Erika Dreifus

Each week in this space, Practicing Writing shares no-fee, paying markets for writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction: competitions, contests, and calls for submissions. These weekly posts complement monthly issues of The Practicing Writer newsletter, where you’ll always find more listings, none of them limiting eligibility to residents of a single municipality, state, or province. (But this blog does share those more localized opportunities, including jobs.)

As always, if you’d like to share a specific opportunity listed here, please credit the blog for the find. Thanks for respecting the time and effort that I put into researching, curating, and posting this information! I do notice, and I appreciate the courtesy.

• “Together with the Talve-Goodman Family, One Story is pleased to announce the Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowship. This educational fellowship will offer a year-long mentorship on the craft of fiction writing with One Story magazine.” Fellowship components are detailed within the announcement. Eligibility: “This fellowship calls for an early-career writer of fiction who has not yet published a book and is not currently nor has ever been enrolled in an advanced degree program (such as an MA or MFA) in Creative Writing, English, or Literature, and has no plans to attend one in the 2021 calendar year. We are seeking writers whose work speaks to issues and experiences related to inhabiting bodies of difference. This means writing that explores being in a body marked by difference, oppression, violence, or exclusion; often through categories of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religion, illness, disability, trauma, migration, displacement, dispossession, or imprisonment. All applicants must be at least 21 years of age as of January 1, 2021.” Also: “If you have been published by One Story, if you have been a reader for One Story, or if you have ever been employed by One Story, you are not eligible for this fellowship.” Deadline: October 30, 2020.
• “Miracle Monocle is pleased to announce the creation of a new award series: The Miracle Monocle Award for Young Black Writers. The winner of the prize will receive a $200 prize and publication in the journal. Work in the following genres is welcome: poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and experimental/hybrid literature. Writers must be 25 years old or younger and identify as Black.” Deadline: October 31, 2020 (although submissions will close if a quota is reached prior to that date).
• Submissions for Shenandoah‘s Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets will be accepted until October 31, 2020. “All submissions will be considered for publication. Poets living in or born in Virginia, as well as those who have lived in Virginia for two or more years in the past, are eligible. Submit as many as three poems, each no longer than 50 lines along with brief biographical note, which should confirm the basis for eligibility as a Virginian. One poem will be selected to receive the $1000 prize and will be published in Shenandoah. No Washington and Lee staff, faculty, or their families are eligible. The Graybeal-Gowen Prize was established to honor the memory of WLU graduate and lover of poetry, Howerton Gowen.”
• News from Ninth Letter: They’ve initiated “a submission fee of $3 per submission for online submissions to our print journal during the months of September, October, January, and February. Online submissions to our print journal will be free in November and December. We will also continue to take submissions to our print edition via USPS, postmarked between 9/1 and 2/28.” Also: Until November 3, they’re accepting (fee-free) submissions of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for a special online edition to be published in Winter 2021. “The theme for this issue is Touch. When was your last? The question is particularly evocative (and provocative)  at the present moment, when physical and social touch seem so restricted. With this in mind, the theme is necessarily constellatory. Consider: in touch, out of touch, touchdown, Midas touch, human touch,  be in touch, lose touch, touchback, don’t touch, wouldn’t touch, wouldn’t touch with ten foot pole, touch a nerve, touch on, touch up,  just a touch, touch and go, touch base, touch pad, lost touch, magic touch, touchy, retouched, I’m touched, truly touched, two-hand-touch,  untouched, stay in touch, touchback, touch-less, finishing touch, put me  in touch, lose touch, lost touch, untouched, untouched, untouched.” Payment: “Authors  whose work is selected for this special feature will receive a small honorarium ($25 per poem, $75 per story or essay) and a complimentary  2-­year subscription to Ninth Letter.”
• From carte blanche: “Submissions for Issue 40 – Fall 2020 are open between 17 October and 17 November 2020. Send us your Comics, Fiction, Photography, Poetry, and Translations.” The theme for this issue is open; “*Please be advised that for issue 40, the fiction section will only be considering submissions from Canadian residents.” Pays: “modest honorarium.”
• “”UC Berkeley Extension, the professional and continuing education division at the University of California, Berkeley, invites applications for a pool of qualified, temporary, part-time instructors to teach on-site and online courses for our Writing, Literature, and Humanities Programs.”
• “The Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin seeks to appoint in Fall 2021 a tenure-track assistant faculty member in Creative Writing (Poetry) whose work and teaching interests include race, ethnicity, and/or expressive culture.”
• Also in Texas, the Department of English and Modern Languages at Angelo State University “invites applications for a tenure-track position in Creative Writing (Fiction) with an open secondary specialization.”
• In Virginia, the Emory & Henry College English department “is seeking a tenure-track Assistant Professor to start in August 2021. Our ideal candidate will be a writer (either Creative or Technical) able to teach African-American literature, with any specialization from colonial to twenty-first century. Also invited to apply are candidates who consider themselves primarily specialists in African-American/Africology/African Studies, as long as they have a record as a creative writer or teacher of technical writing or composition.”
• Applications are now open for the Darugar Scholar position within the Creative Writing Program at Georgia College & State University. “In Spring 2021, the Darugar Scholar’s residency will be a virtual one, and all interaction will be remote, with the possible exception of a short campus visit for the culminating event of the Scholar’s period of residency, if an in-person event is feasible. If an in-person visit is not possible, those events too will be held remotely. Please note as part of the applicant documents that will be submitted, the residency proposal should provide a summary of possible programming. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Applications must be submitted by November 6, 2020, to receive full consideration.”