Sorry We're Prosed: December writing opportunities
Where to send your stories, thoughts and small fictions this month
Hello again,
Or I should probably say hello for the first time to several of you, who have signed up since the last edition. I think I have the recommendations of both Jonn Elledge of The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything and Olive Morris of Folk of Folly Forest to thank for that. Go check out their substacks if you haven’t already.
For newbies, and to remind regulars, this is a curated monthly round-up of writing opportunities. If I don’t specify that an opportunity is paid that probably means it isn’t.
I’m drawn to all kinds of opportunities, from new lit mags to mentorship schemes to established publishers. The only requirement is they need to accept prose of some kind.
Let’s waste no more time (there’s not much of the year left!) and get to it, shall we?
Closing soon
Australians! Are there any of you reading this? Say hello if so. And don’t forget that the Penguin Literary Prize, open only to Australian residents, is still open until 12 December. The winner gets AU$20,000 and the opportunity to publish their manuscript with Penguin Random House Australia.
International contemporary writing magazine Wasafiri is open until 14 December for both fiction and life writing. Pay is £150 per piece.
Tremendous Scottish indie magazine Extra Teeth is open again for submissions. This time they cannot take any from North America. Published work is paid at £100 per piece, and the deadline is 14 December.
Baffling Magazine is open again for speculative flash fiction with a queer bent, until 15 December. They pay 8 cents a word.
There’s a new fiction editor at Minor Literature[s], and the magazine will be open for your stories for the first two weeks of December.
The top prize for Story Unlikely’s annual short story contest is $500, and it’s free to enter as long as you sign up for their newsletter. I also like their description of honourable mentions as “honourable losers”. Closes 31 December. No simultaneous submissions.
Smith College’s journal Meridians is running the Elizabeth Alexander Writing Award, which accepts any genre but, in line with the journal’s mission, will prioritise works that deal with feminism, race, and transnationalism. The top prize is $500 and a residence at Smith, with entries open until the end of the month.
Open internationally, the My Writing Journey competition asks for pieces on the theme ‘The best writing tip I’ve ever received’. The best piece will be published online and earn its writer NZ$200. It’s free to enter.
The theme for issue 2 of Toil & Trouble is ‘Animals’, with submissions open until 1 January.
Open now
Dark fiction magazine Neon is open for two themes at the moment: ‘Machines’ closing 15 January and ‘Childhood’ closing 15 June. They pay 2 pence (GBP) a word for prose.
And a reminder for Women’s Prize Discoveries if you’re a woman writer from the UK or Ireland with at least 10,000 words of a novel written.
If you live in Glasgow, or could get feasibly travel there for four in-person workshops next year, have a look at this from the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Glasgow. They are forming a creative writing group focused on the medical humanities, with the aim of producing a pamphlet of work from the group. Applications close 15 January.
The Parracombe Prize is accepting entries of 2,023-word stories until the end of January. It costs £5 to enter and first prize is £150, with an additional prize for a North Devon local.
Staffed by undergraduates at Stony Brook University, the Sandpiper Review is open for fiction, flash, and CNF until 2 February.
Here’s a lovely thing organised by writer and editor Matt Kendrick: the Welkin Prize is a free-to-enter contest for short pieces of prose. The top prize is £150 plus membership to Writers HQ, but there are several other prizes available thanks to the generosity of others in the writing community. Open until 28 February.
The Anthology Short Story Prize is now open and has a reduced entry price of €10 until 31 December, but is accepting entries all the way through to the end of August. Top prize is €1,000.
If you want to apply for a free entry to the Bridport Prize, you have until 10 May to do so. Bursaries are first-come, first-served and may take six weeks to process so don’t delay. The competition itself has categories including short story, flash fiction, and novel, and is open until the end of May. Top prizes are in the thousands of pounds.
Opening soon
Send short works to The Aurora Journal from 10 December. They pay a token $12 per piece.
One of the only top-paying free-to-enter writing prizes still in existence, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, will open on 1 January.
Submissions for the Virginia Prize for Fiction will open next month. It is for completed, unpublished novels by women, and the prize is a conditional publishing contract with Aurora Metro Books.
The next reading period for the Amsterdam Quarterly starts on 1 January, and will have the theme ‘No Planet B’. Articles, fiction, essays, and other prose accepted.
Also at the start of next year, a new competition just for novellas will open, and it’s judged by Ali Smith! Weatherglass Books’ Inaugural Novella Award will cost £15 to enter, and the winner will be published by Weatherglass with an advance of £1,000.
Always open
This is the space where I usually put journals that are always open for work. This month I thought I would change things up and find a few blogs or newsletters that are open for guest posts. While these are not so much for creative writing, I hope they are useful for anyone who has something to say and is looking for the right platform.
If you have an experience or idea relating to academia and mental health, share it with Voices of Academia, a blog and podcast keen to hear from contributors.
Run by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press, the Transforming Society blog publishes work about research from across the social sciences.
For those with something to say about transport, have a look at this thread from Sarah Barnes, who runs the Along for the Ride blog. This one’s paid.
And of course, there’s always the great Lit Mag News Roundup, which accepts guest posts on various topics related to lit mags, submitting your writing, and the literary world at large. This one is paid too.
Similarly, if you have any tips, tricks, or other things to say about the submissions process, you could send it to the excellent Chill Subs. Contributors receive $20 per piece.
Thank you so much for the cheeky lil shout-out! And for always collating all the good stuff each month, it's v appreciated 🥰