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.

• Attention, Wisconsin residents: “The 2021 Lakefly Writing Contests are now open.” Categories include short short fiction, short story, and poetry. Cash prizes. Deadline: February 26.
• The Little Tokyo Historical Society (LTHS) seeks fictional short stories for its eighth annual Imagine Little Tokyo short story contest in the categories of English language, Japanese language and youth (18 and younger). The deadline is February 28, 2021. The contest is presented by LTHS in partnership with the Japanese American National Museum’s Discover Nikkei project. The purpose of the contest is to raise awareness of Little Tokyo through a creative story that takes place in Little Tokyo. The story has to be fictional and set in a current, past or future Little Tokyo in the City of Los Angeles, California. The short story committee will be specifically looking for stories that capture the spirit and sense of Little Tokyo. Each category winner will be awarded $500 in cash with their short story being published in The Rafu Shimpo, Discover Nikkei and Little Tokyo Historical Society website. A virtual award ceremony and dramatic readings of the winning stories are also being planned for 2021 at the Japanese American National Museum.”
• At Texas Review Press, the Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series “highlights a first full-length collection by emerging authors from each state in the southern U.S.” Currently, the series invites submissions from poets born or resident in Arkansas. “Winner will receive a standard royalty contract and 20 copies of the published book.” Deadline: February 28.
• Another February 28 deadline: “Limp Wrist launches the Glitter Bomb Award (AKA an annual poetry contest).  The award is for one outstanding poem by a poet of any stage of her/his/their career.  The Glitter Bomb Award is a contest with no entry fee that is open to LGBTQ/non-binary poets and their allies. Limp Wrist founder/editor Dustin Brookshire will serve as the initial reviewer narrowing contest entries to 10 finalists. Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux will serve as the final judge of the inaugural Glitter Bomb Award. Laux will select a winner and two finalists.” Prizes include a cash award of $500 to the winner and $50 to finalists. 
• The Jo Ann Walker Poetry Scholarship, which aims “to encourage North and South Carolina residents to attend regional and national poetry workshops” with $500 grants, remains open for applications until February 28.
• “The annual NC State Poetry Contest is a free literary competition open to all North Carolina residents (including out-of-state and international students who are enrolled in North Carolina universities). It remains one of the largest free-to-enter poetry contests in the South. This year’s guest judge is award-winning poet Kayleb Rae Candrilli and features a grand prize of $500.” Entries must be sent by postal mail by March 1.
• The Reckoning seeks “creative writing and art about environmental justice. The fiction we publish is mostly, but not exclusively, speculative; the nonfiction is more creative than journalistic, the poetry tends towards the narrative, preferably with some thematic heft, the visual art leans away from the pulpy towards the surreal, subversive, political. But the heart of what we want is your searingly personal, visceral, idiosyncratic understanding of the world and the people in it as it has been, as it is, as it will be, as it could be, as a consequence of humanity’s relationship with the earth.” Payment: “Eight cents a word for prose, thirty dollars a page for poetry, art negotiable, minimum twenty-five dollars per piece.” (Discovered this one via @Duotrope.)
• We’re halfway through February, which means that even if some of the opportunities listed in this month’s edition of The Practicing Writer 2.0 have closed, many others remain open. Don’t miss out!
• “Bookfox is seeking a freelance writer to write articles helping fiction writers.” Payment: “roughly $500 per post, depending on length and research. Posts range from 4,000 words to 6,000 words. This is a freelance position, but could turn into a full time position if we are a good match.”
• At the University of Virginia, “the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is accepting applications for a highly qualified Administrative Assistant in the Creative Writing Department. The incumbent will serve as the major administrative support to Commonwealth Professor of English Rita Dove, who, as a former U.S. poet laureate as well as a former poet laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia and a Pulitzer Prize winner, has one of the highest public profiles at the University of Virginia.
• “The Paris Review seeks a collegial, highly collaborative managing editor to work closely with the editor in chief and other staff on production of the print quarterly and other editorial projects. This is a great opportunity for a detail-driven, well-organized literature lover to help shape the next chapter of the magazine’s literary story. The managing editor oversees production on the quarterly, works closely with the EIC on acquisitions and shaping the Review’s iconic Writers at Work interview series, and contributes to special editorial projects (including Paris Review Editions).” NB: “This position will begin remotely, but the ability to relocate to New York City by late 2021 is expected. Salary is commensurate with experience.”
• In Tennessee, Austin Peay State University is advertising for an Instructor of Creative Writing, Fiction, who “will teach fiction workshops at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in addition to teaching first year composition and second year World Literature courses. As part of the Center of Excellence in the Creative Arts (CECA), the Instructor will also serve as the fiction editor for Zone 3 Press. This is a temporary, one-year position to begin August 1, 2021.”