Category Archives: Contests

Deadlines: Week of 18/2 – 24/2

Posted on February 18, 2007 by Keren

Artist Trust
Grants for Artist Projects
Grants of up to $1,500 each are given annually to Washington State poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers to support the development of new work. Submit up to eight pages of poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction by February 23. There is no entry fee.

Link to the website for complete guidelines.

Stadler Center for Poetry
Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing
A four-month residency, including a $4,000 stipend, at the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University is given annually to a poet, fiction writer, or creative nonfiction writer. The 2007 Philip Roth Residence is open to U.S. prose writers over the age of 21 and not enrolled in a college or university. Submit up to 20 pages of prose, a curriculum vitae, and three letters of recommendation by February 24.

Link to the website for complete guidelines.

Blurbs from the Poets & Writers, Inc. contest calendar.

Posted in Awards, Contests |

Guardian poetry workshop with Aidan Andrew Dun: everyday objects

Posted on February 16, 2007 by Keren

There’s a twist in the exercise. (which I’ve used in Ode to a Postbox). And it’s this.

The most common object in the modern world is potentially the most sacred because its restoration to sanctity is totally unexpected. The poet has traditionally helped to keep the sacred alive by associating the world’s great symbols – a tree, the ocean, the sky – with simple feelings of compassion, humanity, love, non-violence, noble resonance. Big ideas have most often been expressed in straightforward language (naturally I mean the direct intensity of Shakespeare, not the gibberish of a lawyer or a government). But as oceans, trees and skies die in front of us, and the world and all its strange wonders are desanctified, our exercise is to seek out the overfamiliar and disregarded, the rejected, marginalized and faceless even, and to load these obscure players in life with larger significance. Here is a work of unification and of ‘invisible legislation’, to paraphrase Shelley.

Email your entries, with ‘Poetry workshop’ in the title field, to books.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk by midnight on Sunday February 25. The shortlisted poems, and Aidan’s responses, will appear on the site soon afterwards.

Link to the Guardian article

Posted in Articles, Authors, Contests, Poetry |

'Not Published Yet' prize: for booksellers who write

Posted on February 12, 2007 by Keren

Inspired by the example of Sarah Waters and David Mitchell, who both worked as booksellers before becoming bestsellers, the Not Published Yet competition invites submissions from unpublished authors working in the book trade to win a publishing contract with Faber and Faber, and an advance of at least £2,000.

The competition is open to writers of both fiction and non-fiction, whether they work for a chain or an independent bookshop. First-time authors working full- or part-time for organisations that are members of the Booksellers Association can send in 10,000-word extracts, proposals, outlines or synopses of their work by June 29 2007.

Link to the rest of the Guardian article

Posted in Articles, Awards, Booksellers, Contests |

Boaz Publishing offers $10,000 for unpublished novels

Posted on January 27, 2007 by Keren

Boaz Publishing, a tiny literary publisher in Albany, Calif., has created a new $10,000 award for unpublished novels. The Frances Fabri Literary Prize for Fiction honors the memory of holocaust survivor Frances Fabri, an unpublished poet and fiction writer who spent much of her later years recording oral histories of fellow survivors. Boaz publisher Tom Southern said he sees the prize as an ideal way for agents to find an outlet for “those books that they believed in, but just haven’t made it into print yet.”

In addition to the cash award and hardcover publication by Boaz, the endowment for the prize includes $5,000 for marketing. Southern said that the prize is being funded by investments from anonymous donors. The funds are sufficient for Boaz to plan a second book prize—most likely also for unpublished fiction—sometime later this year.

The deadline for the first Frances Fabri Prize is February 28. The winner will be announced April 15. Submission details can be found online at www.boazpublishing.com.

Read the full Publishers Weekly article here.

Posted in Articles, Awards, Contests, Publishers |

Scriblist: Collaborative story writing project

Posted on January 25, 2007 by Keren

Scriblist founder, Patrick Horne, says:

Scriblist.com is a new creative writing website which offers something just a little bit different. Aspiring authors are invited to enter submissions for the first chapter of a story with all entries posted directly onto the site. Each user then has the opportunity to vote for their favourite submissions and a panel of judges will select the winning chapters from the highest rated entries. The competition in each succeeding month will be to write further chapters to follow on from the winning entries.

This project began with a concern about the dramatic decrease in reading and writing, particularly for young people, even in the era of Harry Potter. Young people are all familiar with the Internet and Scriblist.com will use modern technology to help revive interest in creative writing. The site is open to anyone of any age who is interested in writing. We believe that many people working collaboratively can produce work which is as good as or even better than anything that one person might produce by themselves.

The project offers prizes for the author of each chapter chosen for publication (a delicious-looking iPod Shuffle) as well as royalties from the published book. As an added incentive to encourage younger authors, Scriblist.com will also offer prizes to schools, colleges and universities should any of their students provide one of the chosen winning contributions.

The submission window for the first chapter closes February 4.

Link to the Scriblist home page.

Posted in Contests, Websites |

Independent foreign fiction longlist released

Posted on January 21, 2007 by Keren

The first international Booker prizewinner, Ismail Kadare, heads the longlist for the 2007 Independent foreign fiction prize. The Albanian novelist’s latest book, a dark political thriller set in the twilight of Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship called The Successor, is nominated as part of a longlist for the £10,000 award which spans the globe.

Also on a longlist with an unprecedented 20 titles are Elif Shafak, who was acquitted last year of “insulting Turkishness”, Spanish writer Javier Maras, Italian author Niccolo Ammaniti and Kenyan exile, Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

View the list on the Guardian site here.

Posted in Authors, Awards, Contests |

British science fiction award shortlist released

Posted on January 16, 2007 by Keren

The shortlist for the annual British science fiction award had been released.  Awards will be given in three categories: novel, short fiction and artwork.  The awards will be presented at Eastercon on April 7.

There’s also a recommended reading list of non-fiction works.
Link to the shortlist (via BoingBoing)

Posted in Awards, Contests, E-books, Reading, Science fiction/fantasy |

An American Idol of books?

Posted on January 12, 2007 by Mark

From Reuters, via Yahoo News:

A major U.S. book publisher is hoping its new Web-based writing contest can tap into the popularity of interactive competitions like hit television show “American Idol.”

As part of the “First Chapters” contest, aspiring first-time authors and members of www.gather.com can post manuscripts on that social-networking Web site, organizers from publisher Touchstone Fireside and gather.com said on Thursday.

Full story here.

Posted in Contests, Publishers, Websites |

Costa award winners announced

Posted on January 10, 2007 by Keren

William Boyd was named novelist of the year Tuesday in Britain’s lucrative and long-standing Costa Book Awards.
The prizes — known until last year as the Whitbread Book Awards — were established in 1971 and are Britain’s longest-running literary competition. They are open to residents of Britain and the Republic of Ireland.

The prizes are awarded in five categories — novel, first novel, poetry, biography and children’s book.  Each category winner receives $9,700. One of the five will receive the $49,000 book of the year award on Feb. 7.

The awards were renamed last year after sponsorship switched from retail and leisure group Whitbread Group PLC to the Costa coffee shop chain.

Link to the rest of the Yahoo! News article; link to the Guardian news article

Posted in Articles, Authors, Awards, Contests |

Sobol prize canceled

Posted on January 8, 2007 by Keren

The Sobol Award, a controversial new literary contest that offered agentless writers a $100,000 first prize and a contract with Simon & Schuster for the top three winners, has been canceled.

Officials acknowledged that the prize’s entry fee and other contractual requirements had deterred would-be participants.

“No further manuscript submissions will be accepted,” award organizers announced Monday on the Sobol Web site (http://www.sobolaward.com). “All writers who have submitted manuscripts will receive a full refund of their entry fee ($85) and our copies of the manuscripts will be destroyed and deleted from our system.”

Weeks told The Associated Press on Monday that only about 1,000 manuscripts were received, far below the 50,000 that prize organizers were prepared to accept and well below the minimum of 2,000 that Simon & Schuster had required to ensure its participation.

“I think the criticism was probably quite damaging,” she acknowledged. “We should have responded more quickly, but startups don’t always do the right thing.”

Link to the Yahoo! News article

Previous posts on the Sobel Prize:
New prize for unpublished manuscripts
Sobol contest winners to get book deals

Posted in Articles, Awards, Contests, Publishers |