Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry
Philadelphia Stories
DEADLINE: November 15, 2021
SUBMISSION FEE: $5
INFO: The Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry annual national poetry prize features a first place $1,000 cash award. Three runners up will each receive a $250 cash award. The winning and runner up poems are published in the Spring issue. These poems and honorable mentions appear online. The Crimmins Prize celebrates risk, innovation, and emotional engagement. We especially encourage poets from underrepresented groups and backgrounds to send their work.
2022 JUDGE: Cynthia Arrieu-King
ABOUT SANDY CRIMMINS: Sandy Crimmins’s poem “Spring” appeared in the first issue of Philadelphia Stories and she performed at our launch party. She served on the Philadelphia Stories board from 2005 to 2007. Since Philadelphia Stories magazine premiered in 2004, Sandy’s voice and vision have fundamentally shaped Philadelphia Stories. Sandy was a poet who performed with musicians, dancers, and fire-eaters, and one of her proudest accomplishments was celebrating the work of her vibrant poetry community. The Sandy Crimmins Prize for Poetry is made possible by the generous support of her family.
CONTEST SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Submission deadline: November 15, 2021.
The $5 fee covers the submission of (1) one single poem up to three pages in length. Each poem must be submitted individually. Multiple poems submitted in the same document will not be considered.
Poets may submit as many individual poems as they like so long as they are each in a single document. There will be a $5 fee for each submission.
Submission fees are not refundable.
Simultaneous submissions are accepted; however, we must be notified immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere. If your simultaneously submitted poem is accepted elsewhere, please WITHDRAW your submission as soon as possible. And congratulations!
We will only consider work previously unpublished in print or online.
Poets currently residing in the United States are eligible.
All submissions should use a 12 pt font and standard typeface (not Comic Sans or Impact, etc.).
Poets should only upload Word documents [.doc, .docx]. The AUTHOR’S NAME SHOULD NOT APPEAR IN THE UPLOADED DOCUMENT.
Submissions will be accepted via the website. If you have any trouble uploading to the site, please email contest@philadelphiastories.org.
https://philadelphiastories.org/poetry-contest/
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: ‘ACROSS THE SPECTRUM’ ISSUE
Raising Mothers
DEADLINE: November 15, 2021
SUBMISSION FEE: $3
INFO: Raising Mothers publishes experimental and traditional fiction, flash fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, interviews, book reviews, photo essays, and comic/graphic narratives. Raising Mothers publishes work that centers parenthood from either a parent, or child-centered perspective from BIPOC people exclusively; women, femmes, disabled, nonbinary and LGBTQIA+ parents.
For our “Across the Spectrum” issue, we’re interested in work that celebrates, examines, critiques and/or questions the realities and assumptions of what it means to parent or nurture a neurodiverse child or be a neurodiverse parent. Work that examines these worlds at the intersections of race, class and/or gender identity is strongly encouraged.
We invite all forms--essays, poems, interviews, comics, fiction, etc.--that addresses the breadth and depth of neurodiversity.
www.raisingmothers.com/submissions/
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LITERATURE GRANT
Café Royal Cultural Foundation
DEADLINE: November 15, 2021 at 9am EST
INFO: Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC will award a publishing grant to authors of fiction / creative non-fiction, poetry and playwriting.
Amounts: Up to $10,000.00
Eligibility: Authors in fiction / creative non-fiction, poetry and playwriting. The applicant must be the originator of the written material.
Grants awarded in this category may fund costs associated with continuing the composition of work submitted. Such as:
Course Reduction (if you're a Teacher/Professor)
Salary Replacement
Living Expenses
Research Expenses
Writers applying must be a current resident of New York City and have lived there for a minimum of one year prior to applying.
Please make sure to submit your application with ample time before the start date of your project.
Review Procedures: Funding decisions will be made by the Café Royal Cultural Foundation Selection and Executive Committees. The following criteria will be applied in evaluating grant proposals:
Creativity, originality, ideas and concepts, writing style
Importance of the Project/Cultural Relevance
Promise of future achievements in writing
Application Requirements:
Up to and no more than a 15 page PDF of the work, for the Café Royal Cultural Foundation executive committee to download and read.
A letter of intent from the publisher with a date of planned publication, if no publisher is assigned, Café Royal Cultural Foundation may work with writer to help find a publisher.
A short description of the project.
A short author biography of the person(s) involved.
List of costs that the grant money be used for - must not exceed the amount of $10,000.00
https://caferoyalculturalfoundation.org/literature-page
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30 BELOW CONTEST—2021
Narrative
DEADLINE: November 19, 2021 at midnight PST
ENTRY FEE: $26 (includes three months of complimentary access to Narrative Backstage).
INFO: Narrative invites all writers, poets, visual artists, photographers, performers, and filmmakers between eighteen and thirty years old to send us their best work. We’re looking for the traditional and the innovative, the true and the imaginary. We’re looking to encourage and promote the best young authors and artists working today.
AWARDS:
First Prize - $1,500
Second Prize - $750
Third Prize - $300
Ten finalists will receive $100 each.
The prizewinners and finalists will be announced in Narrative.
All N30B entries are eligible for the $4,000 Narrative Prize for 2021 and for acceptance as a Story of the Week or Poem of the Week.
GUIDELINES:
Written: Works of prose and of poetry, including short stories, all poetic forms, novel excerpts, essays, memoirs, and excerpts from book-length nonfiction. Prose submissions must not exceed 15,000 words. Each poetry submission may contain up to five poems. The poems should all be contained in a single file. All submissions should be double-spaced (excluding poetry, which should be single-spaced), with 12-point type, at least one-inch margins, and sequentially numbered pages. Please provide your name, address, telephone number, and email address at the top of the first page. Submit your document as a .doc, .docx, .pdf, or .rtf file. You may enter as many times as you wish, but we encourage you to be selective and to send your best work. All entries will be considered for publication.
Drawn: Graphic stories, graphic-novel excerpts, and comics of no more than thirty pages, in .pdf format.
Photographed: Photo essays of between five and twenty images, previously unpublished (including on sites like Instagram, your personal website, stock photography sites, etc.). Images should be submitted together in low-resolution .pdf format; however, upon acceptance, images will need to be provided that have a resolution of at least 300 dpi, in a .tif, .jpg, or raw format that can be reproduced at 2,048 pixels wide. Captions or text should be included, either with the file containing the images or as a separate document in a .doc or .pdf format, with numbered captions corresponding to the similarly numbered photographs. Please provide your name, address, telephone number, and email address on the first page.
Spoken: Original works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in audio theater, including performance, radio journalism, and stories and poems read aloud. Submissions may run up to ten minutes, in .mp3 format, with a bit rate of at least 128 kbit/s.
Filmed: Short films and documentaries of up to fifteen minutes. Submissions must be in .mp4 or .mov format.
JUDGING: The contest will be judged by the editors of the magazine. Winners and finalists will be announced to the public by December 18, 2021. All entrants will be notified by email of the judges’ decisions, which will be final. The judges reserve the option to declare ties and to designate and award only as many winners and/or finalists as are appropriate to the quality of contest entries and of work represented in the magazine.
Entries must be previously unpublished, though we do accept works that have appeared in college publications. Entries cannot have been the winner, finalist, or honorable mention in another contest. We accept online entries only. We do accept simultaneous submissions, but if your entry is accepted elsewhere, please let us know as soon as possible (and accept our congratulations!).
www.narrativemagazine.com/30-below-2021
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2021 ILLUMINATING BLACK LIVES: A WRITER'S FELLOWSHIP
Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow
DEADLINE: November 29, 2021
INFO: This fellowship invites writers to explore the African American experience. The work may be in any literary genre: fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, or a combination. It may take place now or in the past. It may draw upon the life of the author or probe other lives. There is no expectation of a certain attitude or type of experience. Rather, the successful application will demonstrate insight, honesty, literary merit, and the likelihood of publication.
Two fellowship winners will each receive a two-week residency at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow to allow the recipients to focus completely on their work. Each writer’s suite has a bedroom, private bathroom, separate writing space, and wireless internet. We provide uninterrupted writing time, a European-style gourmet dinner prepared five nights a week and served in our community dining room, the camaraderie of other professional writers when you want it, and a community kitchen stocked with the basics for breakfast and lunch.
Fellowship applications must be accompanied by a writing sample and a non-refundable $35 application fee. Writers proposing more than one project must submit a separate application and fee for each one. The submission period opens on Monday, September 6, 2021. Deadline is midnight on Monday, November 29, 2021. The winner will be announced no later than December 29, 2021. Residency must be completed by December 31, 2022. Exceptions will be made if COVID-19 makes a residency inadvisable. For an application form, visit https://www.writerscolony.org/fellowships.
www.writerscolony.org/fellowships
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Rising Writer Prize in Poetry
Autumn House
DEADLINE: November 30, 2021
INFO: The 2022 Rising Writer Prize is for a first full-length book of poetry. The judge is Donika Kelly.
GUIDELINES:
Must be the author’s first full-length poetry collection (previous publications of chapbooks and full-length books in other genres are fine)
The winners will receive book publication, $1,000 honorarium, and a $500 travel/publicity grant to promote their book
All finalists will be considered for publication
Submissions should be approximately 50-80 pages
The reading fee is $25 (We will waive the submission fee for those undergoing financial hardship or living with limited means. Please check out our FAQs page for more information)
Do not include your name anywhere on the actual manuscript; if your name appears within the body of the text, please omit it or black it out
You may include a brief bio in the “cover letter” section of Submittable
Do not include an acknowledgments page in the manuscript
Feel free to include a table of contents
Simultaneous submissions are permitted, but please let us know immediately if your book was accepted elsewhere
Friends, family members, and former students of judges or Autumn House editors may not submit to the contest. Students do not include interactions at short-term residencies or fellowships
Former employees of Autumn House, including interns, may not submit to the contest
Note: There is no longer an age restriction on this prize.
JUDGE: Donika Kelly is the author of THE RENUNCIATIONS (Graywolf 2021) and BESTIARY (Graywolf). BESTIARY is the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The collection was also long-listed for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for a Publishing Triangle Award and a Lambda Literary Award.
www.autumnhouse.org/submissions/rising-writers-prize/
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Obsidian
DEADLINE: December 1, 2021
INFO: Obsidian supports—through publication and critical inquiry—the contemporary poetry, fiction, drama/performance, visual and media art of Africans globally.
This special issue of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Gender Queer/ Genre Queer Playground, seeks work that moves between the face of terror and isolation; joy as possibility, necessity, and form. Recess—inspired by the visual artist Ellen Gallagher’s 2001 painted sculpture “Preserve,” (10 x 12 x 32 feet) described in Art in Review as “an expansive, all-white structure of straight wooden dowels designed to resemble a children’s jungle gym, … decorat[ed] … with cut-out pieces of flat rubber … based on Ms. Gallagher’s usual lexicon of google eyes, lips and wavy hair.” Catch—Gallagher’s minimalist structure, modeled in the context of the “playground,” allows for multiple points of entry, the viewer able to play through a raced, gendered, queer site. Blacktop. Blackness. Kickball. Tetherball. Double-Dutch. Tag. You’re It.
We invite LGBQTIA+++++ of the African Diaspora to come play with us across practices. Please send original short stories, poetry, drama, hybrid genre, creative/critical interventions, interviews, multimedia visual and digital art, as well as music and experimental soundscapes.
https://obsidianlit.org/open-calls/
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Honey Literary
DEADLINE: December 1, 2021
INFO: Honey Literary’s third issue will be out February 2022! We publish two issues each year, one in winter, and one in summer. This reading period (for our third issue) closes December 1, 2021.
To share your work, please email the respective genre editor and upload your .docx or image files (please direct any file format questions to Editor in chief, Dorothy Chan @ editor@honeyliterary.com and she would be happy to help). Include a brief bio with a few sentences about why your work is a good fit for us with our mission statement in mind. If you’re submitting the same packet to multiple categories, please let us know as well.
Please send us your work only once per submission period. Simultaneous submissions are cool as long as you promptly notify us if the work is accepted elsewhere.
Honey Literary accepts and encourages simultaneous submissions, but please let us know immediately if a piece is accepted elsewhere. Submit no more than once per submissions period. We only accept unpublished work. Honey Literary retains first publication rights, and upon publication, rights revert back to the author. Please credit Honey Literary as the first publisher if the piece appears elsewhere after publication, which includes, but isn’t limited to other journals, anthologies, chapbooks, and full-length books.
CATEGORIES:
Poetry: Send us three to five unpublished pieces at a time. We’ve got big appetites, so more is more. We want the poems that were too weird for workshop. Give us work that is eclectic and absurd and demands to be read aloud. Send us your jigsaw edges and remixes. Email submissions to Editor Rita Mookerjee: poetry@honeyliterary.com
Sex, Kink, and the Erotic: Locker room talk is dead; Honey Literary is here for body-positive, kink-friendly content centered around respect and consent. Ideal submissions include but are not limited to confessions, toy/gear reviews, etiquette guides, dirty little secrets, burlesque show recommendations, odes to sideboob, fav strip club snacks, dating app wins (or fails), shibari shoots, erotic vignettes, recaps from the weekend, and that porno script you saved on your old desktop. Honey Literary loves and supports sex workers as well as their art/writing! Show us what’s inside your bedside drawer. Note from the editors: Please be sure to look up the difference between “erotic” and “erotica” before submitting. Email submissions to Editor Rita Mookerjee: sex@honeyliterary.com
Essays: Send us essays that use the personal to explore facets of our current world. From natural history, science, politics, international events, food, culture, and art, we want to see how the personal and public intersect in your work.We’re seeking essays that are elastic, capacious, experimental and exploratory. We welcome memoir, nonfiction, research, lyric meditations, and hybrid work about what stirs your curiosity, what raises your hackles. We especially invite emerging writers and student writers to submit their work. (750-1000 words). Email submissions to Editor Avni Vyas: essays@honeyliterary.com
Hybrid: Do you have work that blurs, defies, or redefines genre? We welcome excerpts and stand alones that may include, but are not limited to: documentary poetics, notes, mappings, marginalia, lists, altars/shrines, collections, audiovisual pieces, prose poetry, letters, invented forms, collaborations, and scholarly projects that are slightly or largely out of touch with institutions. Send enough work to contextualize your project with respect for our time. For example: a bouquet–not the entire meadow. Email submissions to Editor Claire Meuschke: hybrid@honeyliterary.com
Comics: We’re looking for eccentric, experimental, excessive, confessional, instructional, genre-nasty comics pieces (10 pages or less) in any form. Single-panel pieces, excerpts from zines, comics stories without words, comics without pictures, one-offs, doodles, interesting trash, and everything in between. We are particularly open to submissions from members of the LGBTQIAAP+ community. Email submissions to Editor Jessica Q. Stark: comics@honeyliterary.com
Animals: Kingdom: Animalia. Familiars. Daemons. Protectors. Companions. Predators. Prey. This is a space to submit art & writing about animals real or imagined, pre-historic or future, spineless or silky, friend or foe. Share the work you do with animals; show us the bioluminescent creatures in your lagoon; describe the dreams where your lost pets come to visit you. Highlight conservation work in your habitats. Profile the service animal of the year. Recount the folk tales that made you scared of drain serpents. Tell us about the anteater in the forest, the sandhill cranes in the parking lot, the carabao in the rice field, the angler in the deep. We want your venom, oily feathers, plush fur, mythical beasts, and whale songs. Please submit a maximum of 3 artworks, 3-5 pages for poems, and 10-15 pages for longer pieces. Email submissions to Editor Christina Giarrusso: animals@honeyliterary.com
Interviews: Honey Literary seeks to conduct interviews that showcase the boundlessness of art and innovation, tapping into the creative’s soul and teasing out the hows and whys of their passions. We want to facilitate interviews that go beyond the typical, robotic back and forth between two parties, but rather a natural, gradual unfurling between people who cherish expression and creation. Whether you’re a singer, writer, visual artist, or culinary chef, Honey Literary wants to know what moves you, what keeps you up at night, who’s in your artistic lineage, and of course, all about your craft. Email submissions to Editor Zakiya Cowan: interviews@honeyliterary.com
Rants & Raves: Send us what you are excited about. Rants & Raves is looking for critical & contextual works on books, just as we did before, but also we are expanding on that option! We are in search of pieces that meditate on works that bring out particular passions for you! Is there a single poem that you would like to blare through a megaphone at all the strangers & loved ones in your community if given a chance? Is there a single song that you can’t get out your head & wish you could talk about with every car that speeds by? Is there a train that you hear daily & absolutely wish didn’t wake you up everyday? Is there a bird you witness in flight that transports you elsewhere? This is where those individual moments that move you shine. We’re looking for (800 words or less) insights into moments that particularly move you. Is there one instance of an Allen Iverson crossover that you’re still hung up on? Which frame in the Rihanna “Work” video do you still have as a gif in your notes app? What about that one daffodil creeping into sprout on your sidewalk cracks? We’re open for you! Email submissions to Editor Nabila Lovelace: rantsandraves@honeyliterary.com
Valentines: Tell us about that one friend you didn’t know you were in love with until you came out. Share the sticky note love letters you’ll never end up giving your roommate’s girlfriend. Or what about those love songs you wrote to your favorite artists? Honey Literary wants your Valentines: your phone notes, email drafts, letters in a box, corner-of-the-page-too-distracted-by-lust-to-pay-attention doodles, and descriptions of the outfits you love but will never wear. Or what about your thoughts on the perfect perfume for that special someone, your late-night car conversations, your platonic epics, your [self-insert] fanfiction, your realizations of being pursued or secretly admired, your sheets of loose leaf stuffed into drawers, your quarantine love stories, or your Tinder conversations with strangers that you’ll never speak to again? Think about those missed connections: the person you ran into three times at the grocery store whose name you didn’t catch. Is your valentine a top 10 list? Is it taped on a bus stop, in the refrain of a pop song, at the bottom of a bowl, or framed at an altar? Give us your cutesy, your sexy, your sultry, and your badass expressions of love and life. Email submissions to Editor Maria Clara Melo: valentines@honeyliterary.com