We found nearly three dozen excellent free poetry and prose contests with deadlines between August 15-September 30. In this issue, please enjoy the fourth set of three pages of "The Burial of the Dead" from "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot, illustrated by Julian Peters.
This month's Annie Mydla column consults with North Street Book Prize judge Ellen LaFleche on classist tropes we commonly see in contest entries, why they're harmful, and what to do about it.
 WERGLE FLOMP HUMOR POETRY CONTEST WINNERS
Congratulations to Robert Garnham, winner of our 2024 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest. "Torquay, 2 - The Other Team, 2" earned him $2,000 and a two-year gift certificate from Duotrope. We paired Mr. Garnham's poem with original art by Melody Iza.
We awarded runner-up Abbie Loosemore $500 for "Gregg's First Pizza Hut". Tim Eberle won Third Prize of $250 for "RoboBurger or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tech". Honorable mentions and $100 went to Caitlin C. Baker, Christy Hartman, John Hodgen, Jim Landwehr, A.J. Layague, Hailey Leithauser, Luisa Muradyan, Connor Paris, Eric Roy, Levi Stallings, Jennifer
Stephenson, and Tyler Vale. 6,846 contestants entered from around the world, a new record. See our press release and read all the winning entries with comments from final judge Jendi Reiter.
Special thanks to assistant judge Lauren Singer, who read all 6,000+ poems. Annie Mydla and her team helped with contest administration and employed Shutterstock AI to make illustrations for the poems by Abbie Loosemore and Tim Eberle. Shutterstock compensates contributors for their roles in the generative AI process.
Our 2025 contest is now open for entries. We will award top prizes of $2,000, $500, and $250. Our co-sponsor Duotrope will give the winner a two-year gift certificate (a $100 value) to go with their $2,000 prize. As always, this contest has no fee.
Open Now
TOM HOWARD/MARGARET REID POETRY CONTEST
22nd year. We will award $3,500 for a poem in any style or genre and $3,500 for a poem that rhymes or has a traditional style. Ten Honorable Mentions will receive $300 each (any style). The top 12 entries will be published online. The top two winners will also receive two-year gift certificates from our co-sponsor, Duotrope (a $100 value). Length limit: 250 lines per poem. Entry fee: $22 for a submission of 1-3 poems. Multiple submissions welcome. Final judge: Michal 'MJ' Jones, assisted by Briana Grogan and Dare Williams. Deadline: October 1.
Submit online here.
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Congratulations to Koss, Megan Williams, Julie Tallard Johnson, Mark S. Robinson, Aadil Farook, Joan Gelfand, Samantha Terrell, Eva Tortora, Gary Beck, Erika Dreifus, Wim Coleman, Pat Perrin, David Kherdian, Judy Juanita, and R.T. Castleberry.
Winning Writers contest judge Dare Williams will be teaching a free online workshop titled "Odd Fragments: Cento and Cut-up" at noon Eastern time on September 13, as part of Sarabande Books' "Zine Lunch" weekly workshop series. Register here for the Zoom link.
Steven Cordova's collaborative poem "The Coroner Is a Crooner: A Queer Exquisite Corpse" was published in June in the Los Angeles Review. Curated by Steven, this poem features lines contributed by 40 queer poets including Winning Writers editor Jendi Reiter and subscribers Michael Bondhus, Kevin Hinkle, Lesléa Newman, and Jeff Walt.
Learn about our subscribers' achievements and see links to samples of their work.
Have news? Please email it to jendi@winningwriters.com.
Do you use TikTok or Instagram? Send your news to the @winningwriters account so we can share it!
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Deadline: August 25
Here at The Masters Review, summer is the season for short stories. Since 2016, our Summer Short Story Award for New Writers has paired emerging writers with some of the industry's top literary agents. Past winners of this award include Nana Nkweti, Nick Fuller Googins, Katie M. Flynn, Reena Shah, Rachel Cochran, and Claire Boyles, several of whom earned representation from one of our partnered agents as a result of this contest.
We welcome submissions of previously unpublished fiction or creative nonfiction up to 6,000 words. This year's winners will be chosen by the acclaimed Colin Barrett (see below). Our contest runs from July 1 to August 25, 2024, and is open to any writer who has not published a novel or memoir with a major press. The first-place winner of this contest, selected by our guest judge, will receive a $3,000 grand prize, along with online publication. Second- and third-place winners will receive $300 and $200 respectively, along with online publication.
All finalists will receive agency review from our six partnered agencies. Participating agents include Nat Sobel from Sobel Weber, Victoria Cappello from The Bent Agency, Andrea Morrison from Writers House, Sarah Fuentes from United Talent Agency, Heather Schroder from Compass Talent, and Marin Takikawa from The Friedrich Agency.
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Submitted work must be previously unpublished. This includes personal blogs, social media accounts, and other websites. Previously published work will be automatically disqualified.
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The entry fee is $20.
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Simultaneous and multiple submissions are allowed, though each submission requires a $20 entry fee.
Guest judge Colin Barrett is a writer from Ireland. He is the author of the short story collections Young Skins and Homesickness, and a novel, Wild Houses. Homesickness was named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times and Young Skins won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. His work has been published in The New Yorker, A Public Space, Granta, and The Stinging Fly. In 2015, Barrett was named a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35".
Learn more and submit online via Submittable.
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Deadline: August 31
Tinderbox is pleased to announce our 2024 poetry prizes, the Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize and the Majda Gama Editors' Prize.
Tinderbox readers and editors will read submissions, 15 of which will be passed on to our judge for their final decision. The judge will select the winner of the Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize. In honor of Tinderbox's ten-year anniversary, this year's final judge is Jennifer Givhan, editor emeritus of Tinderbox Poetry Journal. The editors will select the Majda Gama Editors' Prize winner from the remaining finalists.
The winners of each prize will receive $500. The winners and all finalists will be published in our Winter Solstice issue in December.
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There are no limitations in form or content; we are interested in anything from traditional forms to free verse to lyric essay to flash fiction.
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No more than eight pages maximum per submission.
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The entry fee is $15 for three poems. For $20, you can opt to receive feedback on your submission.
Submit online via Submittable.
Our 2024 judge Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American poet from the Southern California border. Her full-length poetry collection Landscape with Headless Mama won the 2015 Pleiades Editors' Prize. Her second collection Protection Spell was chosen by Billy Collins for inclusion in the Miller Williams Poetry Series from University of Arkansas Press. Givhan received an NEA in poetry, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellowship, and a Latin@ Scholarship to The Frost Place. She's won poetry prizes from The Pinch Journal, The DASH Literary Journal, and The Blue Mesa Review. She earned her MFA from Warren Wilson College, her Master's from Cal State Fullerton, and her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2013, Best of the Net 2015, AGNI, POETRY, Boston Review, Southern Humanities Review, TriQuarterly, Kenyon Review, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Prairie
Schooner, Indiana Review, and others. She teaches online at Western New Mexico University and The Poetry Barn, and lives with her family beside the Sleeping Sister volcanoes.
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Deadline: September 2
WriterAdvice's Scintillating Starts Contest is back and better than ever. For a modest fee, everyone who submits will receive advice from B. Lynn Goodwin, a professional editor and writer.
"I will respond as if I were an agent seeking work in your genre, saying why I might take an interest in your submission or what (if anything) trips me up. As a writer, editor, and reviewer, I've seen what works and what doesn't. I consider what will be easy to sell to a publisher and what will be a challenge. I look for authenticity, originality, and reasons to keep reading."
Perks for you:
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If you're one of our winners, a part of your story, even a teaser like a pitch, will be published on our Winners Page if you give your permission. Agents will love that you've received this recognition. They'll consider your work more closely.
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If we publish your work, you will be financially compensated.
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If your work isn't quite there, you'll get tips on how to make it better.
Scintillating Starts is great preparation before you solicit agents to represent your work.
 Modest entry fees:
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Logline or pitch is $5
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Query letter is $10
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Opening (1,250 words or fewer) is $15
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Submit all 3 for $27 and save 10%
Learn more and see the submission instructions.
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When it comes to troubled representation in literature, classism is a top offender—and can be among the hardest to self-edit for. Class-discriminatory ideas are entrenched in our society and in our writing. Many of the books we judge in contests would have been stronger had class been brought into the open as an underlying condition, and its implications explored wherever they touched the plot and themes. North Street Book Prize judge Ellen LaFleche joins me to explore common classist assumptions and how to scour them out of your work.
Read the full column.
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Sponsored by Winning Writers
TOM HOWARD PRIZE: $3,500 for a poem in any style or genre
MARGARET REID PRIZE: $3,500 for a poem that rhymes
or has a traditional style
The top two winners will also receive two-year gift certificates from our co-sponsor, Duotrope (a $100 value)
Honorable Mentions: 10 awards of $300 each (any style)
Submit published or unpublished work. Top 12 entries published online.
Judged by Michal 'MJ' Jones, assisted by Briana Grogan and Dare Williams.
Recommended by Reedsy as one of The Best Writing Contests of 2024.
Submit 1-3 poems for one $22 entry fee.
Enter via Submittable by October 1
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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
Changes Book Prize. Changes Press will award $10,000 and publication for a poetry manuscript, 48-96 pages, by a US resident with no more than one previously published poetry collection. Winner also receives a book launch in New York City. Enter online after September 1. Formerly known as the Bergman Prize. Must be received by October 1 (new deadline).
Intermediate Writers
Russell Freedman Award for Nonfiction for a Better World. The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators will award $2,500 for a book of nonfiction for children that was published in the current calendar year. Winner also receives $500 to purchase copies of the winning book for distribution to schools and libraries, recognition in all SCBWI publications, and a virtual forum to give a speech before the entire children's book community. To enter, email a PDF of your book, a 250-word summary of your book, and a 250-word essay on how your book will create a better world. Must be received by September 15 (new deadline).
Advanced Writers
Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. The Cleveland Foundation will give four awards of $10,000 each: one for a book of fiction, one for a poetry collection, one for a book of nonfiction, and one for a memoir or autobiography. This award honors books that have made important contributions to the understanding of racism or the appreciation of cultural diversity. Books must have been published in the current calendar year. Plays, screenplays, e-books, unpublished, print-on-demand, and self-published works are not eligible. The author, publisher, editor, or publicist should submit the entry form online and then send 5 hard copies of the book. Must be received by October 16 (new deadline).
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, Erica Verrillo's blog, Authors Publish, Lit Mag News Roundup, Poets & Writers, The Writer, Duotrope, Submittable, and literary journals' own newsletters and announcements.
• Acre Books
(literary fiction and nonfiction manuscripts - August 31)
• At Length
(poem sequences and longform prose - August 31)
• Doubleback Books
(out-of-print small press books for reprinting - August 31)
• Sundress Publications: Survivor Poetry Anthology
(poetry by sexual assault survivors, on any topic - September 30)
• Roxane Gay Books
(pitches for literary fiction and nonfiction books - October 15)
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This month, editor Jendi Reiter highlights poems from books that have won prizes recently. See our selections from past issues.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN
by Mary Pinard
Winner of the 2021 Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Contest
Entries must be received by August 31
Ex Ophidia Press gives $2,000 and publication for a full-length collection by a poet at any stage of their career. Pinard's Ghost Heart was their most recently published winner. This plain-spoken, elegiac poem knows itself to be an inadequate archive of the material culture of a vanished prairie community.
JULY PRAYER TO SURVIVE THE SUMMER
by Robin Walter
Winner of the 2024 Academy of American Poets First Book Award
Entries must be received by September 1
This prestigious award includes $5,000 and publication by Graywolf Press for a debut collection. Walter was the most recent winner, for Little Mercy. In this lyric whose style echoes Emily Dickinson, the speaker anxiously observes a mother and father bird tending their newborns in the nest.
BIRTHDAY FUGUE
by Jessica Barksdale Inclán
Winner of the 2023 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition
Entries must be received by October 15
This long-running contest from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies awards $1,000, publication, and 50 copies, and will be judged in 2024 by Pulitzer Prize winner Diane Seuss. Barksdale's collection Let's End This Now was the most recent winner. In this poem, a middle-aged woman debating whether to leave her marriage is haunted by two voices personifying her options.
THE ART MUSEUM
by Zachary Lundgren
Winner of the 2023 Birdy Poetry Prize
Entries must be received by December 1 (don't enter before September 1)
This open poetry manuscript prize from Meadowlark Press offers $1,000, publication, and 50 copies. Lundgren's Turkey Vulture was the most recent winner. This poem's contrapuntal form helps visualize the gulfs perceived by the poem's speaker—between art and the person looking at it, between himself and the young lovers he sees in the museum, and perhaps between the lovers themselves.
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Here is the fourth set of three pages from Julian Peters' 16-page comic of "The Burial of the Dead", the first section of "The Waste Land". We published the third set last month.
Continues next month
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