Mslexia Short Fiction Competition 2017

Open to stories up to 3,000 words plus a new category for flash fiction up to 300 words, there’s even more reason to get started on some new prose. Deadline: 20 March 2017 The prize for best Short Story is an amazing £2,000 and includes two optional extras: a week’s writing retreat at Gladstone’s Library and a money-can’t-buy mentoring day with a Virago editor. Three other finalists will receive £100. The new Flash Fiction category has a first prize of £500 with three finalists winning £50. All winning pieces will be published in the June issue of Mslexia. Judging the longer stories this year is twice Booker-shortlisted novelist and short story author Deborah Levy, whose novel Hot Milk came out last year. Our new Flash Fiction category is being judged by award-winning flash fiction writer and novelist Kit de Waal, whose début novel My Name is Leon was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award in 2016. Fee: £10 per story. Short Story category entries can be between 300 and 3,000 words in length and can be on any subject. Flash fiction category entries should be up to 300 words in length and can be on any subject. See the website for full details of how to enter.

Poems For Patience

Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust is seeking entries again for its exciting annual poetry competition.

Poems entered in the competition should be no more than 30 lines long. 

They must be the original work of the entrant. Poems previously published in magazines or poetry collections are eligible. 

PRIZE 

• the winner will have her or his poem published and displayed on the Arts Corridor of University Hospital Galway as part of the 2017 Poems For Patience. Poems For Patience is a long running series which over the past decade has featured poems by leading Irish and international poets such as Seamus Heaney, Philip Schultz, Jane Hirschfield, Michael Longley, Vona Groarke, Tess Gallagher and many more. The poems after exhibition on the Arts Corridor are then displayed in waiting areas throughout Galway University Hospitals.
• invited to read his or her winning poem at the launch of the 2017 Poems For Patience at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature in April 2017.
• accommodation in Galway if travelling for one night during the 2017 Cúirt International Festival of Literature
• copy of their poem printed and framed as a Poem for Patience poster
• asked to submit six poems for consideration to be a Featured Reader at the Over The Edge: Open Reading series in Galway City Library.

ENTRY FEE: 

• to enter one poem the fee is €10. 
• If you enter two or more poems the entry fee is €7.50 per poem i.e. to enter two poems it costs €15, 
• to enter three poems €22.50 and so on.

Payment should be made by cheque or postal order payable to Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust.

Entries should be sent by post to Margaret Flannery, Arts Director, Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust, Galway University Hospitals, University Hospital, Newcastle Road, Galway. 

Do not put your name on the poems; please include your contact details on a separate sheet. 

THE CLOSING DATE is Friday, March 3rd 2017

For further details: Tel: +353 (0)91 544979 Email: Margaret.Flannery@hse.ie 

Nature and Place Poetry competition

Poems are invited that deal with any aspect of nature and place and will be given a very wide interpretation by our judge, Kathleen Jamie.

Not only that, this year RSPB and The Rialto are additionally working with BirdLife International and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. There’s a new prize on offer and prizewinners will be invited to read their poems at an event with Kathleen Jamie at CCI in Spring 2017.

The closing date for entries is midnight on 1^st March 2017.

As well as offering poets the chance to win considerable cash prizes and publication of their poems, the competition will raise money for conservation and poetry. We are working in partnership with leading independent UK poetry magazine, The Rialto, as we feel the magazine will be the perfect place to showcase the winning entries.

Prizes

1st PRIZE £1000
2nd PRIZE £500
3rd PRIZE A Place on a Creative Writing Course at Ty Newydd in 2017 (worth £550)

TWO ADDITIONAL PRIZES

A personal tour with Mark Cocker of his most cherished wild life places in East Anglia. Mark is one of Britain’s most celebrated writers on nature.

A personal tour with Nick Davies of his beloved Wicken Fen to learn about his research there. Nick is Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Cambridge.

Our judge is celebrated poet and writer, Kathleen Jamie.  Kathleen was born in the west of Scotland. Her poetry collections to date include The Overhaul, which won the 2012 Costa Poetry Prize, and The Tree House, which won both the Forward Prize and the Scottish Book of the Year Award. For the last decade Kathleen Jamie has also written non-fiction concerning land, nature and culture: she is author of the highly regarded Findings and Sightlines. Her most recent collection The Bonniest Companie appeared in 2015. Kathleen is Chair of Poetry at the University of Stirling.

The entry fee is £6 for the first poem and £3.50 for each subsequent entry.

Full details and the facility to enter online can be found on The Rialto website:

http://www.therialto.co.uk/pages/nature-poetry-competition-2017/

Molly Keane Creative Writing Award 2017

Waterford City & County Council’s Arts Office is pleased to announce that it is currently accepting entries for the Molly Keane Creative Writing Award 2017.

Annually since 1998, to celebrate this rich literary life, the Waterford Arts Office, by kind permission of the Keane family has invited entries for a previously unpublished short story to a maximum of 2000 words.

There is no entry fee, no age limit and no restriction on the subject matter.

A prize of €500 will be awarded to the winner at a special presentation ceremony during the IMMRAMA Literary Festival in Lismore, Co. Waterford on Saturday 17th June 2017.

The closing date for receipt of entries is Tuesday 14th March 2017 at 12 noon.

Full details and an entry form can be downloaded from www.waterfordcouncil.ie or by contacting the Arts Office on 058-41416.

Iowa Review Awards

The Iowa Review Awards accepts submissions during the month of January. Judges for the 2017 Awards are Joyelle McSweeney (poetry), Amelia Gray (fiction), and Charles D’Ambrosio (nonfiction).

Founded in 1970 and edited by faculty, students, and staff from the renowned writing and literature programs at the University of Iowa, The Iowa Review takes advantage of this rich environment for literary collaboration to create a worldwide conversation among those who read and write contemporary literature.

They publish a wide range of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations, photography, and work in emerging forms by both established and emerging writers. Work from their pages has been consistently selected to appear in the anthologies Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.

The Iowa Review publishes three issues per year (in April, August, and December) in both print and digital formats. (Subscribe here!)

About the Contest

Each January since 2003, The Iowa Review has invited submissions to The Iowa Review Awards, a writing contest in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Winners receive $1,500; first runners-up receive $750. Winners and runners-up are published in each December issue.

Contest Rules

Submit up to 25 pages of prose (double-spaced) or 10 pages of poetry (one poem or several, but no more than one poem per page). Work must be previously unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are fine assuming you inform us of acceptance elsewhere.

To submit, visit iowareview.submittable.com during the month of January and follow these instructions:

• Select the appropriate genre category. If you’d like to purchase a discounted yearlong subscription to The Iowa Review for $10, please choose a genre marked “(subscription).” Otherwise, choose “(no subscription).”
• Include a cover letter listing your name, address, e-mail address and/or telephone number, and the title of each submitted work. (Please use the “Cover Letter” form field in Submittable; do not include the cover letter as part of your uploaded document.)
• Do not include your name on the manuscript itself.
• Upload your entry. Multiple poems or prose pieces can comprise a single entry if the total number of pages does not exceed 25 for prose or 10 for poetry. For instance, you may submit two short stories of ten pages each as a single entry; the stories would be read and judged separately. But please do not mix genres: a ten-page story and a two-page poem constitute separate entries.
• Pay the $20 entry fee using Paypal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or Discover.
• If you submit more than one entry, even within the same genre, you must submit the $20 entry fee with each entry.
• Submit between January 1 and January 31.

Judges will select winners from a group of finalists chosen by Iowa Review editors. All manuscripts, whether selected as finalists or not, are considered for publication.

Stories for Homes Volume 2

As a writer, you have to be selective when submitting to charity anthologies. Some are real pie in the sky with only token payments ending up at the charities. So do your homework.

This one is one of the good ones.

Stories for Homes is a project to raise funds for the UK housing charity Shelter and to raise awareness about the housing crisis in London and beyond. The Stories for Homes anthology was published in 2013. A second volume is planned for 2017.

In 2013, known and emerging writers were invited to submit stories of up to 3,000 words on the theme of Home. An amazing team came together to produce Stories for Homes, a world class anthology of short stories e-published 29th July 2013 with the paperback published December 2013.

The book is available from selected bookshops, Amazon and Create Space store.

Within days of publication Stories for Homes Anthology became a best-selling anthology. To date the project has raised money for Shelter and raised the profile of the problem of homelessness across the UK. Read the fantastic reviews for Stories for Homes Anthology here!

The idea of ‘Home’ has been on our minds a lot recently. More than ever, with millions of people driven from their homes all over the world, ‘shelter’ often equates to ‘safety’. Closer to home, at least 120,000 children in the UK were homeless for Christmas 2016. Shelter, the charity that helps the homeless and those in poor housing, needs our help more than ever, and what better way to do that than by bringing our creative minds to consider all that home means?

We are now open for submissions for Stories for Homes Volume 2. The plan is to launch the e-book in September 2017 and a paperback version in November 2017. As before, all profits will go directly to Shelter.

Here are the submission guidelines:

• Stories should be between 100 and 3000 words long (not including the title).
• The theme is HOME.
• Please send your story as a Word document in an attachment to sforh2@gmail.com AND copy in debi.alper@gmail.com. It’s important to send it to both email addresses.
• DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME ON THE ATTACHMENT. Submissions will be considered anonymously. All writers are welcome to submit – unpublished, previously published and those who were included in Stories for Homes Volume One. Anonymous submissions will give a level playing field to all those submitting.
• The deadline is midnight (UK time) 14th February 2017.

North West Words and Ealaín na Gaeltachta Irish Language Poetry Competition

This year’s NWW poetry competition 2016 again features a category for best Irish Language poem. North West Words believes it is important to recognise the wealth of contemporary Irish language poetry in the country. The group, partnered with Ealaín na Gaeltachta (the body responsible for the development of the Arts in the Gaeltacht regions), have combined for a second year to develop an Irish language competition that champions new poetry written in Irish. The competition will have the same format as its English language counterpart with a prize of €250 to be awarded to the entrant who composes the best poem as Gaeilge. The winner will also receive a perpetual trophy sponsored by Donegal Creameries.

North West Words is a non-profit organisation run on voluntary effort. The competition fee of €5 per entry (for up to three poems) goes towards the administrative costs of the competition. 

Deadline 31st January 2017 for poems in Irish.

Link for rules and payment here

Download the rules document here

Anam Cara Workshops

Beautifully set on the Beara penisula, Anam Cara is a special place to visit to retreat to write or to take one of these interesting sounding workshops.

29 April through 5 May:  "When I Write, I Find a Way to Become Wise About Myself," a Proprioceptive Writing Workshop led by Ginny Keegan

20 through 26 May: "Painting The Beautiful Beara Peninsula of Ireland" a Watercolour Workshop led by Evenlyn Dunphy

10 through 16 June: "The Mythic Imagination Creative Writing Workshop" led by Adam Wyeth

5 through 11 August: "Lining Our Thoughts," a Poetry Workshop led by Leanne O'Sullivan

19 through 25 August: "Explore Your Musical Self: A Creative Approach to Songwriting" led by Caz Jeffreys

2 through 8 September: "The Art of Seeing: Mindfulness in Photography," a Photography Workshop led by Katja Liedle

9 through 15 September: "The Art of the Short Story -- In Its Many Guises" a Short Fiction Writing Workshop led by Vanessa Gebbie

28 October through 3 November: "A Celtic Retreat at Samhain -- The Celtic New Year" led by Mary Meighan , Step into the mystical imagination of the Celtic Wisdom Tradition through Celtic Gatherings and guided retreat time and visits to some of the sacred sites on the magnificent Beara Peninsula.

For more information about each of the workshops as well as availability for individual retreats during the rest of the year, please contact Sue at anamcararetreat@gmail.com

Listowel Writers Week Creative Writing Competitions

Listowel Writers’ Week is an internationally acclaimed literary festival devoted to bringing together writers and audiences at unique and innovative events in the historic and intimate surroundings of Listowel County Kerry. 

31st May to 4th of June 2017

The Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year is generously sponsored by Kerry Group Plc, and with a prize of €15,000 it remains the largest monetary prize for fiction available solely to Irish authors. Novels must be published between 1st February 2016 and 1st February 2017. The 2016 Prize was won by Anne Enright for The Green Road.

The Pigott Poetry Prize, now in its fourth year, is generously sponsored by Mark Pigott KBE and the Pigott Family. The €5,000 Prize is awarded for a published collection of Poetry by an Irish poet. Collection entries must be published between 1st February 2016 and 1st February 2017. The 2016 Prize was won by Eamon Grennan for There Now.

The closing date for entries for the above two awards is 3rd February 2017 and submissions now being accepted for both awards.

All other Creative Writing Competitions are open to entries that are previously unpublished and include: The Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award, The Eamon Keane Full-Length Play in association with Siamsa Tíre, the Single Poem and the Poetry Collection, Listowel Writers’ Week Originals, the Con Houlihan Young Sports Journalist Award and Kerry County Council Creative Writing Competitions for Youth. All of the above include a generous prize fund and many can be entered online through our website.  Closing date for receipt of entries is 3rd March 2017.

Prize-winners of ALL our competitions will receive their awards on the Opening Night of Listowel Writers Week on Wednesday 31st May 2017.

Some are free to enter, some are around €10. Full details and criteria for ALL our Creative Writing Competitions are available here Competitions

Magma Magazine Poetry Competition

Magma magazine’s poetry competition is open for entries.  

Deadline: January 16th 2017.  

As always, we are running two competitions concurrently. 

The Judge’s Prize for poems of 11 to 50 lines is being judged this year by award-winning poet Jane Draycott whose collections include Over, Prince Rupert’s Drop and The Night Tree; she will be reading all entries – there are no sifters. 

The Editors’ Prize for poems of up to 10 lines is judged by a panel of five Magma Editors.  The prize money for both competitions is the same, so double your chances and try your luck at both - first prize for both the Judge’s and Editors’ Prize of £1000, second prize of £300 and third prize of £150.

The six prize-winning poems will be published in Magma, and there will also be five special mentions for the Judge’s Prize and for the Editors’ Prize.  Winning and commended poets will read their poems at a Magma Competition Event in March next year.

The entry fees are £5 for the first poem, £4 for the second and £3.50 for the third and each subsequent poem. Magma magazine subscribers benefit from reduced fees: £4 for the first poem, £3 for the second, and £2.50 for the third and each subsequent poem.

Link here

Poetry Ireland’s Introductions

Poetry Ireland’s Introductions Series aims to encourage excellence in the craft of poetry, while raising the profile of talented, emerging poets. 

Applications are now open for the 2017 Introductions Series, which will offer poets in the early stages of their careers, writing in Irish or English, the opportunity to showcase theirwork through workshops and performance.

In 2017 the poets selected for the Introductions Series will participate in two workshops/master classes. The first workshop is focused on form and craft, the second on the art of reading/performing poetry in public.

These workshops will culminate in a number of public readings during the International Literature Festival Dublin.

Veterans of the Introductions Series include: Caoilinn Hughes, Andrew Jamison, Eleanor Hooker, Martin Dyar, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Kerrie O’Brien, Jane Clarke, Victoria Kennefick, Erin Fornoff, Alvy Carragher, Kate Dempsey, Stephen Connolly, and Stephen Sexton. Introductions poets have subsequently been published by Dedalus Press, the Gallery Press, Salmon Poetry, Doire Press and Carcanet Press, and their work has gone on to win numerous awards, including the Rooney Prize, the Michael Hartnett Award, and acknowledgement at the Irish Book Awards. 

Interested poets should submit their work to be considered for selection for the 2017 Introduction Series. Applicants are required to submit:

• A short biography and covering letter. 
• A selection of published or unpublished poems (no more than 10 pages in total).

Note:
Submitting poets should ideally have had work published in established journals and magazines.
Applications are facilitated by an independent, established assessor. 
Selected applicants are usually informed within four weeks and, depending on the number of submissions, approximately 12 poets are selected each year.

Applications should be sent to: 
Introduction Series, Poetry Ireland, 11 Parnell Square East, Dublin 1

Application Deadline:
Friday 17 February 2017      

Link here

The Prole Laureate Poetry Competition, 2016

Welsh based magazine Prole has its annual poetry competition

Prize
Winner: £200, Publication in Prole 22 in April 2017.
Publication on the Prole website
2 x runner up prizes of £50, publication in Prole 22.
Publication on the Prole website

Judge: Macdara Woods

Deadline: January 31st 2017

We are, as ever, open regarding style, content and length. What we are after is poetry that epitomises the editorial values of Prole: to make writing engaging, accessible, entertaining and challenging. Quality is all.

Fees: £3.00 for first entry, £2.00 for any subsequent entries. You can submit online and pay with paypal

Link is here