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.

• Although we’re now slightly past the midway mark for October, many opportunities listed in the October newsletter remain open for submissions or entries. Be sure that you’ve checked them out!
• The Australia-based Suburban Review is open until October 27 (11:59 p.m. [AEDT]) for submissions responding to this call: “On the 28th issue, we were raised according to your scriptures – and artworks, and comics. The theme for our next issue is LEAVEN; we want work which rises from the world, or gives rise to a new one. Maybe your poetry is the catalyst that transforms its material into something better (or worse), your prose fiction grows and grows, or your literary essays make something extraordinary from quotidian or domestic life. Your photography, art, and comics might alter the very thing they picture. To make rise can be political, social, economic, and completely personal. It happens in the public realm or in the private (think protests, but also think your sourdough starter). We want to receive work which foments and ferments, which inflates, and swells, and permeates.” Pay rates are detailed here. (Thanks to @Duotrope for reminding me to check in with this journal.)
• Northern Gravy “welcomes submissions from UK & Ireland writers of any background, including first-time writers” until October 30. They publish fiction, poetry, and kidlit, and pay £100. (Hat tip: Sian Meades-Williams’s Freelance Writing Jobs newsletter.)
• At Barrelhouse, submissions are open for an online issue (“The Gray Issue”) to be produced by students in Mike Ingram’s Fall 2022 Writers at Work class at Temple University. “The color gray is known as a dull, mundane color, but for this issue of Barrelhouse, we want to see gray in a new light. It might be the smoke from a lone cigarette, or a sandalwood incense. It could be the gleam from a knight’s steel sword, or from a bride’s silver necklace. What happens in the quiet moments of life, when no one is looking? What happens when you break out of the binary of black and white thinking? Liminal spaces, cloudy days, purgatory, limbo — good people doing bad things and bad people who do good. Give us your writing that explores the gray areas, even your dad’s gray hair (but please, leave 50 shades out of it).” Payment: “We pay $50 to each contributor to our print and online issues.” Deadline: October 31. (But, per Ingram, “if we’re totally flooded we may have to close up a bit early [I want the class to be rigorous, but not “everyone now has to read the equivalent of twelve novels” rigorous]).”
• Until October 31, BIPOC writers may submit flash fiction fee-free to The Worcester Review (a fee applies for other writers; the guidelines note that “TWR does not want to miss out on submissions from any writer” and anyone for whom the fee may be a barrier is encouraged to contact them). Pays: “Payment will be two copies upon publication (or one copy, if shipping internationally) and a small honorarium. In recent years, the honorarium was $20 for each writer.”
• One Wild Ride, “a new, limited-run literary journal sharing stories about caring for our aging parents and those who raised us,” is currently open for reprints, “previously published flash fiction, creative nonfiction, or hybrid stories about finding joy, sadness & meaning as we flex roles as both child and caretaker. I’m looking for stories about anyone who raised you (anyone!).” Pays: $20 (via Paypal). Deadline: October 31.
• Shenandoah has opened the submission gates for its Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. “Submissions for this prize will be accepted between October 15 and October 31, 2022. Winners will be chosen by guest judge Oliver de la Paz. 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.” NB: There is a cap of 500 submissions, so if you’re particularly interested in entering this competition, you may not want to wait!
• From Invisible Publishing’s Alicia Elliott: “It’s been a while since I’ve done a call for submissions, but if you’re working on a weird, wild, outside-of-the-box and/or boundary-pushing book of creative nonfiction or fiction, I want to read and edit it!” Per the questions and responses, the publisher focuses on Canadian writers’ work (but is open to others’). Pays “small advance” and royalties. “No deadline, but we occasionally do close submissions to catch back up.”
• Wingspans, “a web-based platform that uses storytelling to help students reimagine their futures,” is “looking for experienced journalists/people with a background in creative writing to interview people about their work so the next generation can learn from their experiences.” Pays: $150/interview. Remote work for U.S.-based writers.
• The Center for Fiction is advertising for a Writing Programs Administrative Assistant (Part-time, 25 hours per week, Monday–Friday). The position is listed as hybrid, the Center is located in Brooklyn. Compensation: “$20 per hour, depending on experience.”
• “The Department of English and Victoria College in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto invites applications for a joint full-time tenure stream position (51% English & 49% Victoria College) in the field of Creative Writing with a preference for writers who work in more than one genre. The appointment will be at the rank of Assistant Professor, with an expected start date of July 1, 2023.”
• “The Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington is seeking a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor of Creative Writing/Fiction on a continuing 9-month appointment starting August 2023. Strong credentials in nonfiction strongly preferred.”
• “Utah Valley University’s Department of English and Literature invites applicants for two tenure-track positions in Creative Writing specializing in prose.”
• “The University of Nevada, Las Vegas invites applications for Assistant Professor of Literary Nonfiction, English, College of Liberal Arts.”
• In North Carolina, “the creative writing department of Warren Wilson College seeks a poet to join our undergraduate faculty and assist us in shaping our growing program….This is a full-time, Assistant Professor position in an extended contract system with a 3-3 load beginning August 2023.”
• “The Department of Writing in the School of Humanities & Sciences at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, invites applications for a tenure-eligible position in poetry beginning on August 16, 2023. We offer one of the nation’s few comprehensive bachelor’s degrees in writing, including a concentration in creative writing, and we seek a colleague to help us deliver and enrich our diverse curriculum.”
• In Massachusetts, “the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at Northeastern University (CSSH) invites applications and nominations for one or more tenured appointments at the rank of Full Professor to support the interdisciplinary mission of the college and the university and the experiential liberal arts.” Among the fields listed in the announcement: “creative writing including poetry and creative non-fiction.”