Grand Prize: $1,000 2nd PLACE: $100 3rd PLACE: $50 HONORABLE MENTION (3) ENTRY FEE: $5 (up to three poems)   DEADLINE: January 3, 2012 All Six Finalists Will Be Published in The March 2012 Issue of Gemini prose poem free verse ballad ballade rhyme haiku haibun sonnet lyric elegy limerick narrative pastoral acrostic cinquain quatrain [...]

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Southington Journal is having a contest for publication and awards.   The title of the journal is “100 Memories,” but the type of memory is up to you!   $20 entry fee for up to three poems (rhyming, sonnet, haiku, concrete, or free verse – 30 lines maximum), short stories (1,000 words maximum), flash fiction (500 [...]

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 Open to submissions from July 1, 2010 until September 30, 2010. Free-verse, non-rhyming poetry with surrealistic edge is preferred. The entry fee for the competition is $10.00.  Please send $10.00 via paypal to medullapublishing (AT) gmail (DOT) com prior to send your chapbook submission, then send your submission to the same eMail address.  Send manuscripts [...]

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Seventh year Ten cash prizes totaling $5,550. Top prize $3,000. Submit poems in traditional verse forms, such as sonnets and free verse. Winning entries published online. Both published and unpublished work accepted. Entry fee is $7 for every 25 lines, payable to Winning Writers. Postmark deadline: June 30. Judges: John H. Reid, Dee C. Konrad. [...]
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To help writers get a step up when entering any writing contest, the long-established Writers-Editors Network has posted 10 Tips for Winning Writing Contests. Among those tips are:

Begin with a bang. Editors routinely say they read the first paragraph of a piece, and if they don’t care about what happens next, they stop there, because the incoming mail stack is too high. Contest judges often face even higher manuscript stacks. A quick way to weed out the losing entries is to discard all those where the first page doesn’t give them a reason to go to the second page. Before sending in an entry, read every article or book chapter you can find on openings, beginnings, leads. Then compare yours to what the experts say. This applies equally to fiction and nonfiction.

Make your story different. That means a different setting or unusual characters or a different plot. If it’s been used before, if it’s trite, get rid of it. If two stories on that judge’s pile are similar, they both lose.

Make sure your story or article has a clear central theme that you follow throughout it. You should be able to say, “This article or story is about . . .” and finish the description in one sentence. Get rid of things that don’t relate to that theme.

All 10 tips are posted at www.Writers-Editors.com.

Entries for the 27th Annual 2010 Writers-Editors Network International Writing Competition are now being accepted. Cash prizes will be awarded to the top winners in each category, with honorable mention certificates for near-winners.

Divisions and Categories include:

Nonfiction (Previously Published Article/Essay/Nonfiction Book Chapter; Unpublished or Self-Published Article/Essay/Nonfiction Book Chapter);

Fiction (Short Story; Novel Chapter);

Children’s Literature (Short Story/Nonfiction Article/Book Chapter/Poem);

Poetry (Traditional/Free Verse).

Each entry MUST be accompanied by an official entry form. Contest deadline is March 15, 2010. Guidelines and entry form can be printed out online at http://www.writers-editors.com or http://www.FFWAmembers.com.

(Note: Winners of prior years’ contests are also posted on the site.)

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To read the rules and to enter go to www.writersdigest.com/poetryawards
Enter the only WD competition exclusively for poets, the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards! Regardless of style—rhyming,
free verse, haiku and more—if your poems are 32 lines or fewer, we want them all. Submit your entries by the December 15, 2009 deadline … and your words could be [...]
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