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.

• Useful list of paying “entertainment markets” compiled by Kathie Bullard Harris for the Make a Living Writing website.
• “Get your keyboards ready! Read Local BC is seeking writers to help celebrate British Columbia’s vibrant publishing community. We are now accepting pitches for 2021 about a wide variety of subjects, incl. interviews or Q&As with local authors.” Pays (per linked guidelines): $150 (presumably in Canadian dollars).
• “Houstonia is seeking freelance journalists to write longform reported features and personal essays, and we want to hear your pitches and ideas. Please email editor Dianna Wray: dwray(at)houstoniamag(dot)com. Rate $500+ based on experience.” (Thanks to Opportunities of the Week for the lead on this one.)
• Submissions for the 2020 Anita McAndrews Award Poetry Contest are open until November 30. “Has Human Rights ever been a more relevant theme for poets? *Theme is human rights. Familiarity with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is recommended.” Prizes: First prize $200, Second prize $50.” Judge: Brett Axel. (Found this one via WinningWriters.com)
• Now open for applications: “The NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship is a $7,000 unrestricted cash grant available to artists living in New York State and/or one of the Indian Nations located therein.” For the current round, “fiction” is among the categories in which awards will be granted. Deadline is February 10, 2021.
• We are just about halfway through November, so this may be a good moment to remind you that plenty of the opportunities listed in November’s newsletter remain open for submissions/entries.
• “The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University is seeking a Coordinator of Educational Programs to administrate and develop classes, workshops, and other engagements with the community.”
• The New Yorker is advertising for a Fact Checker.
• Prairie Schooner, “the international literary quarterly magazine edited and published at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with support from the university’s English department and the University of Nebraska Press,” is hiring a Managing Editor.
• “The White Review board of trustees invites proposals for a new editorship of the magazine. The appointment is for a part-time, fixed term of two years and is open to individual and joint applications.” NB: “The magazine is based in London, but the position is also open to UK residents based outside the capital.” Compensation: “For individual candidates, the editor role is paid £25,000 pro-rata, three days a week; in the event of a collective application, the proposal should include details of how responsibilities and salary will be shared. The position may suit those looking for part-time work which complements their own practice.” (Thanks to Freelance Writing Jobs for the lead on this one.) Apply by November 26.
• “The Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin seeks to appoint in Fall 2021 two early career fellows in Creative Writing (Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, or Screenwriting) whose work and teaching interests engage with race, ethnicity, and expressive culture.”
• Mississippi State University seeks “a creative nonfiction writer for a tenure-track assistant professor position” and “a poet for a tenure-track assistant professor position.”
• In New Jersey, “the Department of English at Rider University invites applications for a tenure-track position in creative writing at the rank of Assistant Professor beginning in September 2021.
• Washington University in St. Louis is hiring an Assistant Professor in the Department of English. “We seek applications from emerging creative nonfiction writers whose work centers on the experience of Blackness and have achieved distinction (in the form of at least one book) in one or more genres of creative nonfiction, including essays, literary journalism, memoir, cultural criticism, graphic nonfiction, and more, and who can demonstrate the promise of excellence in teaching and commitment to diversity in the academy.”