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.

• Reminder: Our June newsletter went out to subscribers last week. It’s packed with 70+ opportunities you’ll want to check out, if you haven’t yet done so.
• Barrelhouse has extended its deadline for nonfiction submissions through June 7. “The big thing for this issue is we are specifically looking for not-personal essays. We have loved and published many excellent personal essays over the years, but want nonfiction that is primarily looking outside the self.” Remember: “All Barrelhouse essays must have a pop culture angle of some kind.” Pays: “$50 and two copies of the issue.”
• Submissions for Words & Sports Vol. 3, No. 1, edited by Sandra Marchetti & Jason Ko, are open until June 7. “One of the basic ideas for WAS is that every (quarterly) issue be at least half focused on one ‘main’ sport, and then up to half on other various miscellaneous sports stuff… with the exception of one issue per year being devoted to everything. This is that everything issue! We’d love to see all your baseball/football/basketball/hockey/soccer stories & comics & poems & collages & cnf & hybrid & other genres we’re not even thinking about, but we’d really love to see stuff in any way related to non-major sports!” Pays: $50. (Hat tip: @Duotrope.)
• For writers in DC/Maryland/Virginia: Washington Writers’ Publishing House is running a Micro-Prose and Poetry Contest with a Pride Month prompt: “What do you think of with the word, Pride? How do we shape recognition and celebration of the LGBTQ+ community in the Nation’s capital? This is an open call for micro-prose about Pride in the DMV region.” Cash prizes: $100 for the winner and $50 for the runner-up in each category. Work will also be published in WWPH Writes. Deadline: June 18.
• New York-based Library of America “is offering a full-time, two-year fellowship to a qualified individual seeking to pursue a career in publishing. The fellowship is designed to help make U.S. publishing a more diverse community. The fellow will work closely with the editorial and production team to develop and publish approximately twenty new titles and dozens of reprints each year. Relevant publishing experience is an advantage but is not required. The position is hybrid, with in-office responsibilities at least two days a week.” Deadline: June 16.
• Wendy’s Subway, “a reading room, writing space, and independent publisher in Bushwick, Brooklyn,” is seeking applicants for paid, part-time positions of Communications and Publicity Coordinator (no deadline indicated) and 2023-24 Library Fellow (deadline: June 10).