Why You Should Enter Your Unpublished Work in Writing Contests
Boost your opportunity in these 17 contests for landing agents and publishers
I found a great new list to share with you of 17 free contests from Freedom With Writing with a broad range of subjects and genres that you can enter. Showing that you won a contest for your unpublished work boosts your desirability with a potential literary agent or publisher. Be sure to check the deadlines as many expire at the end of May.
Be sure to read the fine print as if you don’t follow submission guidelines, you can be eliminated immediately.
These are prizes/grants for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plays, screenwriting, and journalism, and the awards are up to $20,000. They’re loosely divided by geography.
The Orchards Poetry Journal: Grantchester Award
This poetry journal has announced a new award. In each issue, two poems will be eligible for The Grantchester Award. Regarding submissions, they say, “While we encourage rhymed verse in traditional forms, we also accept finely wrought free verse.” Send up to 3 poems, preferably unpublished.
Waterston Desert Writing Prize. Also look here
This prize is for a proposed book of literary non-fiction that illustrates artistic excellence, sensitivity to place, and desert literacy — with the desert both as subject and setting. Writing samples about deserts and natural settings are more likely to be reviewed favorably. Apart from the cash award, there is also a residency at PLAYA at Summer Lake that offers reading and reception at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon.
CINTAS Foundation: Fellowship in Creative Writing
This is a creative writing fellowship for writers having Cuban citizenship or direct lineage (having a Cuban parent or grandparent). Applications can be in English or Spanish. Fellows who are not U.S. citizens and who are living abroad must provide a U.S. taxpayer identification number when they accept the fellowship to receive payment. The foundation also offers fellowships for other disciplines — architecture & design, music composition, and visual arts (click the ‘Fellowships’ tab on top of the page).
They want to see science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, or horror LGBTQIA stories of up to 300 words on the theme of Clarity. Their guidelines say, “The whole world is murky right now. Covid waves, climate change, and right-wing pollution of our airwaves have made even truth suspect and subject to dispute. What we need most is clarity. Clarity about the world around us and the path forward.
Tell us about clarity in all its forms and the difference it can make on your characters, the culture, and the world, for better or worse.
Reel One Entertainment: Write a Romcom Competition
Headquartered in Montreal with offices in London and Los Angeles, Reel One is a distributor of commercial television films and series — you can read more about them here. Their contest is for emerging screenwriters worldwide. “We want your fun, romantic and feel-good TV movie ideas for a love story our audiences worldwide are sure to fall for.” There are two stages. For Stage 1, submit a 2-page treatment for your romcom idea; for Stage 2, successful applicants from Stage 1 will be invited to submit an outline. Please read their rules carefully — the Winner Selection section outlines what kind of stories they are looking for; also, the winner must be available to work with their development executives, with the intention of greenlighting to production.
Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors and Here
This is a climate fiction contest from Fix, Grit’s solutions lab. This is their second annual contest, and they want hopeful Sci-fi stories. “Stories must be set anytime between today and the year 2200, and show a path to a clean, green, and just future. We especially want to read — and share — narratives that center on solutions from the communities most impacted by climate change and stories that envision what a truly equitable, decolonized society could look like. In 3,000 to 5,000 words, show us the world you dream of building.”
These are grants for Black writers and editors of speculative fiction; they have a number of grants, of up to $1,000. Applications for the Rest, Craft, and Study grants close in mid-May.
Bacopa Literary Review Writing Contest
This is an international contest, and writers can submit to one category. Apart from prizes in fiction, creative nonfiction, and humor, they have three poetry prizes: formal poetry, free verse poetry, and visual poetry. Please see the guidelines for submission requirements in the category you wish to submit.
The Black Orchid Novella Award
They want novellas (15,000–20,000 words) that conform to the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series. They should focus on the deductive skills of the sleuth. Their guidelines also say, “We need to stress that a novella is not a padded short story. A novella needs to be as tight and fast-paced as a short story or a novel. Authors need to ensure that the story they want to tell is properly sized for whatever format they choose.” They are not looking for derivatives of the Nero Wolfe series or the milieu. They accept mailed submissions only.
Owl Canyon Press Essay Contest
This is an international prize for the best essay of at least 2,000 words about some aspect of Marc Jampole’s experimental literary work, The Brothers Silver. Potential topics include but are not to “point of view issues, use of language, relationship to Jampole’s poetry, comparison to other novelists or literary trends, textual readings, social criticism in the novel, images of Judaism and other religions, significance to contemporary literature, and symbolism in the novel. Papers in foreign languages must be submitted with an English translation.” And apart from the cash prize of $5,000, an additional $1,000 will be awarded to the winner if their essay is published in an eligible publication (see guidelines); authors of any other entry published in an eligible publication will receive $300
Humane Education Network: A Voice for Animals
This is an international essay contest for students in two categories: 14–15-year-olds and 16–18-year-olds. The essay themes include mistreatment of one animal species, the preservation of one endangered species, and more (see guidelines). Participants must currently be attending middle or high school, home-schooled, and less than 19 years of age on 31 January 2022. The contest is also open for those for whom English is a second language. Entries can be essays, essays with photos, or videos. They have extensive guidelines.
EN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship and here
This is for an author of children’s or young-adult fiction. The fellowship is for helping writers whose work is of high literary caliber and is designed to assist a writer at a crucial moment in his or her career to complete a book-length fiction work-in-progress. Applicants must have already published one work for children or young adults warmly received by literary critics, but whose work has not yet attracted a broad readership.
For the Novel Prizee see the publisher/submission links for various regions
The Novel Prize is an award for a novel of literary fiction (at least 30,000 words) managed by the three collaborating publishers, with Fitzcarraldo Editions reading submissions from Africa and Europe, Giramondo from Asia and Australasia, and New Directions from the Americas. Apart from the cash prize, the novel will get the simultaneous publication in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and North America. The prize rewards novels which explore and expand the possibilities of the form and are innovative and imaginative in style.
A couple of contests with later deadlines are:
— Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest
This international contest by the greeting card company is open to all poets, and writers can enter as often as they like. The prizes are $350, $200, and $100. The deadline is 30 June 2022.
This is for a work of previously unpublished prose, either a novel or a collection of short stories or novellas, with a 25,000-word minimum (approximately 150 pages) by a Black writer. The award is a residency, $3,000, and publication. The deadline is 31 July 2022.
Fund for Investigative Journalism Grants
They are open for regular grants, and for expedited grants, as well (see guidelines). These are for articles by US journalists that break new ground and expose wrongdoing — such as corruption, malfeasance, or abuse of power — in the public and private sectors. FIJ encourages proposals written for ethnic media as well as those submitted by journalists of color. Also, “To be considered, foreign-based story proposals must come from US-based reporters or have a strong US angle involving American citizens, government, or business; all stories must be published in English, in a media outlet in the United States.”
PEN America: US Writers Aid Initiative
This is intended to assist fiction and non-fiction authors, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, translators, and journalists. To be eligible, applicants must be based in the United States, be professional writers, and be able to demonstrate that this one-time grant will be meaningful in helping them to address an emergency situation. Various deadlines are listed for 2022, and the next one is 1st June. Other deadlines are in August, October, and December. Writers do not have to be PEN members to apply.
Good luck.