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Monday Markets for Writers

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Monday brings the weekly batch of no-fee competitions/contests, paying submission calls, and jobs for those of us who write (especially those of us who write fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction).

  • “Jaggery, a DesiLit arts and literature journal, connects South Asian diasporic writers and homeland writers; we also welcome non-South Asians with a deep and thoughtful connection to South Asian countries, who bring their own intersecting perspectives to the conversation. (By South Asia we mean Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, The Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.) Our hope with Jaggery is to create a journal that offers the best writing by and about South Asians and their diaspora….We publish ART, ESSAYS, FICTION, POETRY, REVIEWS, and an advice column. We prefer original, previously unpublished submissions; we solicit reprints only in exceptional cases….We’re purchasing ongoing worldwide digital rights, for use in web and possible downloaded forms (ebook, PDF, etc.). Six months after publication, you may request to have your work removed from our online archive. We follow a blind submission review process and pay $25 for prose/poetry/art.” Hurry up if you’re interested: “The deadline for submissions for the inaugural issue is July 31st, 2013.” (via @Duotrope)
  • “Blank Fiction Magazine is currently accepting submissions for our first three issues! The themes for each are: Literary Fiction, Noir Fiction and Science Fiction.” Deadline for the first (literary fiction) issue is October 15. Pays: “Blank Fiction Magazine is proud to support all of our writers with a $50 honorarium for their contribution to our pages.”
  • “Soomo Publishing, an independent publisher of college-level webtexts, seeks experienced freelance writers to contribute original commentaries on world literature. Soomo is convinced that textbooks don’t have to be boring. With this in mind, we are looking for magazine feature-type commentaries to accompany important works of pre-Renaissance-era writing. The commentaries will be included in an online world literature course, and are intended to provide historical and cultural context that is both instructive and thought-provoking. Our goal is to capture students’ imagination and introduce them to the ‘stories behind the stories.’ In terms of voice, our models include Smithsonian magazine, Wilson Quarterly, and Mental Floss’s’101 Masterpieces’ series–in short, anything that makes culture relevant, stimulating, and accessible.” Pays: “Commentaries are being assigned at 1,500 words, at a rate of $0.50/word.”
  • As announced in its latest newsletter: “Creative Nonfiction is looking for new instructors for its online classes. Responsibilities include creating written lectures, reading and responding to student work, engaging in online discussion, and answering student questions on a daily basis.”
  • Coming soon! More no-fee writing contests and paying calls for prose and poetry in the August issue of The Practicing Writer, which will go out to subscribers before week’s end. Get your copy right in your e-mailbox. It’s free, and we don’t sell, rent, or share our mailing list.
  • Algonquin Books (Chapel Hill, N.C.) is looking for an Assistant Publicist.

    • Wednesday’s Work-in-Progress: On the Teaching of Creative Nonfiction, Or “Only a Few Have a Natural Talent for Nudity”

    by Erika Dreifus on
    12

    A few days ago, Twitter (more precisely: my Twitter pal @MikeScalise) led me to an exchange on memoir and essay, which developed into a conversation about the ways in which creative nonfiction (cnf) tends to be taught (in MFA programs and presumably elsewhere). One of the points that seemed to attract agreement concerned a troubling trend to equate cnf with memoir (particularly, if not exclusively, confessional memoir) instead of inculcating a more expansive understanding of the types of writing that can fall beneath the cnf umbrella.

    The discussion reminded me of similar ideas I’d had back when I was an MFA student myself. Remember that I attended a low-residency MFA program, and I was a fiction specialist. I was therefore provided cnf instruction only within the framework of the “gateway” seminars all of us attended, regardless of selected genre.

    We were assigned to write brief “response papers” in preparation for each of these seminars. Here’s what I wrote for a creative nonfiction seminar held in January 2002. (I can’t tell you what the faculty/program response was, because I never received back any of my response papers or comments on them. But that’s a topic for another post. Also, in the original, I provided footnotes to document the Jane Kramer and Adam Gopnik pieces that I discuss in the text; in this post, I’ve linked to them on The New Yorker‘s site.)

    I realize that in a way, this is an odd moment for me to be reiterating a call for attention to creative nonfiction beyond the memoir. I seem to be publishing a short streak of memoiristic essays these days myself. But it has taken me a long time to arrive at this point, and I’m still not entirely comfortable with it. Plus, I’ve written plenty of non-memoiristic nonfiction along the way: review-essays, opinion pieces, history, etc.

    In any case, please keep reading if you are so inclined. And please check out the discussion question at the bottom of the post. (more…)