We found nearly four dozen excellent free poetry and prose contests with deadlines between March 15-April 30. In this issue, please enjoy a Jim Avis vidiette of "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop, illustrated by Julian Peters and read by Sophia Wilcott.

A handsome book cover that's right for your genre can increase sales by a factor of two or more. This month, Annie Mydla speaks with cover designer, former Random House art director, and North Street Book Prize co-sponsor Laura Duffy about designing covers for indie authors. Does working with a professional have to feel like a trust fall? Laura doesn't think so.

This month's subscriber tip comes from Leon Mecham: aggressive "agents" are on the prowl, promising a big windfall for your book if only you'll pay them a modest fee up front. If you have a tip, recommendation, or warning, please email it to info@winningwriters.com.

A Special Call for Submissions in April
During National Poetry Month, Winning Writers will accept submissions for Live and Let Die DEI, a free downloadable digital anthology of original poems that make creative use of the words that the Trump administration has banned from government websites and research papers. Poets of any age and nationality welcome. There's no fee and no prizes, just notoriety and justice. Learn more (PDF) and submit at Submittable starting on April 1.

Last Call!
WERGLE FLOMP HUMOR POETRY CONTEST - NO FEE
Deadline: April 1. 24th year. $3,750 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 Both unpublished and previously published work accepted.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 Approaching
TOM HOWARD/JOHN H. REID FICTION & ESSAY CONTEST
Deadline: May 1. 33rd year. $12,000 in prizes, including two top awards of $3,500 each. Fee: $25 per entry. Final 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 Both unpublished and previously published work accepted.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 22nd annual Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest.

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Deadline: March 31 (midnight GMT)

The Fish Poetry Prize was established in 2006. Previous judges include Billy Collins, Brian Turner, Leanne O'Sullivan, Michael McCarthy, Peter Fallon, Matthew Sweeney, Paul Durcan, Ruth Padel, Nick Laird and Jo Shapcott.

We are delighted that Billy Collins will again be judging. Billy will select the 10 poems to be published in the FISH ANTHOLOGY 2025.

Results: 15 May '25

Anthology Published: July '25
Entry Fees: €16 for first entry (€11 each additional)
€16 equates approximately to US$17 or £14
Optional critique €43

• 1st prize: €1,000
• 2nd prize: Online Writing Course + €300
• 3rd prize: €300

The ten published authors will each receive five copies of the Anthology and will be invited to read at the launch during the West Cork Literary Festival in July 2025.

SUBMIT ONLINE OR BY MAIL

Congratulations to Noah Berlatsky, Lucy May Lennox, Laura Buxbaum, Marilyn McVicker, R.T. Castleberry, Eva Tortora, and Lesléa Newman.

Winning Writers Editor Jendi Reiter won first prize in the 2024 Saints & Sinners Poetry Contest sponsored by the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival. The next submission period for this $1,000 award for LGBTQ authors will open May 1, with an expected deadline in October. In other news, Jendi's erasure poem "CULTURE FAG TRAINING" was accepted by Room Magazine for their humor issue, #48.1, forthcoming in March 2025. Jendi will be reading from their latest novel, Origin Story (Saddle Road Press, 2024), on Thursday, April 10, at 6pm as part of Village Story Salon, an event co-hosted by Cheryl J. Fish and Jonathan Vatner at the New York Public Library, Hudson Park Branch, 66 Leroy Street, New York City. Read Heather Jones' review of Origin Story in The Massachusetts Review.

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!

Limited spots remaining! Save 10% when you register by March 30 for our multi-genre workshop for writers working in the disciplines of memoir/personal essay and fiction.

May 4-10

Taught by bestselling, award-winning author Leslie Schwartz. Daily classes include comprehensive craft discussions, workshops, and private conferences with the instructor.

Sponsored by List og Land Artists and Writers Residency, Westfjords, Iceland, offering beautiful, comfortable accommodations on a remote fjord at the intersection of inspiration and creativity.

We offer a geothermal hot spring, pool and sauna on List og Land's 4,200 acres of wild Iceland, plus whales, foxes, curious seals and endless hiking.

Includes a sightseeing tour to Reykjarfjörður hot pool and the A House in Fossfjorður plus more.

For information and details on cost, classroom instruction, accommodations and registration, please visit List og Land.

Email inquiries: writersworkshopslol@gmail.com or schwartz0505@gmail.com.

 

Heather Jones at The Massachusetts Review recently praised Jendi Reiter's novel Origin Story (Saddle Road Press, 2024): "the book is fun; the scenes are energetic, the dialogue fresh and often humorous despite the dark subject matter."

Tai, the genderfluid teen comic-book artist who collaborates with the protagonist on the project that brings forth his trauma memories, reminded Jones of her own transgender coming-out journey:

"The thing about a Tai or a Heather is we don't tolerate a lot of being pushed around by the world. We were born inside a single person's creative mind, and while the exterior took a beating, we were allowed to grow according to our own capricious will. They call us difficult when we come out because we have to be tenacious."

Come hear Jendi read from Origin Story on April 10 at Village Story Salon at the New York Public Library's Hudson Park branch, co-hosted by Winning Writers critique editor Cheryl J. Fish. Details here.

A handsome book cover that's right for your genre can increase sales by a factor of two or more. Here Annie talks with designer (and North Street Book Prize co-sponsor) Laura Duffy about how indie authors can make the most of the design process, from the cover itself to essential marketing elements like metadata, Amazon keywords, and copy.

Annie: We receive many books in the North Street Book Prize each year. Now, of course, we don't judge a book solely by its cover, but it does make an impact on the book's competitiveness with other submissions. Why do you think authors settle? What are some of the mental stumbling blocks that keep authors from striving for better covers?

Laura: Perhaps it's just that they don't know how to find a designer, or they don't know they need a designer. Perhaps they've designed their own cover, and they don't want to be told that it's not good enough.

But I think that they also need to be shown. They have their ideas. And I say, "Yeah, I'm going to do your idea. But then I'm going to show you my idea, because that's what you're hiring me for." And then they have that, "Ohhh, okay, I get it," whether it's a really impactful design, or it's the details on the back, or on the spine, or in the interior. It becomes this, like, "Okay."

The interview is available as an 18-minute YouTube video. We also provide a transcript.

Deadline extended to April 15

The Perkoff Prize awards $1,000 and publication each to writers of the best story, set of poems, and essay that engage in evocative ways with health, wellness, and medicine as judged by the editors.

Guidelines:

• All submissions must engage with health and medicine in some way.
• All submissions must be previously unpublished.
• Poetry: up to 10 pages of poetry.
• Fiction and Nonfiction: up to 8,500 words, double-spaced.
• Winners will be published in print issue of TMR.
• Check out the prizewinners and finalists from last year's contest here. Winners will be announced in late 2025.
• All entries will be considered for publication (whether in print, or as part of our Poem of the Week or Blast features).
• Multiple submissions and simultaneous submissions are welcome, but you must pay a separate fee for each entry and withdraw the piece immediately if accepted elsewhere.
• Standard Entry fee: $15. Each entrant receives a one-year subscription to the Missouri Review in digital format (normal price $24).
• "All Access" Entry fee: $30. In addition to the one-year digital subscription to the Missouri Review, the "All Access" entry fee grants access to the last 10 years of digital issues and the audio recordings of each digital issue.

Submit Online
Submit By Mail (short downloadable form in .docx format)

Rattle is proud to announce Amy Newman's "Abandoned Fair", which appeared in issue #86, is the winner of the 2025 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor.

This contest has a rolling deadline

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 19 past winners, please visit the award's webpage. To submit your own poems, choose any free submission option on our Submittable page.

ABANDONED FAIR
by Amy Newman

Our love is an abandoned fair:
the lights all broken on the midway,
some glitter still hung in the air.

We strolled like kids. We weren't aware.
We satisfied ourselves all day.
Our love is an abandoned fair,

though painted horses galloped there,
beneath—I cringe at the cliché—
some glitter, still hung the air,

those sparkles of our wear and tear,
silver distractions. What did I say
our love is? An abandoned fair,

an image of what mattered there—
gold, right? (See in a tossed bouquet,
some glitter still.) Hung in the air

like a promise? Nope. Nothing there.
Just sparkly garbage and decay.
Our love is an abandoned fair.
Some glitter still hung in the air.

Leon Mecham warns, "Watch out for a person named Jordan Summers who presented himself as an Independent Literary and Film Agent. He is part of a group of con artists that used Crown Publishing and Penguin Random House letterhead. They sounded and looked so legit that they extracted thousands from us."

Winning Writers advises authors to be extremely wary of unsolicited approaches from people claiming to be literary agents. Most legitimate agents receive more queries than they can accept. They rarely reach out to authors for more business. Moreover, agents generally get paid only when they secure a book deal, not before.

Other red flags include a proposed advance that's much larger than what you're used to. The letter from "Crown Publishing Group" offered $500,000 for the rights to the author's memoir, which is perhaps an order of magnitude greater than what someone who is not already famous can expect.

For more scam-busting advice, see our Contests and Services to Avoid page and Writer Beware.

Leon Mecham is the author of The Long Way Around.

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

First Prize for Poetry, 2024 North Street Book Prize

"Stephen C. Pollock's elegant poetry collection Exits is held together by supple formal inventiveness and a thematic focus on mortality. This universally humbling subject inspires not only melancholy but moments of humor and awe at our small place in the natural world." —Jendi Reiter, final judge of the North Street Book Prize. Read the complete critique and learn more about Exits.

Please enjoy this excerpt:

Arachnidæa: Line Drawings

V.

A concert in the round!
Divertimenti scored for eight short hands
will be played by the maestro
for adoring fans.

The fine fretwork glistens.
The strings tune and go still.

Once in motion,
you dazzle in the parts for pizzicato,
leap with ease over fourths and fifths,
scuttle up scales to a dizzying height
then plummet, by octaves, to the sublime.
All are amused, for a time.

The circle is crossed by chords,
point to counterpoint,
illusions of balance, of words.

Listen to the last mournful strains
murmuring a requiem for the days.

For commentary on this and other passages in Exits, please go here.

Deadline: May 15

The Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest is now open! Submit your fiction, nonfiction, or poetry between now and May 15 for the chance to win $2,000, publication in Ploughshares, and a conversation with Aevitas Creative Management. Current Ploughshares subscribers may enter for free!

See the contest guidelines.

Ploughshares is a quarterly literary journal that publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by emerging and established authors. Our issues have been guest edited by such talents as Tracy K. Smith, Celeste Ng, Tess Gallagher, and more.

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
Victor Howes Prize in Poetry. The New England Poetry Club will award $500 and an invitation to read at the Student Awards Reading at the Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site in June for a poem by an undergraduate student currently enrolled at a New England college (2-year or 4-year) who has a demonstrated interest in writing poetry. Must be received by March 20 (new deadline).

Intermediate Writers
BBC National Short Story Award. The British Broadcasting Corporation and Cambridge University will award a top prize of 15,000 pounds for the best short story up to 8,000 words to a UK national or resident aged 18+ with "a prior record of publication". Stories must either be unpublished or have been first published during the previous calendar year. Must be received by 9am London time on March 17 (new deadline).

Advanced Writers
Maya Angelou Book Award. The Kansas City Public Library will award a $10,000 prize to a US author age 18+ whose published work "demonstrates a commitment to social justice and diversifies contemporary American literature". Genre alternates between poetry and fiction. 2025 contest is for a full-length poetry collection published the previous year or scheduled for publication by November of this year. Winner will participate in a two-week book tour of Missouri colleges, universities, and libraries. Publisher must complete the online entry form and upload an electronic copy of the book via the submissions portal on the sponsor's guidelines page. Must be received by April 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, Submittable, and literary journals' own newsletters and announcements.

• 20.35 Africa Anthology, Vol. VIII
(poems by African resident and diaspora poets aged 20-35 - March 24)

• new words {press}
(poetry and hybrid-genre work by trans and gender-expansive authors - March 25)

• Dreambridge Publishing: "In My Element" Anthology
(short fiction about elements and alchemy - March 31)

• The Stinging Fly: Climate Nonfiction Issue
(Irish lit mag seeks essays on the climate crisis - March 31)

• Ninth Letter: "Reversal" Issue
(poetry, fiction, essays on this theme - April 1)

• West Branch
(poetry, fiction, essays, translations, book review pitches - April 1)

• Broken Sleep Books: Laurel and Hardy Anthology
(poetry, stories, essays inspired by classic comedy duo - April 30)

• manywor(l)ds
(creative writing by neurodivergent, queer, and Mad authors - April 30)

• Papaya Press: Richard Siken Tribute Anthology
(poems inspired by this award-winning poet - May 1)

• Story Unlikely
(short fiction - September 29)

This month, editor Jendi Reiter highlights fiction and nonfiction that have won recent prizes. To see more winning prose and poetry, visit our online collection.

JUMPING OFF
by Ginger Pinholster
Winner of the 2024 Prime Number Magazine Award for Short Fiction
Entries must be received by March 31
This $1,000 prize includes publication in Prime Number Magazine, an online journal from Press 53. Grotesque comedy and high moral stakes coexist in this prizewinning story about an orphaned young woman trying to stay afloat, financially and literally.

FALLING
by Hadley Franklin
Winner of the 2023 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize
Entries must be received by April 13
This prize sponsored by a Madrid bookstore gives 2,000 euros, a writing residence in Italy, and the opportunity for the winner and shortlisted entries to be published in a variety of literary magazines. Franklin's prizewinning story, subsequently published in The London Magazine, features a college student navigating complex reactions to her boyfriend's death and the attention that it brings her.

TO THOSE AFFECTED BY MY ACTIONS
by Emily Ver Steeg
Winner of the Fall 2024 Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award
Entries must be received by April 30
This twice-yearly contest gives prizes up to $1,500 and publication in the online magazine The Ghost Story for short stories with paranormal, supernatural, or magical realism elements. In this unsettling tale, a crematorium worker has second thoughts about their profession after an apparent revelation from God.

Julian Peters invites you to enjoy "another brilliant 'vidiette' by Jim Avis, based on my comics adaptation of Elizabeth Bishop's famous villanelle, 'One Art'. The video features audio and footage from a very spirited reading of the poem by Sophia Wilcott." Read the text of the poem at Poetry Foundation.

March Links Roundup: Fictional Truths, Factual Lies
Beneath our supposedly objective tests for fiction versus fact, the genre border is a political battleground. Classifying a work as fiction can allow more leeway for controversial takes on current issues…or it can be a rhetorical device to undermine narratives that challenge us.

[read more]

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