Tempe Library Writing Contest 2022

Tempe Library Writing Contest 2022

It’s time for the 8th annual Tempe Writing Contest & Cover Design Contest sponsored by Tempe Public Library, Arizona State University, and The Friends of the Tempe Public Library. The submissions are open now until February 14.

Who can enter? The contest is open to High School students, College students, and adults in the Phoenix area.

What are the submission guidelines?

Poetry – a poem up to 100 lines

Fiction – a short story up to 3500 words

Creative Nonfiction – a work of creative nonfiction up to 3500 words (including essay, memoir, and literary journalism?

Learn more about eligibility, submission guidelines, and cover design specifications on the Tempe Writing Contest website. Winners will be announced on March 12 and the winning entries will be published in print and online on the Tempe Public Library website.

You can submit here. Happy writing!

#ArtLitPhx: ‘Sweating It’ Storyline Slam

Stop by The Newton for a storytelling competition.

10 STORYTELLERS. 6 MINUTES. 1 WINNER.

The Storytellers: Each month, 10 storytellers take the stage to share a six-minute story. To put your name in the Electronic Hat, sign up to be a teller on the front page of this website starting the day after the last SLAM. The SLAM lineup is posted the weekend before the show on this website and on the SLAM’s Facebook event page.

The Judges: Audience members are picked at random the night of the show before the SLAM starts to be the judges.  

The SLAM: Five judges score the stories on a scale of ten, with the total maximum points available set at 30. The highest and lowest scores from the judges will be dropped. The remaining scores are tallied to compile the storyteller’s final score.

The Winner: The storyteller with the most points at the end of the night wins $30!

Scoring at The Storyline Slam

Founded in 2011 by Dan Hoen Hull, The Storyline is a series of live storytelling nights that create a space for diverse stories without checking boxes. Several storytelling shows have sprung from their origins within The Storyline Collective including …And Then It Got Weird, Yarnball and The Whole Story. The Storyline Slam continues in that tradition as a monthly slam competition, aimed to further storytelling in The Valley and foster a spirit of fun in the community.

EVENT INFORMATION

Location: The Newton, 300 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix

Date: Friday, June 14

Time: 7 to 9 p.m.

Tickets: $6 online or $8 at the door

For more information about the event, click here.

Contributor Update, Deborah Bogen: Winner of the New Letters Poetry Award

Deborah Bogen
Deborah Bogen

New Letters is a literary magazine that has an annual writing contest. Each year, three writers are chosen to receive $1,500 and publication in the magazine. This year, Deborah Bogen was chosen as the winner in the poetry section.

Deborah Bogen has contributed poetry to Superstition Review twice. To read her poems featured in issue 4, click here. For her work in issue 12, click here.

To learn more about the New Letters writing contest, click here.

Treehouse Celebrates its First Birthday

TreehouseFor the past year, Treehouse has been dedicated to exhibiting pleasantly unusual and interesting writing that is short enough to read on a coffee break but good enough to linger over.  We feature previously unpublished work from emerging and established writers alike. We accept writing no longer than 1,000 words in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry genres. Simultaneous and multiple (up to three) submissions are accepted. Submissions are read on a rolling basis (unless otherwise noted).

To celebrate our successful first year, Treehouse is proud to present our First Annual Literary Loot Contest for Unusual Prose! In addition to publication in Treehouse, the contest winner will also receive: a one year subscription to Barrelhouse, Booth, Carolina Quarterly, Ecotone, Gigantic, Gulf Coast, [PANK], and REAL: Regarding Arts & Letters; two new Fall titles from brand new (but no less awesome) indie press A Strange Object, two new titles from Dzanc Books and a six-month subscription to their e-book club; a copy of Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard) and First Year (an MLP Anthology) from Mud Luscious Press; and a t-shirt from A Strange Object and [PANK].

Our favorite non-winning contest entries will also be published in Treehouse.The rules:

  1. We’re interested in prose that does unusual stuff. In the past we’ve published stories in the form of to-do lists, invisible text with footnotes, survival guides, landlord-tenant correspondence, recipes, and also all kinds of inventive work that was linguistically, but not necessarily structurally, experimental. So if you think your story, essay, prose poem, or genrebender fits the bill, send it our way. (Sorry, no poetry with line breaks for this one.)
  2. Entries are to be a maximum of 750 words.
  3. All entries must be emailed to treehouse.editors@gmail.com by April 30. Preferred format is .doc, but .docx and .pdf are also acceptable.
  4. Subject line of contest entries must say: CONTEST ENTRY. Otherwise, they will simply be filed as regular submissions and will have zero chance of receiving cool swag.
  5. Your name MUST NOT APPEAR ANYWHERE ON YOUR PIECE. Since we often get writing from people we kind of know, either via real life or the internet, we want to be extra careful that everything is getting read blind. We’re even going to implement our ultra-secret “assigning numbers to stories and then not telling anybody what the numbers mean” system.
  6. In the interest of fairness, we can’t accept submission from editors at any of the magazines or publishing houses that are participating. UNCW students may submit work, so long as they’re not currently on staff at Ecotone.
  7. Former Treehouse contributors are invited to submit work.
  8. We also can’t accept submissions from anyone who has gotten past second base with any member of the editorial staff. (In this case, “second base” refers to urban second base; rural second base is okay.) However, if you have gotten past second base with a member of the editorial staff: why don’t you call us already? It’s been more than three days.
  9. One of the main things we’re trying to communicate with this contest is that literature is a community. We picked out the journals and publishing houses we’re most excited about because we wanted to share them with you—our favorite readers. (And pretty much everybody we asked to participate eagerly agreed.) As such, we’ll be featuring a different participating magazine or indie house every week. Please check out their sites and consider subscribing or buying books—not because they’re helping our contest, but because they’re sustaining a thriving literary community that you’re not going to get from mainstream publishing. And because they publish cool shit!
  10. We really believe in doing as much as we can without getting money involved. So even if you can’t afford to subscribe to any of our partners’ publications, consider spreading the word—about the contest and/or about any of the publishers you see that tickle your fancy—via facebook, twitter, or other social media. Or, you know, your mouth.

Our authors have been featured in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize AnthologyBest New American VoicesBest American Mystery Stories, and Best American Fantasy. In the past year we’ve published new work from acclaimed young writers like Roxane Gay, Matt Bell, Patrick Somerville, Marie-Helene Bertino, and many others.

We look forward to reading your work! To support Treehouse, you can read the magazine, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!

Booth Journal’s 2013 Booth Story Prize; Final Judge: Roxane Gay

booth journal1st Prize: $1,000 and publication
2nd Prize: $250 and publication
All entries will be considered for publication.
All entries receive a one-year (two issues) subscription to Booth, including the Prize issue.
Winner will be announced on August 15, 2013.
Entry fee is $20.
Stories must range from a minimum of 500 words to a maximum of 7,500.

Enter your submission for the 2013 Booth Story Prize.

Final Judge
Roxane Gay’s stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, Oxford American, NOON, Ninth Letter, Mid-American Review, Best Sex Writing 2012, and elsewhere. Her writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in The Wall Street Journal, Salon, Prairie Schooner, and the New York Times. Grove/Atlantic will release in 2014 her novel, An Untamed State, and Harper Perennial will release her essay collection, Bad Feminist. Gay is the co-editor of PANK and the essays editor for The Rumpus.

Fine Print
Our Story Contest is compliant with the CLMP Contest Code of Ethics (see below). All rights revert to the author upon publication. Students and former students of Butler University and of this year’s judge may not enter. Butler University employees are ineligible as are close friends of the judge. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but you must withdraw your work from consideration if it becomes committed elsewhere. Further details on the reading and judging process are available upon request. Gay lives and teaches in the Midwest.

CLMP Contest Code of Ethics
“CLMP’s community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to 1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors; 2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines — defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public. This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage.”

Booth Contest

Superstition Review and The Story Prize

The Story Prize, an annual award for books of short fiction, has recently released its 2011 award winners. Three outstanding short story collections were chosen from among a field of 92 books that 60 different publishers or imprints submitted in 2011. With so many worthy entries this year, The Story Prize included an additional list of seven outstanding contenders and 25 noteworthy mentions.

We would like to congratulate all of our SR contributors who made the list:

Issue 3 contributor Edith Pearlman‘s book Binocular Vision was one of the three award winners.

Of the seven finalists, SR has featured Steve Almond and Daniel Orozco in Issue 2.

Issue 2 contributor, Michael Martone from Issue 4.

Caitlin Horrocks, mentioned for her book, This Is Not Your City, will be featured in our upcoming release of Superstition Review Issue 9.

Deadline January 31st: Third Coast Fiction and Poetry Contests

Third Coast is accepting new submissions for a Fiction and Poetry Contest.

Contributors have the opportunity to submit one previously unpublished story (up to 9,000 words), or three previously unpublished poems for a chance at winning a $1000 prize and publication in Third Coast. This year’s judges include award-winning novelist Jaimy Gordon and Major Jackson, poet and author of Leaving Saturn. The $16 reading fee includes a 1-year subscription to Third Coast.

Third Coast is accepting both mailed and online submissions. Mailed submissions must have be postmarked by the January 31, 2012 deadline. Winners will be announced April 2012.

You can find more information about how to submit and contest guidelines on Third Coast.

Contest: New South

Contest Guidelines:

The 2012 New South Writing Contest will be held from December 1, 2011 through March 5, 2012. (Entries must be received or postmarked by midnight on March 5, 2012.)

Each year, New South awards $1,000 to a first place winner, and $250 to a second place winner in the genres of poetry and prose.

The 2012 New South Writing Contest will be be judged by Tom Hunley in the genre of poetry and Joshua Harmon in the genre of prose.

While we take the greatest care in handling your entries, we assume no responsibility for lost manuscripts. Only unpublished work will be considered. Simultaneous submissions will be considered with notification. All rights revert to author after publication. Current students, staff, and faculty at Georgia State University are not eligible.

New South publishes quality literary art promoting the work of emerging and established writers. New South holds no subject biases. The staff will select the best work regardless of style or genre. The final round of judging will be anonymous (the names will be removed from the manuscripts before the final judges see the entries). Judges from outside the staff will pick the winners from finalists selected by the New South staff.

Please send up to three poems, one short story, or one essay per entry fee. (Prose pieces should not exceed 9,000 words.) Whether it is submitted online or via the mail, each entry must include:

1) A reading fee of fifteen dollars ($15). Entry fee includes a copy of the Summer 2012 issue, which will contain the winning entries.

2) The submitter’s contact info, including telephone number, email, and mailing address, preferably contained within a formal cover letter.

TO ENTER:

*Visit Tell it Slant (http://www.tellitslant.com) for online submissions. Payment accepted via PayPal.

OR

* Send your manuscript, along with a check or money order for $15 made payable to Georgia State University, to:

New South
Campus Box 1894
Georgia State University
MSC 8R0322 Unit 8
Atlanta, Georgia 30303-3083

Meet the Interns: Kim Jakubowski

Advertising Coordinator Kim Jakubowski is an English (Creative Writing) major completing her senior year at ASU. Her short story, “Heartland,” recently won the Randel and Susan McCraw Helms Homecoming Writing Contest, and is being published in an upcoming issue of Marooned. Aside from her internship with Superstition Review, Kim currently works as an ESL tutor. After graduation, she hopes to travel and continue writing, and eventually pursue an MFA or a career in publishing. This is her first semester with Superstition Review.

1. What is your position with Superstition Review and what are your responsibilities?

I am working with Superstition Review as an Advertising Coordinator. Some of my responsibilities include writing press releases, updating SR‘s press kit, coordinating advertisements with other literary magazines, and promoting our reading series, submissions period, and issue launch.

2. Why did you decide to get involved with Superstition Review ?

I read one of my own stories for Superstition Review during my first semester at ASU, and I talked to an intern there who said that working with the magazine was a fantastic experience. I’m interested in gaining some insight into the publishing process, as I am considering a future career in the publishing industry.

3. How do you like to spend your free time?

I spend a good portion of my free time reading and writing. I also love listening to music, playing guitar, and spending time with my friends and family.

4. What other position(s) for Superstition Review would you like to try out?

My passion is for reading and writing fiction, so I would love to try the position of fiction editor.

5. Describe one of your favorite literary works.

My favorites change periodically, but if I had to pick one work to bring to that proverbial deserted island, it would be The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel. This is one work that I never tire of; it’s witty and original, and her use of language is incredibly incisive and beautiful. The binding on my book is already falling apart.

6. What are you currently reading?

I can never seem to read just one book at a time, so at the moment I’m reading a collection of short stories by Alice Monroe, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as the Best American Short Stories 2010.

7. Creatively, what are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a couple of short stories, as well as a non-fiction piece.

8. What inspires you?

I’m inspired by people with an enthusiasm for life, as well as people who have the strength and drive to pursue what they love.

9. What are you most proud of?

My writing and academic accomplishments have always been a source of pride for me. I’m proud of my determination to achieve my goals.

10. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

I would love to be a published writer, or involved in the publishing field as an editor. I also hope to travel extensively, maybe live in a foreign country. My plans are a bit vague at the moment, but I hope that I will be able follow my passions and end up doing something that I enjoy.