press, an imprint of Concrete Wolf, will award $2,500 and publication to a poet who lives in Alaska, Oregon, or Washington. Our judge is poet Alice Derry.
Submit a manuscript of 60-80 pages of poems without any identifying information. Simultaneous and multiple submissions are accepted. Fee: $10. Enter online at Submittable.
All entrants will receive a copy of Sally Albiso's collection Moonless Grief. The winner will be announced in July 2022 and published late fall 2022. In addition to prize money the winner will receive 50 copies of their published collection. All manuscripts will be considered for publication.
This award honors the exquisite poetry of MoonPath Press author Sally Albiso who passed away in 2019. The award is endowed by her husband John Albiso. Learn more and see the complete contest guidelines at the MoonPath website.
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Deadline: May 18
This exclusive contest is open only to previously published authors with at least one writing/poetry award. We will invite five poets to showcase up to 20 poems each in our 2022 Poetry Masters Anthology. Submit 5-20 of your best poems in one MS Word document. Fee: $40.
Prizes: TROPHY, CASH, AND PUBLICATION
1st: $1,000
2nd: $500
3rd: $250
4th: $125
5th: $125
Visit OPRELLE for details.
Oprelle is a publishing company committed to providing a platform to otherwise unknown or unheard-from creatives. Our mission is to share the works of those who are growing and rising in the poetry, art, and written word realms. Through ongoing contests, we provide resources and exposure for poets, artists, and authors. We hope to inspire new talents to press forward with their extraordinary gifts.
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Deadline: July 1
Bellevue Literary Review's annual prizes recognize exceptional writing about health, healing, illness, the body, and the mind.
• Goldenberg Prize for Fiction
Judged by Toni Jensen
• Felice Buckvar Prize for Nonfiction
Judged by Rana Awdish
• John and Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry
Judged by Phillip B. Williams
Each prize offers a $1,000 First Prize and $250 Honorable Mention. Winners and honorable mentions will be published in the Spring 2023 issue of BLR.
Poetry: 3 poems per submission
Fiction and Nonfiction: 5,000 words maximum
Only previously unpublished work will be considered.
Entry fee $20.
Visit BLR's website for complete guidelines.
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Tom Sheehan, winner of our first prize for poetry in our 2021 North Street Book Prize competition, would like to share with you this article he published in the Boston Sunday Globe this past December, "A secondhand wagon for Christmas, and a gift that came later" (PDF).
Recalling his childhood in the Depression, Tom writes, "I was the family hunter for coal chunks fallen from Boston & Maine Railroad tenders, and that wagon began to accompany me on my scrounging adventures along the tracks. I headed out when the coal box beside the kitchen stove of our third-floor apartment was near empty, chills in the air. I learned you had to fight for survival head-on."
Tom has also made his award-winning volume, The Saugus Book, free for your private reading. Download it here (PDF, 135 pages, please be patient) and read our critique.
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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
Gwenn A. Nusbaum/WWBA "Poets to Come" Award. The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association will award a $1,500 scholarship to a US citizen ages 25-35 who is "at the beginning of their career" and "demonstrates a scholastic or pre-professional track of outstanding poetic writing". The award must be used for "supportive activities to further the winner's writing career" ( e.g. college tuition/fees, writing courses, workshops, conferences, and retreats). Before submitting, read sponsor's full terms and conditions. Enter online. Submit a poetry sample (ten poems, one chapbook, OR five poems to illustrate a narrative of your autobiographical statement), a cover letter that includes a statement of intent for your professional writing
goals and your expenditure plans for the scholarship funds, as well as a 3-page resume/CV. Due April 4.
Intermediate Writers
Rabbi Sacks Book Prize. Yeshiva University will award $50,000 for a published nonfiction book that contributes significantly to the arena of modern Jewish thought and heightens awareness of issues pertaining to the intersection of faith and modernity. Themes may include Jewish thought and philosophy, ethics, Jewish history, Jewish education, Jewish identity, contemporary Jewish practice and sociology, Jewish peoplehood, Israel from a religious perspective, or antisemitism. Due April 29.
Advanced Writers
Maya Angelou Book Award. The Kansas City Public Library will award $10,000 to a contemporary US author age 18+ whose published work "demonstrates a commitment to social justice in America and/or the world". Genre alternates between poetry and fiction. 2022 contest is for a work of fiction published this year or the previous year. Winner will participate in a two-week book tour of Missouri colleges, universities, and libraries. Due April 1.
See more Spotlight Contests for emerging, intermediate, and advanced writers within The Best Free Literary Contests database.
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Winning Writers finds open submission calls and free contests in a variety of sources, including Erika Dreifus' Practicing Writer newsletter, FundsforWriters, Trish Hopkinson's blog, Erica Verrillo's blog, Authors Publish, Lambda Literary, Lit Mag News Roundup, Poets & Writers, The Writer, Duotrope, Submittable, and literary journals' own newsletters and announcements.
• Yellow Arrow Journal: "UpSpring" Issue
(poetry, essays, and art on this theme by women-identified writers - March 31)
• Flowers & Vortexes
(poetry and art - April 4)
• Rattle: "Tribute to Translation" Issue
(poetry translated into English - April 15)
• Sequestrum: "Desire" and "Optimism" Issues
(themed poetry, stories, essays - April 15)
• In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy
(Black Lawrence Press anthology call for innovative poems on grief - May 31)
• RHINO Poetry
(poems, translations, flash prose - June 30)
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Award-Winning Fiction & Nonfiction from Around the Web
This month, editor Jendi Reiter highlights fiction and nonfiction that have won recent prizes.
HEROIN CHIC
by Rebecca Bernard
Winner of the 2021 Non/Fiction Collection Prize
Entries must be received by March 11
This $1,500 award for a manuscript of short fiction, essays, or a combination of the two includes publication by Mad Creek Books, the trade imprint of Ohio State University Press. Bernard's Our Sister Who Will Not Die: Stories was the most recent winner. This relentlessly self-questioning essay holds space for both the romance and the sordidness of drug abuse, while acknowledging her privilege in walking away (mostly) unscathed.
COLLUVIUM
by Meredith Clark
Winner of the 2021 Sonora Review Essay Contest
Entries must be received by March 31
Sonora Review awards prizes of $1,000 each for a story and essay on an annual theme. The 2022 theme is "Rage". Clark's poetic, fragmentary piece about girlhood and trauma was the nonfiction winner for 2021's "Extinction" themed contest.
HUNGER
by Matthew Cheney
Winner of the 2014 Hudson Prize
Entries must be received by March 31
This long-running award from Black Lawrence Press gives $1,000 and publication for a collection of poetry or short stories. Cheney's prizewinning debut story collection, Blood: Stories, was published in 2016. In this haunting new story from The Dark magazine, an estranged daughter discovers—or imagines?—the horrifying way that her father has dealt with bereavement.
DEAR BARBIE ARM ON THE CORNER OF FIFTH AND MARKET
by Kelle Schillaci Clarke
Winner of the 2022 Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship for New Parents
Entries must be received by April 17
This fiction prize for writers with at least one child under age 10 awards $1,000, a year of mentorship, publication in Dreamers Creative Writing Magazine, and a reading at the Pen Parentis Literary Salon in New York City. In this evocative flash piece, a broken toy prompts the narrator to reflect on the heartache of raising a young girl under patriarchy and the threat of the pandemic.
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 The Transience and Greatness of Books
Given the fickleness and unpredictability of the literary life–like any life–Joseph Conrad advises the author to prioritize clear understanding, compassion, and the liberty of the imagination. Art is already dead when it merely serves to illustrate an ideological or aesthetic agenda.
Read more
Jendi Reiter is the editor of Winning Writers.
Follow Jendi on Twitter at @JendiReiter.
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