WRITING OPPORTUNITIES
The Lehman College English Department Writing Competitions are open to all undergraduate and graduate students. Winners get a check – most prizes start at $50. Submit your academic and creative work to as many competitions as you wish. Submit early to beat the rush! The deadline for all completed submissions is at the end of February each year.
OBSCURA queries should be directed to LehmanLitMag@gmail.com; make sure to contact both the student editor-in-chief and the faculty advisor (Professor Castillo Planas). Visit their club central or webpage!
MERIDIAN inquiries should be directed to the student editor and/or Professor Frye-Castillo, faculty advisor. Related links include: The Lehman College Meridian , Twitter, and Facebook.
THE NORTON WRITER'S PRIZE is awarded annually for an outstanding essay done in an undergraduate writing class—including literacy narratives, literary and other textual analyses, reports, profiles, evaluations, arguments, memoirs, proposals, mixed-genre pieces, and more. Three cash prizes of $1,000 apiece will be awarded in 2022 for coursework submitted during the academic year. The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2023.
Professor Cleland, mystery writer among many other talents, tells students to take a look at AVON ROMANCE: you can become a published romance writer very fast!
Here’s a fantastic pair of fellowships for emerging young Asian writers to keep in mind in and after Lehman. (“Asian” includes Asians, Native Americans, Asian American adoptees and multiracial writers, Indo-Caribbean writers, and West Asians such as Iranians and Arab Americans; fellowships are for those under 30.) There are eight total Open City Fellowships and Margins Fellowships per year & all include $5,000, Asian American Writers’ Workshop space, publishing opportunities, and workshops. Look for the next Application cycle in August 2023.
More great fellowship granting organizations for BIPOC writers:
Kundiman is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature.
Cave Canem is a nonprofit organization with fellowships, workshops, reading series and much more centered around African American poetry.
Canto Mundo is a nonprofit literary organization with fellowship and workshops for Latinx writers.
Latinx in Publishing hosts a number of events about entering publishing as well as offering mentoring and fellowship programs.
Also check out this extensive list for book prizes & series focused on BIPOC writers.
The Elizabeth George Foundation awards grants yearly to unpublished fiction writers, to poets, to short story writers, to emerging playwrights, and to emerging non-fiction writers. Applicants must be current residents of the United States. Deadline is July.
The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism: January Academy is a series of enrichment workshops, which runs for most of January, is open to CUNY J-School students, alumni, applicants, select CUNY undergraduates (juniors and seniors only), Macaulay Honors College students, and invited guests. In general if you’re interested in pursuing some sort of creative nonfiction, feature writing or journalism, pursuing the events and information of CUNY’s Newmark Journalism School isn’t a bad idea!
The National Novel Writing Month website offers offers writing support in the form of pep talks, online advice chats, and calendars to track the writing process. Check out NaNoWriMo here.
Narrative Magazine also offers several prizes, including awards for their Fall Story Contest, a $4000 Narrative prize, as well as a Poem of the Week and Story of the Week.
Catapult Magazine has a regularly updated lists of prizes and publication opportunities. Visit here regularly! In general, if you feel you are reading to start submitting your work to get published, check out submittable! You an search by genre, by cost (for example free submissions) and more. One of the many journals that uses submittable for example is One Story which opens their submission period in mid-January.