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.

• Prospectus “welcomes submissions from unpublished or little-published poets as well short prose pieces and fine-art images.” Check the guidelines for eligibility details. Payment: “Prospectus believes artists should be paid for their work and will pay $25 for each published piece. In addition, you will receive 5 copies of the journal plus a 15% discount on additional copies.” Submissions for the June issue remain open until February 28. 
• Black Warrior Review, where submissions close February 28 and typically require a sub fee, invites Black and indigenous writers to “email their submissions, for no fee, to the editor corresponding to the submission’s genre.” Pays: “Currently, we offer royalty payments to regular-submission print contributors between $100 and $220, depending on the length of pieces. These numbers are subject to change per issue and differ for contributors to Boyfriend Village (our online edition) and for chapbook and featured-art contributors.”
• Attention, Ontario writers: The Toronto Star Short Story Contest remains open for entries until March 1, 5 p.m. Open topic. Prizes: First-place winner receives $5,000, “plus their choice of either the tuition fee for the two-semester creative writing graduate certificate correspondence program at the Humber School for Writers, which has an approximate value of $3,700, or a summer workshop in creative writing online program, which has an approximate value $850. In addition, the second-place winner receives a cash prize of $2,000 and the third-place winner gets $1,000.”
• “The editors of Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry invite students currently enrolled in undergraduate studies to submit work for our 2021 Student Poetry Writing Contest. We are currently open for submissions and will remain so until March 1. We seek work that conjures the experiences, observations, and insights of backcountry journeys. By ‘backcountry,’ we mean away from roads, preferably more than a day’s journey by foot, skis, snowshoes, kayak, canoe, horse, or any other non-motorized means of conveyance. We are open to a wide range of carefully-crafted work, both personal and political (however you construe that word). Work that does not fall within this backcountry spectrum, however excellent it might be, is not a good fit for us.” Prizes: “Up to three poems will be chosen for publication in the June 2021 volume of Deep Wild Journal, and the authors will receive cash awards of $100 and five copies of the journal. Each poem will be read by at least two readers. Finalists will be judged by Deep Wild editors.” Deadline: March 1. (Found this one via @Duotrope.) 
• By this time next week, the March issue of The Practicing Writer 2.0 will have gone out to subscribers. In the meantime, many opportunities listed in the February edition remain open. Don’t miss out!
• At Truman State University in Missouri, the Department of English and Linguistics “is seeking applicants for one non-tenure, renewable full-time faculty position as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and English with expertise in African American literature (and/or other literatures of American minorities) and experience mentoring underrepresented students, to start August 2021. This position is a full-time appointment on a nine-month contract.  There are also summer teaching possibilities.  This is an ideal opportunity for a creative writer (prose preferred) who aspires to a position at a public liberal arts and sciences institution where teaching high-ability undergraduates is the primary mission.”
• In Massachusetts, the English Department at Tufts University “invites applications for two part-time lecturer positions in Creative Writing. One lecturer to teach three courses per academic year in journalism, and one to teach four courses per academic year in poetry.”