Monday Markets/Jobs/Opportunities for Writers

Every week, I try to start us off with a fresh batch of markets, jobs, and opportunities. Always paying gigs. No submission fees. Let’s get started with this week’s offerings.

  • From Mason’s Road: “For our upcoming issue, the theme is characterization. We are looking for submissions in which characters’ voices, behaviors, and thoughts resonate and shine. While we always aim to publish the very best work that we receive, our genre editors will sift through their selections from Issue #5: Characterization to nominate their favorite for the $1,000 2012 Mason’s Road Literary Award. A special guest judge (TBA) will select the prize winner from these nominations. We have a blind submissions policy and accept work in fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, drama (stage or screen), art, craft essays, and audio drama from both emerging and established writers and artists.” Deadline: May 15, 2012.
  • Ashland Creek Press is currently accepting submissions of novels, memoirs, short story collections, and essay collections on the themes of travel, the environment, ecology, and wildlife — above all, we’re looking for exceptional, well-written, engaging stories. As you’ll see from our new and forthcoming titles, we are open to many genres (young adult, mystery, literary fiction) as long as the stories are relevant to the themes listed above. At this time, however, we are not reading submissions for children’s books.
  • The Dave Greber Freelance Writers Book and Magazine Awards are for Canadian residents who work a minimum of 70 percent of their time as self-employed freelance writers. “As of 2012, the book award is valued at five thousand dollars and the magazine award is valued at two thousand dollars. Both awards are made available to freelance writers of non-fiction for social justice writing that is exceptionally well written and researched. The Book and Magazine awards provide financial support while the writer completes a book or magazine project for publication.” No entry fees indicated. Deadline: June 15, 2012.
  • The Paris Review wishes to hire a full-time assistant for our editorial, advertising, and development staffs. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to: managing social networks, updating Web store, formatting and proofreading Web site, and producing newsletters. Candidates should have experience with Google Analytics, HTML, WordPress, and Excel. Experience with InDesign and SalesForce (or other fund-raising programs) a plus. In addition, candidates should have strong writing skills, an interest in the arts, lots of energy and enthusiasm, and the ability to do many things very well at once.” Job is in NYC.
  • Intriguing freelance opportunity for those in the right cities: “The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) seeks a San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston-based freelance writer to write profiles for our member site http://membercentral.aaas.org. Please have experience writing profiles and science content for a broad audience. A background or degree in journalism is preferred. A degree in science with proven writing skills will also be considered. We pay $.75/word at a maximum length of 800 words. You are required to submit a high-res digital photo (good enough for web publication) of the profile subject with your story. We pay $5 for every photo you take that we publish with the story. We accept but don’t pay for photos the profile subject gives you/us permission to use.”
  • “The University of Houston-Victoria invites applications for the position of Writer-in-Residence in the School of Arts and Sciences. The individual must have a strong publication record in creative non-fiction and be able to help us grow our Creative Writing major as well as establish a low-residency MFA. Teaching duties will include upper-division courses in creative nonfiction as well as introductory Creative Writing classes.  The School of Arts and Sciences is home to the Society for Critical Exchange, Cuneiform Press, Centro Victoria, and two internationally distributed journals: American Book Review (http://americanbookreview.org) and symploke (www.symploke.org).”
  • Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (New York) is looking for a Communications Coordinator, Infectious Diseases Society of America (Arlington, Va.) seeks a Senior Communications Specialist, and Sarabande Books, Inc., (Louisville, Ky.) is taking applications for a Director of Marketing and Development.
  • The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers

  • I’m so grateful to those writers who are sharing their AWP wisdom with those of us who couldn’t make it to Chicago for the conference. For instance, throughout this week, Chloe Yelena Miller is posting presentations from a panel titled “Will Write for Food: Writers Working Outside Academia.”
  • Continuing with that theme: Fiction Writers Review shares Sarah Van Arsdale’s awesome AWP-based success story.
  • And over on her blog, Cathy Day continues to post items relating to the panel on “A Novel Problem: Moving from Story to Book in the MFA Program.”
  • In other news: What sort of music helps you write? Here’s my take on Chopin.
  • Attention, biographers: The Leon Levy Center for Biography is planning what looks to be a phenomenal (and free!) conference in New York for Thursday, March 29. I’ll keep an eye out for any videos that become available for those of us who can’t attend (even if we live in New York).
  • On the #writerwithadayjob theme: Check out “A Day in the Life,” a post by Eric Weinstein on the Ploughshares blog.
  • The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers

  • Cathy Day’s delightful dispatch from AWP: “If you’d like to teach a class in novel-writing but don’t know how, have no fear. My panel is here! David Haynes, Patricia Henley, Sheila O’Connor, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, and I have all taught the course, and we’ve compiled a Best Practices handout: syllabi, exercises, and other resources to guide you on your way.”
  • The time is approaching for the Big Poetry Giveaway 2012!
  • Reasons to write (other than for money).
  • Robert K. Massie explores the leave-taking process for biographers when they finish a book.
  • And there’s a new interview with yours truly up on the Last Light Studio website.
  • The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers

  • On Lisa Romeo’s blog, Stephanie Vanderslice introduces her new book, Rethinking Creative Writing: Programs and Practices that Work. (We’ve got an interview with Stephanie about this book right here, too.)
  • A voice from the adjunct trenches.
  • This story of how one author found her agent on the subway (technically, the agent found her) has been making the Internet rounds.
  • A lovely account of how Sage Cohen’s young son reminded her of writing advice from Galway Kinnell (which happens to echo advice I recall from Arnost Lustig, who passed away one year ago this week).
  • I really like this interview with my fellow Last Light Studio author, Ericka Lutz, in which Ericka talks about her new novel, the experience of publishing with our small press, and her “nontraditional” routes in both writing and promotion.
  • I was amused (but not at all surprised) to learn that Stephen Colbert has landed a deal for his children’s book (but can we please do away with the verb “ink”?). Check this GalleyCat report for details, plus links to the two-part interview with Maurice Sendak that started it all!
  • Thursday’s Work-in-Progress: Introducing My New Column

    Last week’s posts–about my day job and about how and where to locate forthcoming books for review–proved very popular. Thank you all for the comments, shares, RTs, and other indications of your interest! I hope that you’ll be pleased to know that today’s “work-in-progress” post takes up some of the threads from last week’s items. And that’s because I’m about to introduce a new “extra-curricular” writing activity grounded in my reviewing practice: a “First Looks” blog series/column for Fiction Writers Review, where I’m honored to be a contributing editor.

    As the first post–which went live yesterday–explains: “This series, which I’ll be writing each month, will introduce you to soon-to-be released novels and short-story collections that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. Consider it a public “to be read” announcement of sorts, a way for me to point out a new title (or two) every month and explain what about it has caught my eye. For the most part, we’ll be concentrating on books that fall within FWR’s chief interest: fiction by emerging authors.”

    So go ahead. Take a peek and see which soon-to-released titles made it into the inaugural post (and why). Hope you enjoy!