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.

• According to its Submittable page, The Maine Review is offering fee-free submissions until December 31. Pays: “Fiction and Nonfiction writers receive a $25 honorarium per published flash (1,000 words or fewer) and a $50 honorarium for work 1,001 words or more. Poets receive a $25 honorarium per published poem.”
• From Trillium Arts: “Western North Carolina artists of all disciplines substantially impacted by Hurricane Helene are invited to apply for Helene Emergency Artist Residencies (HEAR.) This new opportunity provides a variety of relief benefits to arts professionals working in literary, media, performing, visual, and interdisciplinary arts. This regional residency is open to arts professionals 18 years or older in Western North Carolina counties impacted by Hurricane Helene, including Alexander, Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba, Clay, Cleveland, Gaston, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Lincoln, Macon, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Swain, Transylvania, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yancey.” Deadline: January 3.
• “The Steinbeck Fellows Program of San José State University was endowed through the generosity of Martha Heasley Cox. It offers writers of any age and background a $15,000 fellowship to finish a significant writing project. Named in honor of author John Steinbeck, the program is guided by his lifetime of work in literature, the media, and environmental activism. Fellowships are currently offered in Creative Writing (excluding poetry) and Steinbeck Studies. Fellows may be appointed in many fields, including literary scholarship, fiction, drama, education, science and the media.” NB: “Award recipients will be required to reside within the counties of the San Francisco Bay Area or adjacent counties of the California central coast or central valley during most of the fellowship period. The fellowship period is for one academic year (approximately September – May).” Deadline: January 5.
• For those between the ages of 18 and 30 years old and living within 150 miles of the Chicago Loop: “The Luminarts Creative Writing Fellowship awards are $10,000 per artist. The Creative Writing Fellowship awards excellence in creative writing in the categories of poetry and/or prose (fiction and nonfiction).” Deadline: January 10.
• At Brown University in Rhode Island, they’re advertising for an Administrative Coordinator “responsible for providing administrative and financial support to the Assistant Project Director and Faculty Director for the African Poetry Book Fund (APBF), implementing academic and university mandates in order to achieve the APBF’s goals and maintain its excellent international scholarly and global reputation.” This position “is fixed-term (part-time), 11 months, 20 hours per week, and renewable every 3 years, depending on the funding source.”
• In California, “the Creative Writing Program (CWP) at Stanford University seeks an Associate Director (AD) who will have broad administrative and educational responsibilities, with a particular focus on undergraduate education.”
• “The Department of English and Creative Writing at Stephen F. Austin State University, a member of The University of Texas System, invites applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor and specializing in Poetry, to begin in August 2025. To fill a critical need in our thriving BFA program, we are particularly interested in candidates with a record of poetry publication and experience teaching poetry workshops and craft. A secondary background in Creative Non-Fiction and/or African American Literature is a plus.”
• In New Jersey, “the Department of English at Monmouth University is seeking applications for an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing: Fiction, with additional experience in Creative Nonfiction and/or Scriptwriting preferred. This opening is for the 2025-2026 academic year and is a tenure-track appointment.”