Bradley Johnson Productions Posts

I was digging the allotment last October when my neighbour, an old man called Peter who wears beige medical socks and about whom several people have given me enigmatic warnings, started speaking. I removed an earphone and paused my audiobook mid-flow so I could hear. His raspberry canes had sent up lots of suckers and he wondered, would I like some? I looked over and saw that the canes had marched a good way up his plot. Peter’s removal of the six or seven canes he was offering me had not noticeably reduced their numbers. I speculated whether he wanted such a large number of raspberry canes, whether he was unable to control the suckers that kept shooting up due to his arthritis, or if there was another reason. I had not yet decided where I would put the canes or even if I wanted them, but it wasn’t the first time he had offered and I accepted, removed the other earphone and followed him to the spot where he had set them aside.

 

I had taken on the overgrown allotment a few months previously, just after moving to a seaside town near London that was once prominent but is now mostly forgotten by those outside. The town devotes a lot of its scant resources to commemorating the past, in particular, an event 400 years ago that goes persistently unacknowledged beyond its borders. It is remembered on plaques and street names and small museums and living willow sculptures and roundabout sculptures and in the name of its medical centre and parades and gardens and historical re-enactments. As in many seaside towns there are high levels of poverty and neglect. The great hope, I think, is that there will be a sudden realisation of its centrality to British history, after which the town will become prosperous once more.

 

Peter comes to the plot every evening in the half-hour before sunset to pick leaves and root vegetables for dinner. I asked Peter what he cooks – but he says that he does not really cook, he prepares the vegetables and makes something to go with them. The peelings from meals are saved and emptied onto a heap on the allotment before he picks new vegetables – and that is all he uses to enrich the soil, he says, when I ask about fertilisers. My neighbour participates in the cycles of growth, decay, gestation and renewal on his plot – the plot nourishes my neighbour. He has become an extension of what he tends, and acts on its behalf even when physically offsite. I am reminded of theories of post-human life when I think of Peter. The distinctions between his agency and that of the earth and the plants fade. Their actions are coextensive and cannot be whittled to a single origin . . . a trans-species flow of becoming through interaction with multiple others (Rosi Braidotti).

 

I am becoming part of his vegetal network too.

He dries seed from each year’s crop to produce the next and in early November he puFt generous amounts of dried broad beans and peas into old flour bags for me. He had been carrying them around for several weeks waiting for us to cross paths. I put them in the ground and now they are over a foot tall and I am protecting young pea plants from pigeons. Peter gives me things out of kindness, but also to manage the proliferation of the earth. He is not the only one. In the past year other plot holders and gardeners have given me eight squash and courgette plants, six bean plants, a bag of green peppers, raspberries, strawberries, figs, giant chive seeds, garlic chive bulbs, hollyhock seeds, a small hazelnut tree, five leeks, one celeriac, a stick of sprouts and a bunch of purple sprouting broccoli. The earth gives and gives and so we must become munificent or risk being overwhelmed by rotting vegetables. I am sucked into its network too, making apricot jam from the tree planted on my plot twenty years ago and handing it out to reciprocate the armfuls of gifts.

 

*

 

There is tension between individual plots and the shared site. On one hand, as I gather from notes made in my journal –

 

the scope for self-expression is substantial. Each allotment becomes a version of its tenant, from permacultures full of borage, figs and bees, to quiet rows of prize vegetables on bare earth, to shed-assemblages made from so many scraps. Since I arrived, people passing my plot have advised me based on their own approaches, from the pragmatic to the rather disturbing. When the weeds were chest height, I considered hiring a rotavator and ploughing the whole plot, but a resident of forty years told me it would multiply the problem: each fragment of ‘spear grass’ torn up by the rotavator, would produce more spear grass. A strange couple who grow a mix of flowers, weeds and fruit trees and told me (with straight faces) to let the pigeons eat my young peas, to buy peas at Tesco instead, and then (!!!) to the wring the necks of pigeons while they were asleep in the trees and eat them. I have not yet discovered if this advice is based on their own practices. The site accommodates . . . a lot.

 

On the other,

 

each plot is only separated from those around it by a narrow strip of grass which as well as being a boundary, is a shared path. It is the kind of division that reminds you of your responsibility to common space and the ultimate indivisibility of the earth. Unlike private land which can be owned absolutely, allotments cannot be bought by plot holders; we will only ever be tenants. Our presence is tentative and contingent on those with whom we share paths. The allotment rulebook says we must keep weeds down so that their seeds (which do not respect grass boundaries) are prevented from crossing into other plots. Those who break site rules are evicted after warnings from the council in the manner of an online moderator who will shut down your social media account. I was sent A4 colour photographs of my rule-violating plot and told to ‘start cultivating it’. I wrote back with a list of every single action I had made since acquiring the wildly overgrown, rubbish-filled plot a few months earlier. We who received letters grumble about the priorities of the inspectors who are too aesthetically oriented for our liking. Our site is the shabbiest in town, apparently. Another of my neighbours complained though, about someone who had once planted poppies intentionally, not thinking of their freely spreading seeds – a viral sensation. Having seen the bees enjoy stray poppies at the edge of my plot, I felt it was a shame to remove them, though I knew I must heed his cautionary tale. The offending poppy grower might have been one of the many tenants previously evicted from the plot I now tend.

 

Contamination, like dirt, is in the eye of the beholder (Mary Douglas). To cleanse weeds from one perspective, is to poison the soil from another, and on allotments one man’s hygiene is often another man’s abomination. Even so, some would do well to remember the caution that some self-knowledge is required when it comes to hygiene (Douglas again). Peter is in a bind because he wants to protect his plot from external contaminants, but as an allotment holder he is obliged to get along with other people’s thoughts about what is acceptable to put on the soil. After several months (before his offerings of raspberries and seed) I found out that Peter was afraid I might contaminate the earth connected to his. This was what he feared when I arrived, keen to cultivate a plot that nobody could remember anyone sticking with. Small comments from him and warnings from other plot holders brought me to an understanding. Peter is haunted by a fear of chemicals and he did not know my feelings on the matter. Once, he shared his concern with me about the petrol fumes generated by someone’s strimmer. Gradually the history emerged. Years ago when he was on a plot on the opposite side of the site, the person next to him began using pesticides. It was more than he could bear and (after some huge upset) he moved across the site to begin again. The gossip put down roots of course and when I became the latest plot holder next to him, two or three people made veiled references to the incident. I realised I should let slip that I would not be using industrially produced chemicals.

 

*

 

Allotment earth is like the cache on a public computer, it holds too much information. I feel like a haruspex, reading entrails as I pick through the things I’ve found there – things that have become internal to the plot because of those who were here before me. It is an almost gruesomely intimate process and summons one-sided conversations with people I can only know obliquely through what they have left behind. Buried objects retain their potency after you have forgotten them. I can sense half-realised intentions, am frustrated by their carelessness and bad decisions, and hear the dim echo of an emotion –

 

packaging from outmoded snacks, non-wool carpet, rusted metal, tiny threads of plastic, a gin bottle, roof insulation panels, MDF with peeling veneer, chicken wire, wooden pallets, a Looney Tunes Tazo from the 1990s, broken fencing, screws, a rusting wheelbarrow coated with cement, toys, bricks, plastic pegs, plastic bags, buried potatoes and lettuces I didn’t plant, beer cans, partially perished black plastic sheets to repress weeds that have been ruptured and fragmented by . . . weeds . . .

 

The objects give me a keen sense of the mixed-up-ness of human and non-human life. Some of them have become host to snake-like slow-worms or slugs or woodlice or become part of the root networks of weeds; some I use to make fences or to hold down netting; some I remove elsewhere to be transformed by other people or machines. The allotment reads as an ever-expanding network of co-dependencies that stretch through time and space, an accumulation of every action ever. The ground I am digging and levelling into terraces was moved here to strengthen a military construction several centuries ago. There is no untainted landscape to return to, no pure and wild ‘before’, no external position away from all this.

 

*

 

One never quite knows how a plant will behave until it shows you. When I was growing courgettes and pumpkins next to each other last summer, they turned into strange things. They had fucked, essentially, and without me even noticing. New, in-between forms and colours appeared: courgettes that had the characteristics of pumpkins, orangey-green gradients not pictured on seed packets and, when I cut into the flesh to cook them, textures I had not encountered before. The results of blossoming intimacies not managed through species or gender. A few months later, the Italian bitter leaves were shapeshifting too. Castelfranco, which already looks hybrid because pale green speckled leaves, seeped into the deep purple Treviso which I had planted next to it. Some of the Treviso leaves changed colour to look faded and paint spattered like the Castelfranco. In turn, some of the pale green Castelfranco leaves began to glow an erotic purple pink at their edges, the chromatic mark of the Treviso. Fennel bulbs have begun regenerating from fragments of root left in the ground where they were harvested.

That violent heteronormative cultures of sex and reproduction among humans are attributed to ‘nature’ feels astonishing after spending time on the allotment. The slutty ingenuity of vegetables when it comes to desire and reproductive methods is a marvel that makes a mockery of conservative ideas of the natural. If a hack to proliferate or hybridise is possible, plants will invent it. Over the winter I grew pelargoniums from cuttings for the first time, dipping stems I had taken from the main plant into a weak lemon water (a tip found on YouTube) and then putting them into soil. After drooping for a few weeks, they sprouted tiny lime green leaves. Surrounded by the small new plants in whose creation I was one participant (along with the YouTuber, the plant, the soil, the water, the light), I was struck by the sheer volume of gendered propaganda and control my friends faced when making babies under patriarchy – the intense, repressive hell of it. While weeding the other day I heard on a podcast that in France, gay women are not permitted to have children using IVF, and I gasped. Full Surrogacy Now! (Sophie Lewis).

 

*

 

I listened to Jia Tolentino explain the internet as I dug terraces last October. I missed her book of essays in the summer and bought the audio version to entertain me. Hearing about how I had been corrupted by using social media would keep me feeling up to date having moved out of the city.

I aimed the spade and cast it forcefully into the ground, before jumping on it and bouncing a little to send it sharply downwards (very satisfying). As a medium, the internet is defined by a built-in performance incentive (Jia Tolentino). If I hit a stone or a piece of rubbish, I moved the spade until I found a piece of earth that would yield and I repeated the move. The internet has already become the central organ of contemporary life. Then I got off the spade, picked up the severed clump, shook out the soil held by its roots, and tossed the knotted weeds onto a pile for composting. The internet has already rewired the brains of its users, returning us to a state of primitive hyperawareness and distraction while overloading us with more sensory input than was ever possible in primitive times. I scoured the uncovered earth for plastic, metal and picked out what I found and put it in a pile for recycling, a painstaking process that I realised I would have to repeat across the whole plot. It has already built an ecosystem that exploits the attention of its users. The plot is on the side of a hill and I noticed that when I watered the plants I put in the ground in the summer, it just ran straight off, so after removing the weeds from its surface, I began redistributing soil from the uphill section by shovelling it downhill to create a level platform.

The longer I spend on the allotment, the more I become aware that many observations about the internet have always-already applied to the earth, despite its un-technological appearance. The earth is a platform at which I stare for hours, scanning for signs of life to engage with. Dopamine release is triggered when small green shoots pop up in response to my activities, a vital feedback loop. It is a medium I dig into again and again, emerging muddier with repetitive strain injury and cracked skin. The earth produces particular forms of agency among allotment tenants; we adopt its generative and sometimes invasive qualities, a tendency to rampant networking, and a thematic preoccupation with life and death. Network evokes intersecting cables or glowing webs of avatars in digital space, but root networks came first, hybridising with the hands that tend them.

 

*

 

On a recent visit to Dungeness I saw a woman tramping all over Derek Jarman’s garden and photographing every inch before getting in her car and driving away. Every crunch into the shingle was visceral, like she was walking on his body. My friend and I hovered at a distance, stepping closer seemed morbid. The earth (or shingle) we tend becomes an extension of our physicality – I suffered from a lack of vigour last summer and the weeds soon told on me. When I returned to the plot after six weeks away, an allotment holder I admire was momentarily cold and uttered the words, ‘they soon come back’. He meant the weeds, not me. He had begun to think I would not come back. I felt an unwanted echo of Jarman’s book Modern Nature – I had been slowly reading my way through the diaristic fragments about his film-making, his illness and the garden he was making, taking note of plants that could survive in exposed coastal locations and enjoying the out-of-date art world gossip –

 

A second sleepless night. With a pile of a dozen T-shirts wringing wet at my bedside, I was up before six to have a bath and make a cup of tea. Stomach red raw, and very weak. I sat in the kitchen sipping the peppermint brew for over an hour.
Wednesday 14 March 1990

The sun almost disappeared in the clouds. Welcome the cooler weather. I walked along the Ness and brought back an armful of metal and driftwood to add to the garden. The fishermen had brought up a large and ancient anchor in their nets, which they brought to me for the garden. It’s becoming an attraction. Sylvia came over to admire the irises and I gave her a rosemary cutting.
Wednesday 9 May 1990

 

I did not expect Jarman’s account of illness to resonate, but as weeks of unexplained, crippling fatigue wore on and I had to cancel plans because I did not feel strong enough, the theme became less distant. I was surprised I could be unwell for so long in the height of summer – how illogical! Tomato vines were fruiting in the yard, but I could not summon the energy to walk round the supermarket and suddenly the trolley was holding me up. I was furious because despite being possessed of language (unlike plants or animals) I could not produce an explanation of my illness. I could diagnose the powdery mildew, though, which turned the leaves of courgettes and pumpkins on the allotment dusty white because I had not been up to watering them. As summer drew to a close, my energy slowly returned.

Life, illness and death are the thematic preoccupations of allotment discourse. I find myself having interactions of unforeseen and painful intensity with more or less complete strangers. The location of my plot next to the site entrance, the parking and the water tap means I experience a high volume of such encounters. A man came up to the fence in January when I was involved in the odd activity of digging up fruit trees I had only planted a month previously. I had decided to dust their roots with mycorrhizal fungi, as I had read it would help them develop a close bond with the earth. The man wore a hi-vis vest and drove a white van. I asked if he had an allotment (paranoid he was an allotment inspector because of the hi-vis). He said he was on his father’s allotment and he was tending it because his father was ill. I said I was sorry to hear his father was unwell. He said his dad was ill because of working around toxic substances on an industrial site and there was nothing that could be done. Then he told me that his uncle died on his birthday, and his aunt died young too. All three had worked on the same site around chemicals that had damaged their lungs, they all had the same syndrome. I said I was so sorry to hear this and asked if there was anything the hospitals could do, or if they could get compensation. He said no.

Then he started speaking about my neighbour. He remarked that Peter went to his plot very late in the day when it was getting dark and commented that he was quite frail. The man said he worried about Peter and said that he had told Peter to go home once because it was almost dark and he worried that if anything happened to him, he would be lying there in the dark all night and nobody would find him until the morning. I was shocked at the thought of Peter lying in the dark, but I felt defensive of his independence too. I found the man in hi-vis to be a little intrusive but could see that his fixation on death was understandable.

On another occasion when I was digging and there was no one else around, the same man arrived in his white van, but he didn’t come over to me. I was quite relieved by this after our first exchange. But as I was getting into my car to drive, he looked over at me and waved. I suppose I was looking towards him too and I waved back. I felt a jolt of anxiety at having to meet his eye. Then I reversed up the hill out of my parking space, straightened the wheel and put the car in first in preparation to drive down the hill; I looked over again as the car moved forwards and he was still looking at me, and so I waved again and he waved again, continuing to look at me as I drove out of sight. Even without actually speaking, this was too much. His confession on our first meeting cursed our future interactions with an unsettling intimacy and for me, the sense of a duty I could not fulfil. Though I feel strongly that he could not help it, his confession was a manipulative thing to do – telling a story that elicits great pity from a stranger. But it was a tragic act because it could only serve to alienate me from him. Like a sublime horror, his confession was so huge it obliterated the possibility of cultivating smaller topics of conversation into which we could safely retreat.

 

*

 

At the end of October two young boys were playing on the little drive into the allotment site and then eventually crossed into the plots, running back and forth behind the bramble hedge at the bottom of the hill. They kept looking at me, a little scared (I was digging earth at the top of the plot listening to a podcast). Eventually I said ‘hi’ and they said ‘hi’ back, then apparently thinking I wanted an explanation, they said ‘We are looking for lizards,’ and the smaller boy added, ‘but we haven’t found any.’ I told them lizards are probably hiding from the cold right now but that they could try looking under stones or pots. I told them about the slow worms on our plot that we found under black plastic sheets. They went off for ten minutes but came back and told me they hadn’t found anything. I let them look around on my plot under things like plastic ground cover and scrap wood and warned them about rusty nails. They admitted that they had taken fruit from people’s allotments in the summer. I told them that if anyone was ever there when they wanted to do that, they should ask first, so they didn’t get told to go away. People would very likely say yes, I said. We talked about recycling (via the plastic I had dug up) and pumpkins and pumpkin soup. They told me about huge Halloween pumpkins at Lidl. One of them wanted to help me clear up rubbish from the plot and throw it away and began earnestly picking things up. I said ‘no!’ afraid they would cut themselves and instead asked them if they wanted to help plant daffodils. I let each boy dig a hole and plant a bulb. One said, ‘oh I got much more tired than I expected from digging.’ I realised how much smaller they were than me and how large the spade was. I told them to return in March to see them bloom and they said, ‘that long?!’ Then I told them about how bulbs need a good cold spell underground to flower, a fact I had only learned quite recently. That was enough; they went off to play again and when I looked up, they had disappeared.

 

*

 

Since I left the city, allotment holders are the people I speak to most often apart from friends online. Here, relationships develop at the speed of the seasons, slowing in wintertime and quickening in spring. During past few weeks my relationship with Peter shifted from plot-only to IRL (in-real-life) after we exchanged numbers and then spoke on the phone so I could buy food and deliver it to his house. I did this so he could avoid contact with the virus that is endangering so many lives. After months of allotment visits, we have, to some extent, become part of what the other tends. In early March I finally built a fence from scrap wood and planted the raspberry canes Peter gave me that had been waiting for a place to grow – and I will eat soft fruits in the summer.

 

Image courtesy of the author. 

The post Qualities of Earth appeared first on Granta.

If you’re organizing a writing contest and want to get the word out, contact us here.

Have you ever Googled “writing contests”? In less than one second, 172 million results immediately populate and you’re left to wade through countless options that may not even be right for you.

And something you’ll notice in your search is many of these writing contests require “reading fees” or prizes — like seeing your work in print — that you can only receive if you pay for it. 

Some legitimate contests do charge small entry fees, but often a fee can be a red flag for a scam, so those might be the ones you want to stay away from. 

Besides, there are plenty of free writing contests that encourage and inspire boundless creativity with real cash prizes and career-advancing opportunities! Since it can be hard for a writer to know where to find them, we did the legwork for you.

We found 37 reputable, well-reviewed, free writing contests for poets, fiction writers, essayists and more. With thousands of dollars in cash prizes and numerous opportunities to secure a publishing contract, you’re sure to find the right free writing contest for your work.

Fiction and nonfiction writing contests

Ready to share your novel or personal essay with the world? Whether you’re a newbie or more established writer, you’re likely eligible for a few of these contests.

Here are some fiction and nonfiction writing contests worth considering.

1. L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest

Whatever your feelings about L. Ron Hubbard’s work and philosophy, the prizes for this regular contest are nothing to sneeze at. Every three months, winners earn $1,000, $750 and $500, plus an additional annual grand prize worth $5,000.

Submissions must be short stories or novelettes (up to 17,000 words) in the genre of science fiction or fantasy, and new and amateur writers are welcome to apply.

Deadlines: Quarterly on March 31, June 30 and September 30.

2. Inkitt

This boutique publishing firm offers cash prizes and promotional packages to winning authors. Submit a novel of 7,500 words or more in any fiction genre (no fanfic, short stories or poetry).

Inkitt’s writing contest runs monthly and gives authors the chance to win cash prizes, exclusive book badges and promotional packages while showcasing their books to Inkitt’s audience of 2 million users. Winners are determined by Inkitt’s unique algorithm based on overall reader engagement.

Deadline: See individual contest pages.

Disclosure: Inkitt is an advertising partner of The Write Life. We hold our advertisers to high standards and vetted this contest just like the others on this list. 

3. Drue Heinz Literature Prize

You can win $15,000 and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press with this prize, awarded for a collection of short fiction.

You may submit an unpublished manuscript of short stories, two or more novellas or a combination of novellas and short stories. Your total word count should be between 150 and 300 typed pages. You must also have already published a novel or book-length work of fiction “with a reputable publisher,” or no fewer than three short stories or novellas in nationally-recognized journals.

Deadline: Annual submissions must be postmarked between May 1 through June 30.

4. St. Francis College Literary Prize

Since 2009, this biennial literary award has honored mid-career writers who have recently published their third, fourth or fifth work of fiction. The winner receives $50,000 and may be invited to the St. Francis College campus in Brooklyn, NY to deliver a talk about their work or teach a mini fiction workshop to St. Francis students.

Deadline: Biennially; the deadline for 2021 is TBA. 

5. Young Lions Fiction Award

This $10,000 award recognizes “young authors,” which the rules define as any author aged 35 or younger. Submit any novel or collection of short stories published or scheduled to be published in the calendar year. Works must be written for adults; children’s or YA pieces are ineligible.

Deadline: Annually in the fall (most recently in August or September); the deadline for 2021 is TBA. 

6. Graywolf Press Non/fiction Prizes

One of the best-loved small presses in the creative writing world, Graywolf Press hosts a variety of contests for both established and up-and-coming writers. Graywolf also offers smaller fiction and nonfiction prizes, with genres rotating by year; 2020 was a nonfiction year, so fiction is up in 2021. These awards include a sizable advance — $12,000 in previous years — as well as publication with Graywolf.

Deadline: Contest is held annually with rotating genres; the 2021 deadline is TBA.

7. The Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans

Hosted by the prestigious Iowa Review, the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award is offered to U.S. military veterans and active-duty members writing in any genre about any subject. Manuscripts of up to 20 pages will be accepted, and the first-prize winner will receive $1,000 and publication in the Review. A second place prize of $750 is also available, as well as three runner-up prizes of $500 each.

Deadline: Biennially. The next contest will be held in 2022, and submissions will be accepted between May 1 and May 31.

8. New Voices Award

Presented by Lee & Low Books, an award-winning children’s book publisher, this award is given for a previously unpublished children’s picture book manuscript (of no more than 1,500 words) written by a writer of color and Native nations who are a resident of the United States..

The winner receives $2,000 cash and a standard publication contract, and an additional Honor Award winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000. You may submit up to two manuscripts.

Deadline: August 31, 2020. 

9. Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence

For 13 years, this contest has provided visibility for emerging African American fiction writers and enables them to focus on their writing by awarding a $15,000 cash prize. Eligible authors should submit a work of fiction, such as a novel or short story collection, published in the calendar year. (Galleys for publication within the year are also accepted.)

Deadline: Annually; the deadline for 2020 is TBA. 

10. PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

Honoring the best work of fiction published by an American author in a single calendar year, this award has been given to the likes of John Updike, Philip Roth and Ann Patchett. Novels, novellas, and collections of short stories are all eligible.

The winner receives a hefty cash prize — up to $15,000 in the past — and an invitation to read at the award ceremony in Washington, DC. Plus, there are no submission fees or application forms to deal with; just mail five copies of your book (or bound proofs) to the organization to be considered.

Deadline: Annually on October 31 for books published that calendar year.

11. PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers

This contest is a little different, because it requires you to already have published a short story in a literary journal or cultural website. But if you’ve made your debut (but gone no further), you may be eligible for the generous cash prize of $2,000, which is annually awarded to 12 emerging writers, whose works are then published together in an anthology.

Short stories of up to 12,000 words are eligible and must be published in the calendar year preceding the year in which the award is given. Additionally, keep this in mind: Submissions are only eligible if submitted by an editor. Authors may not submit their own work.

Deadline: Contest is open annually between June and November.

12. Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards

Fiction and nonfiction writers who have recently published a book that “contribute[s] to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of cultural diversity” are eligible for this award, which offers $10,000 cash as well media and publicity opportunities. Plus, winners receive their prize at a ceremony in Cleveland.

Submissions must be published in the prior year (so books published in 2020 are eligible for the 2021 award).

Deadline: Annual submission window is September 1 through December 31.

13. Marfield Prize (a.k.a. National Award for Arts Writing)

Presented by the Arts Club of Washington, this award seeks to honor nonfiction books that deal with the “visual, literary, media, or performing arts.” The prize is $10,000 and may be awarded to works of criticism, art history, memoirs and biographies, and essays.

Deadline: Annually in the last quarter of the year; the 2021 deadline is TBA. . (If you have questions, reach out to Ito Briones, Chair of the Marfield Prize, at itobriones@gmail.com.)

14. W.Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction

If you’re a war buff, this competition is for you. It awards $5,000 — and a 24-karat-gold-framed citation of achievement — to the best piece of fiction set during a period when the U.S. was at war (war may either be the main plot of the piece or simply provide the setting). Submissions may be adult or YA novels.

Deadline: Annually on December 1.

15. Friends of American Writers Chicago Awards

FAW presents two annual awards: an Adult Literature Award for literary fiction or nonfiction, and a Juvenile Literature Award for a children’s/YA book.

Authors must reside in the state of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota or Wisconsin — or they must set their book in one of those locations. Prize amounts vary from year to year, but you don’t have to bother with an application and all winners are celebrated at the organization’s May luncheon.

Deadline: Annually between August and December; the 2021 deadline is TBA.

16. Hektoen Grand Prix Essay Contest

Hektoen International, an online journal dedicated to medical humanities, offers two prizes annually for essays of no more than 1,600 words: $3,000 is awarded to the winner and $800 to the first runner-up. Eligible topics are broad so long as they have a relation to medicine, and may include art, history, literature, education and more — this year’s topic was blood!

Deadline: Annually; January 15, 2020 is the most current deadline.

17. Biopage Mini-Essay Writing Contest

There’s no denying it: social media is a huge part of our 21st-century lives. It’s easy to get used to limiting our communications to 280-character and emoji-strewn snippets, which is why this marketing firm is hosting an essay writing contest to “remind people of the benefits of writing.”

Essays of up to 5,000 characters (roughly 1,000 words) will be accepted, and you can tackle just about any topic you want. The grand prize winner will receive $1,000, and three runners-up will be awarded $200 each.

The contest is free to enter, but you’ll need to register for a Biopage account to be eligible.

Deadline: July 31, 2020. 

18. Minotaur Books / Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition

Writers 18 and older who have never had a novel published (in any genre) are eligible for this prize, awarded to an original book-length manuscript where “murder or another serious crime or crimes is at the heart of the story.” The winner receives a publication contract with Minotaur Books and an advance of $10,000 against future royalties.

Deadline: Annually in the first quarter of the year; the deadline for 2021 is TBA. 

19. ServiceScape Short Story Award

ServiceScape, a platform matching freelance writers, editors, and graphic designers with clients (i.e., a great place to look for paid writing work!) offers a yearly Short Story Award of $1,000 to a winning fiction or non-fiction work of 5,000 words or fewer. The winner will also have their story featured on the ServiceScape blog, which sees thousands of readers each month.

Deadline: November 29, 2020.

20. Stowe Prize

This biennial prize of $10,000 honors an American author whose adult fiction or nonfiction work has had an impact on a critical social justice issue (as did Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin).

Deadline: Biennially; the 2022 deadline is TBA. 

21. The Diana Woods Memorial Award in Creative Non-Fiction

Creative nonfiction essays of no more than 5,000 words on any subject are eligible for consideration for this award, whose winner receives $250 and publication in Lunch Ticket, the literary and art journal produced by the MFA community of Antioch University Los Angeles.

Works must not have been published elsewhere. Award winners are required to submit a 100-word biography, recent photo and a short note thanking the Woods family for their generosity and support.

Deadlines: Biannual reading periods are in February for the Summer/Fall issue and in August for the Winter/Spring issue.

22. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms Essay Contest

Each year, this Canadian organization offers three prizes, ranging from $500 to $1,500, to the essay with the most thoughtful, well-reasoned arguments around a specific human-rights theme. (For example, 2019’s prompt was, “Should universities police student behavior at private events?”

The contest is open to Canadian college and university students, and essays should be 2,500 words or less in length.

Deadline: Annually in October. 

23. Write the World

For young writers ages 13-18, these cool contests also serve as mini workshops. Recognizing that “a first draft is never perfect,” submissions actually receive peer review by authors, writing teachers and other experts and writers are given the chance to revise their pieces based on this feedback before submitting them for final prize consideration.

Contests vary each month, but there’s a $100 prize for the winner and $50 for the runner-up (plus $50 for the best peer-reviewer). All three are featured on Write the World’s blog alongside comments from a guest judge. And since each month’s prompt is from a different genre, developing writers get a chance to test out different styles.

Deadline: Monthly.

24. Prose.

Stuck with writer’s block and looking for a way to jumpstart your escape? Prose offers weekly challenges meant to spark your creativity; many are just for fun, but look for the weekly numbered challenges posted by Prose (rather than community members or sponsors) for a chance to win money.

Prizes are typically between $100 to $200 and word counts are low — some as low as under 150, some as high as 500, but all say “quality beats quantity.” So even if all you get from the prompt is a chance to flex your brain, it’s not a bad deal.

Deadline: Weekly and monthly.

25. The Fountain Essay Contest

The Fountain, a bimonthly magazine that explores themes such as philosophy, science, and spirituality, is holding its annual essay competition and is awarding $1,000 for first place; $500 for 2nd; $300 for 3rd; and $150 each for two honorable mentions. Open to participants of all ages from across the globe, this year’s competition is about your challenges; what they are and how you mentally, physically, and/or spiritually overcome them. 

Deadline: Annually; the deadline for 2021 is TBA.

26. The Restless Books Prize For New Immigrant Writing

First-generation immigrants have a chance to win $10,000 and publication by Restless Books for telling their stories (real or imagined). The contest alternates annually between fiction (novel or short story collection) and nonfiction (memoir, essay collection, narrative nonfiction). In 2020, it will go to a work of nonfiction of at least 25,000 words; 2021 will be nonfiction.

Deadline: Annually; the deadline for 2021 is TBA.

27. LiteraTea Spring Short Story Contest

What does community mean to you? LiteraTea, a supportive online platform for writers and readers, is awarding The Commonwealth Prize of $345 to the winning short story that best captures the theme of ‘community’ in 1,200 to 3,000 words. Whether your take on community is an ant or nudist colony, all topics are welcome. 

In addition to the cash, winners also receive a free, six-month placement in LiteraTea’s Advanced Writers’ Program and will be showcased on the website.

Deadline: The most recent deadline was 5/7/2020; the deadline for 2021 is TBA.

28. AFSA National High School Essay Contest

The U.S. Institute of Peace and the American Foreign Service Association sponsor this annual high school essay contest, where the winner receives a $2,500 cash prize, an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C. to meet U.S. Department of State and USIP leadership, and a full-tuition paid voyage with Semester at Sea upon the student’s enrollment at an accredited university. Essays shouldn’t exceed 1,250 words and have to answer all aspects of the prompt as well as demonstrate an understanding of the Foreign Service

Runners-up get a pretty sweet deal, too — a $1,250 cash prize and a full scholarship to participate in the International Diplomacy Program of the National Student Leadership Conference.

Deadline: The 2021 deadline is TBA. 

29. Science-me a Story

Born in 2017, the Society of Spanish Researchers invites talented and original writers to write a 100-word blurb for a hypothetical novel. This might sound really easy, but your blurb has to quickly hook readers and make them want to read more. Open to anyone over 18 anywhere in the world, your real or fictional short story for this competition must be either in English or Spanish and “conceived from the objective of scientific dissemination to primary school” to qualify for the cash prizes: £150, £100 and £50. 

Deadline: The 2021 deadline is TBA.

30. Cabell First Novelist Award

Virginia Commonwealth University sponsors this award that honors an outstanding debut novel published in the preceding calendar year. While you may have published previous books in a different form, the submission must be your first published book marketed as a novel.

The award is a $5,000 cash prize, and the winning author must agree to attend the award event, usually scheduled for November, where you will appear at a public reading and Q&A session, followed by a book signing and reception, that focus on the creation, publication, and promotion of a first novel.

Deadline: Annually; the 2021 deadline is TBA.

31. Daisy Utemorrah Award

The Daisy Utemorrah Award is for an unpublished manuscript of junior or YA fiction written by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples currently living in Australia. Generously supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund and the State Government of Western Australia, the winner of the award receives $15,000 and a publishing contract with Magabala Books.

Deadline: May 31, 2020.

Poetry contests

Curious about opportunities for poets? Your stanzas — rhyming or not — could be worth a fair amount of money in these poetry competitions.

Check out these poetry writing contests.

32. African American Voices in Children’s Literature Contest

Open to writers of African American heritage who are over the age of 18 and Minnesota residents, this contest, hosted by Strive Publishing and Free Spirit Publishing, seeks to fill the need for African American representation in children’s and young adult books. Original board and picture books for children aged 0-8 are eligible, provided they feature contemporary African American characters and culture and focus on character development, self esteem, community, and other aspects of positive childhood development.

Three prizes, ranging from $250 to $1,000, will be awarded, and the first place winner will be “seriously considered” for publication, though it’s not guaranteed.

Deadline: June 22, 2020. 

33. James Laughlin Award

If you’re already a published poet, this is the award for you; it’s given for a second book of poetry due to come out in the forthcoming year. The winner receives $5,000 and an all-expenses-paid week-long residency at The Betsy Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. In addition, copies of the winning book are distributed to 1,000 members of the Academy of American Poets.

Deadline: Annual submission window is January 1 through May 15.

34. African Poetry Book Fund Prizes

The APBF awards three prizes annually for African Poetry. The Glenna Luschei Prize for Afican Poetry gives $1,000 for a book of original African poetry published in the prior year.

The Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets gives $1,000 and a publication contract for a book-length collection of poetry by an as-yet-unpublished African author.

The Brunel University African Poetry Prize is a new prize that grants £3,000 to a poet who was born in Africa, or has African parents, who has not yet had a full-length book of poetry published. (U.S. citizens qualify.) To submit, you’ll need 10 poems.

Deadlines: See individual prize pages.

35. Tufts Poetry Awards

Claremont Graduate University presents two awards each year to poets they deem to be “outstanding.” The Kate Tufts Poetry Award grants $10,000 for a published first book of poetry that shows promise.

The Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award grants a mammoth $100,000 for a published book of poetry by an established or mid-career poet.

Deadline: July 1, 2020; books or first books of poetry must be published between July 1, 2019, and June 30, 2020. 

36. Graywolf Press Walt Whitman Award 

The Walt Whitman Award is a $5,000 prize awarded, along with publication, to an American poet with a winning first book manuscript. He or she also receives an all-expenses-paid six-week residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy, and a trip to New York City to attend the American Poets Prizes ceremony.

Graywolf Press is also one of the publishers of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, “a first book award dedicated to the discovery of exceptional manuscripts by African American poets.” Winners receive $1,000 and Graywolf publishes every third winner of the prize.

Deadline: Submissions are accepted between September 1 and November 1 of each year.

37. Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest

Now in its 20th year, this humor contest wants your best published or unpublished work for a grand prize of $1,000; runners-up are awarded $250 and 10 honorable mentions will receive $100 each. Writers of all ages from eligible countries can submit an original, humorous poem with 250 lines or less, and it must be an English.

Deadline: April 1, 2021.

Where to find more legitimate, free writing contests

Looking for more opportunities to submit your work? Here are a few great sites to keep an eye on for writing contests.

Winning Writers

A number of the contests found on our list came highly recommended by this site, which compiles some of the best free literary contests out there. Along with a wide range of recommended contests for writers of all stripes, Winning Writers also lists some contests and services to avoid — which is just as useful!

They also offer a handful of contests themselves, including the North Street Book Prize .

Poets & Writers

Another fantastic source for legitimate writing contests we consulted when compiling this list, Poets & Writers vets competitions, contests, awards and grants to make sure they’re following legitimate practices and policies. It’s worth checking out regularly as it features both annual and one-time contests.

Reedsy

Since 2014, Reedsy has built a network of world-class publishing professionals and helped produce more than 10,000 books. An ecosystem for authors and publishing professionals, Reedsy prides itself on providing help at every stage of your publishing journey — it even curates writing contests. 

Right now, for instance, The Narrative Prize will award $4,000 to a writer with the best short story, novel excerpt, poem, one-act play, graphic story, or work of literary nonfiction published by a new or emerging writer in Narrative. 

(This listing contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase through our links, you’re supporting The Write Life — and we thank you for that!)

Don’t forget to set your filter accordingly to find all the contests with fee-free entries!

The original version of this story was written by Kelly Gurnett. We updated the post so it’s more useful for our readers. 

Photo via Viktoriia Hnatiuk / Shutterstock  

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