Bring in the new year by submitting your work! Share your resolution to write more this year with the editors and judges at these 10 excellent journals. Happy New Year!
FEATURED! Winter Short Story Award for New Writers
This one is our own contest, and it’s featured for so many good reasons! The Masters Review is looking for stories under 6000 words, by emerging writers — authors without a book deal or published novel (writers with circulations under 5,000 are welcome to submit as well)! The winner receives $3000, publication, and agency review, and the runners-up also receive cash prizes, publication, and review. Judged by the fabulous Kimberly King Parsons! Details here.
Entry Fee: $20 Deadline: January 31
SAND Journal
SAND Journal, the international journal of English writing based out of Berlin, is open for submissions for issue #21 through January 5th. Submit your flash fiction (up to 1,000 words), fiction (up to 5,000 words) or poetry (under five pages) by midnight, January 5th for consideration. SAND also considers translations of works that have not yet been published in English yet! Submit today!
Entry Fee: Free! Deadline: January 5
Desert Writers Award
Open to writers who wish to write creative nonfiction about the desert, the Desert Writers Award was founded in memory of Ellen Meloy. Each spring, the Fund awards a $5,000 grant on the basis of the applicant’s writing sample, strength of the proposed book project, and the biography of the applicant’s “ability to demonstrate a history and future of writing and desert experience.” Find out more here.
Entry Fee: $15 Deadline: January 15
The Big Moose Prize
Open until the end of the month, the Big Moose Prize is offered by Black Lawrence Press to new, emerging, and established writers for novel submissions. The winner receives $1,000, publication, and 10 copies of the published book. Judging is done blind by Black Lawrence Press’s panel of editors. You’ve got one month to polish up that draft. Get to it!
Entry Fee: $25 Deadline: January 31
The Iowa Review Awards
The Iowa Review offers annual awards to writers in fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry. Carrying a $1,500 prize in each genre, The Iowa Review invites writers to submit up to 25 pages of prose or 10 pages of poetry for consideration in their contest. the 2020 team of judges includes Stephanie Burt (poetry), Lan Samantha Chang (fiction), and Leslie Jamison (nonfiction). Full details here.
Entry Fee: $20 Deadline: January 31
Crazyhorse Prizes
Another contest open to all genres, the Crazyhorse Prizes are offered each January. Submit your very best 25 pages or prose or your favorite 1-3 unpublished poems for your chance to win $2,000 and publication. A winner will be selected from each genre, by their respective judges: Jamel Brinkley (fiction), Cyrus Cassells (Poetry), and Sue William Silverman (Nonfiction). The $20 entry fee also includes a 1-year subscription to Crazyhorse! Winners will be announced by the 1st of June. Find out more.
Entry Fee: $20 Deadline: January 31
Lamar York Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction
Sorry poets, this one is only open to the prose writers. The Chattahoochee Review awards $1,000 and publication to the winner of each of its prizes, in an annual contest which honors the founder of The Chattahoochee Review. Submissions are capped at 6,000 words, so be sure to get your submissions in under that mark. This year’s judges are Anthony Varallo (fiction) and Alice Bolin (nonfiction). The deadline is January 31st, but don’t wait until the last minute! Check it out.
Entry Fee: $18 Deadline: January 31
The Montana Prize For Fiction
Judged by Rick Bass, this prize offered by Whitefish Review awards $1,000 to the writer with the best submitted story. There are no themes; Rick Bass is only looking for the best of the best. “That said, Shakespeare reported that all literature is about loss….so the odds are that the winning story will look at loss in some way,” he says. Submissions up to 7,000 words will be considered. Full details here.
Entry Fee: $20 Deadline: January 31
New Millennium Writing Awards
The 49th annual New Millennium Writing Awards offers a $1,000 prize to each of its four winners: one in each category (fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry). Select finalists (including all poetry finalists) will be published as well! Fiction and nonfiction submissions up to 7,500 words will be considered, while flash fiction is capped at 1,000 words and poetry at 3 poems or up to 5 pages. Judging is blind, so be sure to make your submissions anonymous! The deadline is at the end of the month. Good luck!
Entry Fee: $20 Deadline: January 31
The Short Fiction Prize
The Kenyon Review is open to submissions of up to 1,200 words of short fiction until the end of the month. The winner receives a scholarship to the 2020 Writers Workshop at Kenyon University. Past finalists include TMR’s current judge Kimberly King Parsons! This year’s contest is judged by current KR fellow Misha Rai Get your short fiction ready for submissions and find out more here.
Entry Fee: $24 Deadline: January 31
By Cole Meyer