Free Author Resources: Writing Opportunities

Organizations Offering Ongoing Workshops, Seminars, and Conferences


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Portraits of Serafino and Francesco Falzacappa

This is the Writing Opportunities page with links to organizations which provide ongoing possibilities of all sorts for improving your writing whether via contests, publications, or workshops. It’s a bit much to take up the space in the Hodgepodge with this as well as a huge chunk of time to keep tracking individual, so I thought it would be more practical to track those organizations here on a permanent basis. It provides you with a one-stop “shop” of opportunities with the intention of saving you time.

I’d appreciate your letting me know of workshops and seminars (or more) you’ve taken or learned about, so we can add them to the Writing Opportunities page.

If you believe a friend may want to know about these classes (or has taken one they’d like to share news about), share this page about workshops, seminars, and more with them by tweeting this.


2River
About: 2River welcomes submissions of unpublished poems, chapbooks, art, and multi-media presentations of poems. Before submitting, please read the guidelines.

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The 2River View is published four times a year. The reading period for each issue is as follows:

  • June 1 – August 31 for the Fall Issue
  • September 1 – November 30 for the Winter Issue
  • December 1 – February 28 for the Spring Issue
  • March 1 – May 31 for the Summer Issue

Arizona Authors Association Literary Contest
About: The Arizona Literary Contest was instituted in 1980 and is open to all writers anywhere in the world, as long as their entry is written in English and the fee paid in US currency. Please read the guidelines for their categories for published and unpublished works:

  • Unpublished Categories:
    • Short Stories
    • Poems
    • Articles/Essay/True Stories
    • Unpublished Novels
  • Published Categories:
    • Fiction: Novels/Novellas or Short Story Anthologies (all by same author)
    • Nonfiction Books
    • Children’s Literature

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Blackbird
About: A joint venture between the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and New Virginia Review, Inc. which publishes the Blackbird online journal of literature and the arts twice a year, incorporating fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and plays. If you produce video essays, please query us about your work. Check to see when their reading period is as unsolicited submissions received outside of the reading period will be disregarded. Before submitting, read the guidelines.

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Duotrope makes the submission process simpler
About: While not a publisher or a submission service, Duotrope does provide a “search feature to help you find the perfect match for your piece from thousands of current fiction, poetry, and non-fiction markets” while their “submissions tracker keeps you organized [knowing] what you sent where, when to expect a response and when to query”.
“After your free trial period (7 days), membership costs just USD $5/month, or save with an annual subscription.

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Grub Street offers Workshops and Events.
About: Independent center for creative writing in Boston, Massachusetts.

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Our mission is to be an innovative, rigorous, and welcoming community for writers who together create their best work, find audience, and elevate the literary arts for all.
We accomplish this by offering the highest quality classes and services for writers at all stages of development, by educating writers through the entire writing process from inspiration to publication and promotion, by putting a premium on teaching excellence, by welcoming as many writers as possible through generous scholarships and free outreach programming, by creating fulfilling employment for writers, by connecting people and ideas through writing, and by empowering writers to fully embrace new opportunities ushered in by the digital age.
Grub Street Programs
Grub Street offers a number of programs every year including an award for the National Book Prize, the Novel Incubator which is an MFA-level course over a number of months for ten fiction writers wanting to dig deep, Publish It Forward is a joint effort with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts with a quarterly lecture series … dedicated to bringing some of the most innovative and forward thinking writers, publishers and agents to Boston, the Non-Fiction Career Lab which runs for a year for ten non-fiction writers, the Launch Lab helps with book launches, and the Memoir Project brings the life stories of seniors to life.

Imagine This! An ArtPrize Anthology
About: Sponsored by the Cascade Writers’ Group and Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters, they accept original and unpublished poetry, short stories, and essays. This year, submissions are accepted online within a restricted time period and there is a fee per submission.
First prize is $1,000, second prize is $500, the third prize is $250, and the top 20 works will be published in the anthology.

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Kindle Worlds has license for legit fanfic
About: Kindle Worlds is Amazon’s publishing model that allows writers to publish and sell authorized stories inspired by popular worlds.

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NFPW Communications Contest
About: Deadline appears to be the end of each January to submit work published or broadcast in hardcopy or online in the previous year.
Each entry is $20.
The National Federation of Press Women holds an extensive, two-tiered contest each year with categories covering a range of writing from journalism to poetry, with several categories for different kinds of books.

One tier is a state-level contest, a.k.a., the at-large contest if your state doesn’t have one, with first-place state winners moving on to the national competition. Some states require that you (men or women) join the organization first. If you win first place statewide, you’ll have to become a national member in order for your entry to be judged nationally.

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Poets & Writers Magazine
About: The Writing Contests, Grants & Awards database includes details about creative writing contests — including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, and more — that are published in Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. They claim to carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it, and that they are the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere. Check the Submissions Calendar for deadlines. A number of them pay, and some pay well.

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Serving House: A Journal of Literary Art
About: Serving House Journal endeavors to publish fiction, nonfiction (CNF, essays, interviews, memoirs, reviews) and poetry that will surprise, rivet, amuse, charm, enchant — even electrify — our readers.

Our mission is to play an international role in fostering and preserving the best of what the literary arts are capable of doing: writing that may impel others to become writers themselves; writing that will add to and enhance the dialogue of the arts; writing that reaffirms our belief in the inspiring possibilities of the written word.

We celebrate the imaginative voice, the authentic non-serviam attitude towards the status quo “world of letters.” We like lean-edgy-elegant writing that takes on the stupefying realities of our challenging times, our thorny relationships, the political chicanery that exhausts our patience, the contraries between men, women, children, and friends.

We’re looking for work that strives to eclipse clichés, stereotypes, and mass-market formulas gleaned from what has become more and more a “reality show”, a “sit-com”, a stultifying Wal-Mart of the mind. “Expect poison from standing water,” William Blake once told us. “The cistern contains; the fountain overflows.”

Inscribe the flow of the world as you see it. Send that world to us. We promise you a fair reading.

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WANA, #MyWANA on Twitter
About: We Are Not Alone was founded by Kristen Lamb and “teaches creative professionals how to marry technology with humanity to build effective online platforms. We are here for the whole artist and offer a wide variety of tools to reach your dreams” including “instruction on business, social media, writing craft, and even lifestyle because let’s face it. Happy, relaxed artists make better art. All of our WANA instructors are artists. There are no IT people* or sales/marketing/PR gurus here to try and change who you are. Every instructor understands you because they are artists just like you. Every tactic or tool they offer has been tried, tested, and demonstrated to be effective.”
WANA offers a range of classes including business, craft, lifestyle, and social media classes as well as one-on-one consultations.

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Writers Relief provides the Classifieds
About: A free list of writing contests, writers conferences, calls for submission, anthology, listings, publication opportunities, and more.

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