We found over three dozen excellent free poetry and prose contests with deadlines between May 15-June 30. In this issue, we show you a tense confrontation from "The Hat Makers and the Heron Master" by Mike Keller, illustrated by Julian Peters. Annie Mydla interviews Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of The Frugal Book Promoter, about bold and effective marketing on a budget. Subscriber Annie Dawid offers a great idea to grow your presence on the podcast circuit. If you have a tip, recommendation, or warning, please email it to info@winningwriters.com.

Winning Writers Makes the "101 Best" List for 2025!
Winning Writers is one of the "101 Best Websites for Writers" once again. Writer's Digest writes in their May/June issue, "Since 2001, this site has sought to be a go-to contest resource for all writers, and we think they succeed! They've been featured on this list for five years running."

Next Deadline
NORTH STREET BOOK PRIZE
Deadline: July 1. 11th year. Cash awards totaling $22,000, including a top award of $10,000. This year's categories: Mainstream/Literary Fiction, Genre Fiction, Creative Nonfiction & Memoir, Poetry, Children's Picture Book, Middle Grade, Graphic Novel & Memoir, and Art Book. Accepting hybrid-published as well as self-published books. Fee: $85 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 (and boy are these things popular). See the previous winners and enter here.

Also open now, our Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest will award $12,000 in prizes, including two top awards of $3,500 each. Submit 1-3 poems for $25. Deadline: October 1.

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Deadline: May 31, 2025

Are you ready to let your poetry shine? Open Kimono Publishing invites poets of all levels to participate in our exciting competition! We're seeking fresh, authentic voices that push boundaries and explore poetry in bold, unfiltered ways. This unique opportunity offers recognition, publication opportunities, and a platform to showcase your talent to a growing audience.

We believe in the power of raw creativity and diverse perspectives. Our mission is to amplify voices that need to be heard and foster a community where originality thrives. Winning poets will be featured in a beautifully curated publication celebrating their work and connecting them to literary enthusiasts worldwide.

Whether you're a new poet or seasoned writer, this is your moment to make an unforgettable impact. Don't wait. Submit your entry today to be part of something extraordinary!

Congratulations to Jessica Pegis, Noah Berlatsky, Jed Myers, CB Anderson, Lori D. Johnson, Mark Fleisher, Eva Tortora, Duane L. Herrmann, Terri Kirby Erickson, CM Pickard, and James K. Zimmerman.

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!

Hey, so there is a rumor going around about CraveBooks...
Supposedly, they just released a crazy new website update.
At first glance, you'll see...
- Custom author profile pages to showcase your books.
- An entire video library of self-publishing education—with over 125 videos inside.
- Automated email list building to grow your author newsletter.
- A 'smart promotion' feature to help you schedule and 'STACK' all your book promos at the same time.
- You can even upload your reader magnet to help you reach more bookworms.
It's just a rumor, so check it out for yourself.
Oh, and apparently, it’s FREE to create an account.
Click here to explore the website.

Indie authors often assume that marketing will cost an arm and a leg. Or they're embarrassed to promote themselves at all. Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of The Frugal Book Promoter, shares advice for bold and effective marketing on a budget. "...nearly a quarter century after acceptance of alternative ways to publish began to flourish, most indie authors and publishers aren't using them effectively to meet these magical opportunities head-on. Reviews can be used by a publisher or author to extend the life of a book, even to revive titles with sales that have lagged."

Read on.

Deadline: May 31, 2025

• Judge: Ellen Bass, Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets
• 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 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.

Ellen Bass's most recent collection, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Her other poetry books include Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Her poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Among her awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, and the California Arts Council, the Lambda Literary Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women's poetry, No More Masks!, and her nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, California jails, and teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University.

Past Winners: 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 nationally recognized Poet Tarot Guidebook: A Deck of Creative Exploration and 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!

Deadline: June 15, 2025

$500 will be awarded to the Grand Prize winner of The MacGuffin's POET HUNT 30. Darrel Alejandro Holnes judges this year's contest. Up to two Honorable Mention poems may also be published along with the names of the finalists and semifinalists. All entrants will receive a copy of the issue that includes the judge's selections.

Send up to five poems per $15 entry fee. Include a cover page that lists your contact info and poem titles or leave this information in your Submittable form. This should be the only place containing personally identifiable information to preserve the anonymous review process.

Enter via Submittable or mail your materials to: The MacGuffin • Attn: Poet Hunt 30 • 18600 Haggerty Road • Livonia, MI 48152.

See the complete rules.

Annie Dawid, author of Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown (Inkspot Publishing), recommends searching out podcasts relevant to your book and proposing an interview.

"Search using keywords ('women writers', for example) in podcast listings on Apple, Spotify, etc. Seek out podcasts for writers and readers; current affairs podcasts relating to the subject matter of your book; identity groups that would be interested in hearing your story and how you got your work published; and podcasts with geographic connections to the places in your writing.

"For me, all my seeking has netted about 20 podcasts thus far, some terrific, some amateur, and most along the spectrum between. Maybe a 20% rate of success from all the queries I’ve done. Most won't answer at all, rather than saying no. But I have no empirical data to say whether they've helped sell my book."

Visit Annie's website for links to her books and recent interviews.

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

Deadline: July 1, 2025

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.

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

Reasonable entry fee: $85 per book. Some other contests charge $100+.

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 five 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 61,000+ 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, 2025).

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!

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

Deadline: July 15, 2025

The annual Rattle Poetry Prize celebrates its 20th 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 win 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 this finalist poem by Chad Frame, published in Rattle #86, Winter 2024:

Claw Machine

More to the left, he says, then leans to watch
the dangling claw from a better angle
as I guide the stubby joystick, grease-slick

from unwashed hands—just two coin-fed alley kids
fishing for a way to pass the time. Behind the screen,
the glass-eyed, cheap stuffed animals, cotton-cored,

plead with us for escape. We tune out the rumble-crash
of our parents' Tuesday night league, the shouted fucks
when they bowl poorly, and the shouted fucks

when they bowl well, wafting Marlboro plumes braiding
midair with the steam from vending machine coffee,
generations of beer staining the ash-strewn carpet

a thousand shades of brown. And his eyes, all blue
and lit up like pinball bulbs, are watching intently
as the claw drops for the rainbow bear, its clumsy seams

misstitched and already unraveling.
This could be any night in midsummer
in middle-of-nowhere America

in the mid-nineties—except it's the one
when I decide to tell him how pretty
those eyes are, as I dangle the hard-won

bear by one misshapen foot, an offering
I am destined to find later in the men's room sink,
ripped into pieces, scattered like pins, fuck you

faggot Sharpied on its face. And this, I have learned, this
is how the heart operates—just when we think we've got
a grip on something, the claw seems rigged to let it go.

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 $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
bpNichol Poetry Chapbook Award. Meet the Presses will award C$4,000 to the Canadian author and C$500 to the publisher of the best English-language poetry chapbook, 10-48 pages long, published in Canada in the preceding year. Must be received by May 31.

Advanced Writers
Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Writers' Trust of Canada will award C$60,000 for novels or short story collections recently published in Canada by Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Books published between April 30 and September 30 must be received by June 25. See also the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

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.

• The Markaz Review: Mental Health Issue
(creative writing from or about the greater Middle East - May 23)

• Poet Lore
(unpublished poems and poem sequences - May 31)

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

• Chestnut Review
(poetry, fiction, essays, artwork - June 30)

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

Leslie Feinberg
STONE BUTCH BLUES
This 1993 autobiographical novel is a radical queer classic. Jess, a factory worker in Buffalo in the 1960s and 70s, endures family rejection and police violence as a butch lesbian. Black-market medical treatment allows Jess to live as a man for awhile, affording them some safety but alienating them from their lesbian community and history. The choice to revert to a gender-nonconforming appearance feels authentic yet dangerous. Meanwhile, they're attempting to build solidarity in the workers' movement without exposing themselves to anti-queer attacks, a path that culminates in activism in 1980s New York City alongside their trans femme lover. In keeping with Feinberg's Communist philosophy, the book is free to download from their website, or available from Lulu.com in hard copy for the cost of printing and shipping.

Isabella Hammad
ENTER GHOST
A troupe of Palestinian actors navigate obstacles to stage an Arabic-language adaptation of Hamlet in the West Bank, angering the Israeli government with their implied critique of an illegitimate ruler. This subtle and thought-provoking literary novel is narrated by Sonia, an expat with British citizenship who returns to her family home to find direction in life when her acting career stalls. Her journey from spectator to activist mirrors Hamlet's emergence from passivity. The story explores what it means to engage in political resistance as an artist in our current moment: Hammad neither overstates the power of protest theater, nor succumbs to crude materialist dismissal of art as a luxury or distraction.

Janet MacFadyen
STATE OF GRASS
This poetry collection brings the topic of family trauma out of the merely confessional and into the mythic. On retreat in Ireland after her father's death, an older woman recovers her incest memories, the lineaments of her story emerging like a preserved bog body or the archaeological traces of a famine-destroyed village. The land's stark beauty and endurance create a space for her to hold her personal recovery in historical perspective, creating a fellowship with her wounded ancestors.

Michael Swanwick
THE BEST OF MICHAEL SWANWICK
This first volume in a career retrospective of the award-winning speculative fiction author spans over 25 years of creative tales about planetary consciousness, time travel, steampunk con artists, dinosaur tourist attractions, and what would be gained and lost if we could re-engineer the human brain.

Another project from illustrator Julian Peters is a collaboration with Mike Keller. The Hat Makers and the Heron Master is an epic tale set in New York City and the wilds of Florida from the 1850s to the 1890s. Here is a brief presentation of the story by the author followed by an episode from the book:

The Hat Makers and the Heron Master is a story about Karl Schulze, a simple man who suffers through his family’s murder at the outset of Florida’s last Seminole War and recedes from society into the embrace of the deadly marshlands. Searching to feel again, his heart connects with the wetlands' wading birds. He appoints himself their protector against the onslaught of commercial hunters and development flooding the state during that period.

The Koch sisters, part of a millinery family who move from New York City to the brand-new village of Palm Beach, inhabit a Gilded-Age world wholly alien to the hermit. But their lives become tied together by the unquenchable global desire for feathers in women's fashion. Schulze and the Koch sisters join Colonel Francis Styron, a former soldier repenting for past sins, and his ornithologist son Travis. Styron's history is more deeply interwoven with Schulze's than the hermit can possibly imagine. Together, the group works to acquire land to protect the birds from the swinging axe of development wielded by orange and railroad robber baron Samuel Chapman.

But Chapman's desire and resources are too powerful a force for the allies to withstand. Schulze and Styron meet an inglorious end at the hands of Chapman's henchmen and, soon after, Travis and the Koch sisters are shocked by a secret the two men harbored.

May Links Roundup: Alexa, Am I a God?
An AI's built-in responsiveness to consumer feedback teaches it to skew future answers in a direction that pleases the questioner, whether or not it's true. And current LLMs persistently "hallucinate" data in a manner both humorous and horrifying. Remember when Google's AI Overview recommended glue as a pizza topping because it misunderstood a joke on Reddit? Now try basing your theology on that.

[read more]

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