Opportunities for Writers – December 2021
Opportunities for writers – December 2021, including writers conferences, workshops, contests, and submissions. Updated 12/13/2021.
Submit your opportunity to mail@indianawriters.org. Submit your opportunity by the 1st of the month to ensure it is included.
Have a short story, poem or other work you’re just dying to share? Check out these publications, workshop and contest opportunities. Read below to discover opportunities for writers for December 2021 and beyond:
*Advice on Writing Contests:
When considering contests, look to see how they handled winners’ work from previous years: Is there a list of previous winners? Where you can go to read or have access to the winning pieces of writing? Who are the judges? Are they people who you would read yourself? If you win, what kind of audience would you receive for your work? Research contests and their reputations online. Use places like duotrope.com, Poets and Writers (pw.org), the New Pages (newpages.com), or The Review Review (thereviewreview.net), to see whether there is any other information about the contest from other sources.
Storm Cellar: A Literary Journal of Safety and Danger
Storm Cellar is a nationally distributed, independent literary arts magazine rooted in the Midwest, appearing in print and ebook editions. This is a journal of safety and danger. We want your prose, poems, chimeras, and ideas penned on envelopes in buses and train cars. The magazine aims to publish amazing work by new and established writers and artists, present a range of styles and approaches, and cure (not merely displace) boredom. If you write one thing to be read while waiting for the all-clear to sound, send it here.
Adroit Journal‘s Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry
Deadline: 12/21/21
ach year, we recognize six writers without full-length collections as Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry. Previous Scholars include K-Ming Chang, Keith S. Wilson, Paige Lewis, Gabrielle Bates, Alycia Pirmohamed, Bryan Byrdlong, Donte Collins, Jane Huffman, and many more. All emerging writers are eligible, and winners are published and receive a prize stipend. Submissions can include previously published work, simultaneously submitted work, and (of course!) previously unpublished work. We also have a fee waiver in case the entry fee presents a barrier to submission—the deadline to submit a fee waiver is 12/18/21.
Learn more about Gregory Djanikian Scholars Opportunity
“Moms Who Write” Anthology, submissions open
Deadline: 12/31/21
The goal is to tell your story. We want to reflect the reality of momming and being a woman right now. There are so many who are where you are and need to hear your stories. How you’re doing the thing. How you maybe didn’t do the thing, but learned from it.
This is open for short stories, essays, poetry, art, and photography.
Check out the page and get more ideas on what to submit!
MacDowell Fellowship!
Deadline: February 10, 2022
Application fee: $30
MacDowell is currently accepting applications for the Fall/Winter 2022-2023 residency season (Sept 2022-Feb-2023). MacDowell’s mission is to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals an inspiring environment in whcih they can produce enduring works of the imagination. MacDowell accepts applications from US-based & international artists working in the following disciplines: architecture, film/video arts, interdisciplinary arts, literature, music composition, theater, and visual arts.
Apply!
-La Libreta- Open for Submissions
-La Libreta- is published online three times each year. We publish the work of intergenerational writers and artists of color from the Bronx and beyond that identify as women.
Submissions open Dec 1
Please read and follow submission guidelines.
Unleash Press
Call for Submissions: Book Prize, Conversations Anthology and Editors’ Prize
We invite writers to submit to the Unleash Press 2022 Book Prize which is accepting submissions until January 5, 2022.
Submissions are also being accepted for Unleash Press Anthology, Conversations. Essays, fiction, drama, art, and poetry interpretations of the theme will be accepted. Entries will be accepted July 15 – January 15, 2022. Submissions should have a total word count of no more than 5,000 words. All authors chosen for the anthology will receive an e-copy and a paperback copy of the book. Submissions are $10. The Editors’ Prize is $75 and includes a custom illustration inspired by the writing. Submission guidelines can be found here.
Creative Writing Awards Competition Launches With New Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry
Penguin Random House and We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), a national grassroots organization that advocates for diversity in children’s literature, have opened submissions for the 2022 Creative Writing Awards. This is the first year the awards are featuring the newly named Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry. For the third consecutive year, we are partnering with WNDB to nurture the next generation of literary talent by supporting young writers from a variety of backgrounds.
The 2022 competition launches on October 1, 2021, and closes on February 1, 2022 — or when 1,000 applications have been submitted. Current high school seniors who attend public schools in the United States, including the District of Columbia and all U.S. territories, and are planning to attend college in fall 2022, are eligible and encouraged to apply.
Five first-place $10,000 prizes will be awarded in the categories of: the Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry; the Maya Angelou Award for spoken-word; fiction/drama; and personal essay/memoir.?In recognition of the Creative Writing Awards previously being centered in New York City, the competition will award an additional first-place prize to the top entrant from the NYC area. Runners up will also be honored.
To apply and to read more about eligibility and rules, please click here.
Winners will be announced and posted on the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards website in early June.
More than a publication; a community.
Of Rust and Glass is a literature and arts publication featuring talent from all across the Midwest United States, including writers, artists, photographers, videographers, musicians, and everything in between. It is a celebration of the thriving creative spirit within our wonderful community.
Quarterly themed submissions, rolling submissions yearlong.
Cutleaf Journal Open to Submissions
Cutleaf publishes a new issue twice a month. We welcome unsolicited original prose (both creative nonfiction and fiction) and poetry from established and emerging writers.
Work published online in Cutleaf may be chosen for inclusion in the print Cutleaf Reader.
You can find updated submission guidelines here.
Gal’s Guide Anthology
Share your experience with women’s history with us. Any story or poem of how women’s history or women in history has impacted your life is what we are looking for.
Deadline is 12/16/2021 for publication in March 2022 Women’s History Month!
Submission will be chosen by a jury of 3, one representing Gal’s Guide, one representing Four Eyed Media and one impartial judge from the literary world. Stories will picked for the anthology will be ones that best fit the theme of women’s history and follow the submission specs below.
Writers will grant rights to Gal’s Guide to the Galaxy and Four Eyed Media from the time of acceptance to publication (approx. January 2022-March 2022) At time of publication, all rights will revert back to the writer. Poetry or Prose (fiction or non fiction) accepted.
Get Inked Teen Writing Conference
The Get Inked Teen Writing Conference offers an inclusive, safe space for teens to workshop their writing with like-minded peers and published authors.
Just $70 per student, the Get Inked provides teen writers the experience of attending the type of event typically reserved for adults. From key-note speakers to hands-on breakout sessions, students will get to spend time with published authors and have a chance to improve their own writing skills.
“I Am Rural America”
We are seeking poetry that confronts the economic, racial, and social injustices too often experienced by rural communities and highlights aspects of rural life that are too often ignored by the media and the public. We especially seek to elevate the writing of Black, Brown and Indigenous persons, immigrants, farmworkers and other Communities of Color from across North and South America, whose stories are too often disappeared in conversations about rural populations.
We welcome poetry that speaks hard truths. But we also seek writing that focuses on your hopes for a more just and equitable rural America.
part of the The Voices and Faces Project’s Louder Together
If you have any questions, please feel free to email Aimee Noffsinger at abravo@voicesandfaces.org
Submissions open until January 1, 2022. Click here to submit your poetry to “I am Rural America”
Letters About Literature
Statewide Writing Contest for Grades 4-12 / Write a Letter to an Author / Win prizes! Get Your Students Published!
Letters About Literature is a letter writing contest for students in Indiana in grades 4-12. Students are asked to read a book, poem or speech and write to the author (living or deceased) about how the book affected how they see themselves or how they see the world. Indiana students in grades 4-12 are eligible to enter the Indiana Letters About Literature reading and writing contest.
WE ARE NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS!
Deadline – January 10, 2022
Prizes in Indiana are awarded to the following winners in each level:
- First Place: $100.00
- Second Place: $50.00
- Third Place: $25.00
- Indiana Author Letters (Awarded to the highest scored letter written to an Indiana Author): $50.00
- Teacher Prize: $150 (Awarded annually to a teacher who has gone the extra mile to support their students in entering our contest)
There are three competition levels:
- Level I: Grades 4-6
- Level II: Grades 7 & 8
- Level III: Grades 9-12
All Indiana winners will be announced in late March, 2022 and will receive an invitation to the Virtual Awards Ceremony as well as a prize pack (including free books!) mailed to their home. All Indiana winning letters are published in a booklet that is distributed for free to the winning students. Our author for the Virtual Awards Ceremony will be MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX!
LAL supports educational standards established for reading and language arts.
The 2021-22 Letters About Literature contest for young readers is made possible by the James and Madeleine McMullen Family Foundation and the Indiana State Library Foundation.
Walden Woods Projects “Live Deliberately” Essay Contest
The Contest is open to youth around the world ages 14-18 (and 19-year-olds enrolled in high school or the equivalent). The cash prize for the winner in each age group is $500!
The deadline for submission is February 21, 2022. Please visit the Live Deliberately Essay Contest website to view this year’s prompt, download a shareable flyer, and learn more about how youth can submit their essays. https://www.walden.org/education/essay-contest/
The Walden Woods Project works to preserve the land, literature and legacy of Henry David Thoreau. The spirit of environmental stewardship and social responsibility are both hallmarks of Thoreau’s legacy. And, of course, he combined those concepts with writing to make a difference in the world. We hope that this year’s prompt will be of interest to youth involved with your organization, who also use writing as a powerful tool for positive change and self-expression.
Acre Books open to submissions
Acre Books, the book-publishing offshoot of The Cincinnati Review, aims to build on the excellence that its parent publication has become known for. Like CR, our small press will focus on surprising, imaginative, and absorbing works—of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, and hybrid forms—that are expertly crafted and beautifully polished, and that engage readers aesthetically as well as emotionally. We are devoted in particular to finding, and bringing to a broad readership, remarkably talented newcomers. Initially we will bring out 6 titles annually, but we intend in the coming years to expand our lists and our staff. Visit our home page to subscribe to our mailing list.
Acre’s titles are distributed by the CDC (Chicago Distribution Center).
The American Poetry Review Seeks Submissions
Seeking poetry submissions, submissions for first book prize, and prose writing related to poetry such as book reviews and interviews. Visit them on Submittable to learn more.
Seeking Submissions for Meditation Anthologies
Hazelden Publishing is the leading publisher of addiction recovery and self-help resources. Part of the?Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, the nation’s largest nonprofit treatment provider, we offer a variety of accessible and life changing materials–from daily meditations to evidence-based programs.
In the past, our meditation-a-day format books have been written by a single author. Now, we are taking the opportunity of using the 365 days in a year to expand the number of voices we can uplift and recognize.?The more people who hear about the call for submissions, the more inclusive, reflective of the community, and useful the final books will be.
Complete information about How We Heal: Meditations for Reclaiming Our Voices from Addiction and Sexual Trauma is available here: https://www.hazelden.org/store/publicpage/meditations-anthology-writing-detail
Complete information about Leave No One Behind: Daily Meditations for Service Members and Veterans in Recovery is available here: https://www.hazelden.org/store/publicpage/meditations-anthology-writing-leave-no-one-behind
The Flying Island: New Look for 2021!
Flying Island, the Online Literary Journal of the Indiana Writers Center accepts submissions on a rolling basis from Indiana residents and those with significant ties to Indiana.
- Fiction: up to 5,000 words
- Nonfiction: up to 3,500 words
- Poetry: up to three poems, no more than 50 lines each.
Visit the journal and submit your work.
Washington Post Seeking Op-eds
In our effort to bring in more voices from across America, the Washington Post’s op-ed department would like to hear from writers with a wide variety of backgrounds, interests and outlooks. The one constant should be that they are good writers with strong viewpoints, and value facts and reasoned argument over invective. We’ll welcome one-off submissions, or pieces on breaking news events that we solicit, but we also hope that some writers will develop into regular contributors.
The Washington Post maintains a high bar for acceptance: We receive a large volume of op-ed submissions and have limited space, so even worthwhile op-eds might not be accepted if they don’t meet our needs at the moment. But our having a designated venue for op-eds from across the country does expand the possibility that your submission could find a home here. (A good target length for op-eds is 750-800 words.)
Here are some examples of writing that would fit into this category. As you can see, the range of topics is broad – political, personal, analytical, humorous, legal, business-oriented, you name it. What ties them together is that they don’t originate in Washington or universities or think tanks or other common sources of opinion articles. They bring first-hand experience or on-the-ground knowledge to bear on matters that may be local to the writer but could easily be of interest to readers everywhere.
Extra note: It’s best to send pieces in both an attachment and pasted into the email (reading in the email is fastest, but if there are links within the text, they convert more easily from a document).
Send op-eds to Mark Lasswell, Mark.Lasswell@washpost.com
Write for Sixty Inches from Center
Sixty welcomes writers and artists of all experience levels to pitch ideas for traditional and experimental arts writing around topics, and practices that are relevant to the cultural landscapes of the Midwest.
Priority will be given to writing by, about, and for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists, artists with disabilities, and the long list of writing, art-making, and cultural practices that have been neglected in mainstream conversations and canons about art and culture. We publish writing, photography, art, archive materials, video, and conversations that are thoughtful, generative, experimental, and relatable to a variety of readers.
Once a pitch is accepted, writers have full and free access to our editors, transcribers, translators, photographers, and illustrators to support the creation and completion of the final piece.
To see what type of articles they publish and other guidelines, visit the link.
Driftwood Press Submissions Open
John Updike once said, “Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.” At Driftwood Press, we are actively searching for artists who care about doing it right, or better. Driftwood Press is a bi-annual literary magazine founded in Tampa, FL in 2013.
As of 2018, we pay our contributors (see guidelines for rates) for each contribution made to our magazine.
At Driftwood Press, we are actively searching for artists who care about doing it right, or better. We are excited to receive your submissions and will diligently work to bring you the best in full poetry collections, novellas, graphic novels, short fiction, poetry, graphic narrative, photography, art, interviews, and contests.]
Visit their website for more information and to submit your work.
Extinction Rebellion Creative Hub Open for Submissions
Welcome to the Extinction Rebellion Creative Hub: an anthology of songs, fiction and poetry that’s inspiring, meaningful and original, and that reflects the principles, concerns and values of the Extinction Rebellion from a global, regional or local perspective.
This collection is a voice and a resource for Extinction Rebellion members everywhere, and a contribution to the global XR profile in the wider world.
Find out more and submit your work.
blankcoverpress.com
Submissions open in all genres!
For submissions, email: submissions@blankcoverpress.com
https://blankcoverpress.com
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: A Force Outside Myself: Citizens Over 60 Speak
Deadline: Rolling
If you are 60 or older, we’re interested in your thoughts right now and hope you can write a short first-person narrative. (100-500 words) Send entries to Kitania Folk at aforce@mcsweeneys.net and watch our site for ongoing updates.
Awakenings Review Seeks Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Photography, and Art
Established in 2000, The Awakenings Review is an annual lit mag committed to publishing poetry, short story, nonfiction, photography, and art by writers, poets and artists who have a relationship with mental illness: either self, family member, or friend. Our striking hardcopy publication is one of the nation’s leading journals of this genre. Creative endeavors and mental illness have long had a close association. The Awakenings Review publishes works derived from artists’, writers’, and poets’ experiences with mental illness, though mental illness need not be the subject of your work. Visit www.AwakeningsProject.org for submission guidelines.
Hip Mama magazine is looking for unique, creative, strong, edgy, alternative parenting stories for upcoming issues.
Check out the magazine here.
Send submissions to: hipsubmissions@gmail.com
Complete Guide to 2021 Artist Grants & Opportunities
A list of the top international open calls, residencies, fellowships, and awards that we believe will benefit artists during the upcoming year! The complete list is broken down into six categories: grants, residencies & fellowships, calls-for-entry, publications, COVID relief funds, and opportunity sites.
This list will be updated throughout the year, so make sure to bookmark the page, check back often. View the list.
Poets & Writers: New Writing Contest Deadlines!
For information regarding writing contests and deadlines:Go Here
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE YOUR OPPORTUNITY LISTED HERE? Email the details to: mail@indianawriters.org
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