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These prizes, grants, and fellowships are for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, journalism, and playwriting. They range from $100 up to $75,000. They are, very roughly, divided by geography. – S. Kalekar
PRIZES OPEN FOR INTERNATIONAL SUBMISSIONS
The Heron’s Nest: Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Awards
This poetry contest is run by The Heron’s Nest, a quarterly online journal of haiku. Submit up to five haiku for this contest.
Value: $150, $75, $50
Deadline: 1 June 2022
Open for: All poets
Details here.
PEN America: Three grants
PEN America is currently accepting submissions for three grants/ fellowships, below. (They’re also open for the US Writers Aid Initiative.)
— PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants: This international grant is to support the translation of book-length works of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or drama that have not previously appeared in English in print or have appeared only in an outdated or otherwise flawed translation. Works should be translations-in-progress, as the grant aims to provide support for completion. The works must be translated into English. Projects may have up to two translators. There are various submission requirements, including a translation sample of 8-10 pages.
Value: $2,000-4,000
Deadline: 1 June 2022
Open for: All writers
Details here and here.
— PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship: This is for an author of children’s or young-adult fiction. The fellowship is for helping writers whose work is of high literary caliber and is designed to assist a writer at a crucial moment in his or her career to complete a book-length fiction work-in-progress. Applicants must have already published one work for children or young adults that was warmly received by literary critics, but whose work has not yet attracted a broad readership.
Value: $5,000
Deadline: 1 June 2022
Open for: Published YA/children’s writers (by a US trade publisher)
Details here and here.
— PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History: These grants are for literary works of nonfiction that use oral history to illuminate an event, individual, place, or movement. They are to help maintain or complete ongoing projects. Oral history must be a significant portion of the work and its research. Writers have to send in writing samples and transcripts as part of the application.
Value: Two grants of $15,000 each
Deadline: 1 June 2022
Open for: Unspecified
Details here and here.
The Forum Essay Prize
This is an essay contest; the theme is ‘Challenging Literature.’ They want “essays that use academic research to pursue innovative questions. … The topic may be addressed from the perspective of any of the literatures (including literary linguistics, translation and comparative literature approaches) normally covered by the journal: Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Please note that material of a predominantly social science or sociological nature falls outside our scope.
We are seeking submissions that focus on literature that challenges us and/or challenges how we read, write, research and teach literature in our discipline(s).” They’ve listed potential approaches to the subject.
Deadline: 1 June 2022
Value: £500; possible runner-up prize of £200
Open for: All writers
Details here.
Atlanta Review: Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets
The Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets solicits poems from college-age students, aged 18-23, on any subject or style. Poems with an international focus are especially welcomed, but all poems must be written in English. Students may submit up to two poems (40 lines or fewer for each poem). A letter of recommendation from a teacher or other person well-acquainted with the student’s writing must accompany the poem(s). The recommendation letter should affirm that these poems are the student’s original work.
Value: $100
Deadline: 1 June 2022
Open for: College-age poets (18-23 years)
Details here.
Sapiens Plurum Short Fiction Contest: Inventing Beautiful Futures
Sapiens Plurum conducts an annual short fiction contest, opening on Earth Day of each year. The theme is ‘Inventing Beautiful Futures’: “Even within the harmful elements of nature and society there is an innate potential that can be harnessed into something beneficial or even beautiful. Technology can be the tool or catalyst for that transformation. Tell us a story about how you see this story unfold.
Your story should be consonant with the Sapiens Plurum mission: to inspire us — the first species that can intentionally impact its own evolution — to aspire beyond what was humanly possible.” Submissions should be 1,500-3,000 words.
Value: $1,000, $500, $300
Deadline: 1 June 2022
Open for: All writers
Details here and here.
The Novel Prize
The Novel Prize is an award for a novel of literary fiction (at least 30,000 words) managed by the three publishers working in collaboration, with Fitzcarraldo Editions reading submissions from Africa and Europe, Giramondo from Asia and Australasia, and New Directions from the Americas. Apart from the cash prize, the novel will get simultaneous publication in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and in North America. The prize rewards novels which explore and expand the possibilities of the form, and are innovative and imaginative in style.
Value: $10,000
Deadline: 1 June 2022
Open for: All writers
Details here (and see the publisher/submission links for various regions above).
EcoTheo Collective: Lorca Latinx Poetry Prize
This is a prize for emerging Latinx poets, who have no more than one full-length collection of poetry in print. You can read more about the prize here. Send chapbook manuscripts of 10-15 pages (see guidelines). “All unpublished, original collections of your poems written primarily in English are eligible (no translations unless your own).
Individual poems may be previously published in any medium, but the manuscript as a whole must be unpublished as a collection.” The winner will receive Spanish translation and bilingual publication of their manuscript, a cash prize from Letras Latinas, and 10 copies of the chapbook.
Deadline: 5 June 2022
Value: $500
Open for: Emerging Latinx poets
Details here.
Defenestration.net Short Story Contest
They want a short story which should include an incident of defenestration – the art or –ism of throwing people out of windows. This need not be literal. Their team defines such an incident as follows – “a sudden, immediate, even violent shift, change, or seismical event between the beginning and the end.” There will voting by four judges for this contest, with fan voting counting as an additional judge vote.
Value: $75, two runner-up prizes of $30 each
Deadline: 7 June 2022
Open for: All writers
Details here.
Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Contest
This is for junior and senior division (11-14 and 15-18) students worldwide. The theme for this ocean awareness contest is ‘The Funny Thing About Climate Change’- it invites students to respond to climate crisis with humor/satire/positivity (see guidelines). The categories are: Visual Art; Poetry & Spoken Word; Creative Writing; Film; Performing Arts: Music & Dance; Interactive & Multimedia.
Value: Senior division – $1,500, $1,000, $500, $300, $250 in each category; Junior division – $1,000, $750, $250, $150, $100 for each category
Deadline: 13 June 2022
Open for: Students ages 11-18
Details here.
A&U — America’s AIDS Magazine: Christopher Hewitt Awards
This is an award for fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama. All submissions must be HIV/AIDS-related. Writers may submit more than one work. Send up to 1,200 words for fiction and non-fiction, and 1,400-1,600 words for drama (drama can be an excerpt from a longer play).
Value: $75 in each category
Deadline: 15 June 2022
Open for: Unspecified
Details here.
The Norton Writer’s Prize
This is a non-fiction prize for undergraduates who are enrolled in an accredited 2- or 4-year college or university, enrolled during the 2021-22 year, and aged 17 or above. They will accept literacy narratives, literary and other textual analyses, reports, profiles, evaluations, arguments, memoirs, proposals, multimodal pieces, and other forms of original nonfiction pieces of 1,000-3,000 words. Entries require nomination by an instructor.
Value: Three prizes of $1,000 each
Deadline: 15 June 2022
Open for: Undergraduates
Details here.
Goi Peace Foundation: International Essay Contest for Young People
This is an international essay contest for people aged up to 25 years, in two categories – children and youth. The theme is, ‘My Values’. ‘Our values determine how we think and act, and they shape the society we live in. What are the values that you hold dear? How can you best live your life in line with those values, and in doing so, what kind of society do you hope to create?’ Entries can be in English, French, (up to 700 words), or Japanese (up to 1,600 characters).
Value: For each category, there is one first prize is JPY100,000 (about $840); three second prizes of JPY50,000 (about $420) each; five third prizes, and 25 honorable mentions
Deadline: 15 June 2022
Open for: Children ages 14 and under; youth ages 15-25 years
Details here.
University of Pittsburgh Press: Drue Heinz Literature Prize
This international award is open to authors who have published a novel, a book-length collection of fiction or at least three short stories or novellas in commercial magazines or literary journals. It is for an unpublished manuscript of short fiction, or two or more novellas, or a combination of one or more novellas and short stories. Manuscripts must be 150-300 pages.
Value: $15,000
Deadline: 30 June 2022
Open for: Published writers
Details here and here.
Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest
This greeting card company runs a biannual poetry contest. “Poems can be rhyming or non-rhyming, although we find that non-rhyming poetry reads better.” Also, “We suggest that you write about real emotions and feelings and that you have some special person or occasion in mind as you write.” Writers can enter the contest as often as they like.
Value: $350, $200, $100
Deadline: 30 June 2022
Open for: All writers
Details here.
(They’ve also posted guidelines for their general greeting card poetry and prose submissions – see deadlines for seasonal poetry; and also for prose book submissions on certain topics.)
Preservation Foundation Contest: General non-fiction
This is an international contest for unpublished writers (see guidelines). Their upcoming deadline is for the general non-fiction category: “Any appropriate nonfiction topic is eligible. Stories must be true, not semi-fictional accounts. So-called “creative nonfiction” will not be considered.” Entries should be 1,000-5,000 words. They want all entries, regardless of whether or not they win, to be on their website as long as the Foundation exists (see guidelines). Also see contests in other genres, which have deadlines later in the year.
Value: $200, $100
Deadline: 30 June 2022
Open for: Unpublished writers
Details here.
Society of Authors: Authors’ Foundation Grants
They have two grants for works in progress and the form is the same, for both. There are two rounds of funding annually, and deadlines are 1 February and 1 July. The Society of Authors also has other grants it administers. They have the Authors’ Foundation Grants, for which there is no nationality or age requirement, and the K. Blundell Trust Award, for British writers. The Authors’ Foundation Grants are for authors of fiction, non-fiction or poetry who are contracted, or who are published and working on a project that is likely to have interest from a British publisher. They are for works in progress.
Value: Unspecified
Deadline: 1 July 2022
Open for: See above (also see guidelines and FAQ, ‘What is the difference between the K Blundell Trust and the Authors’ Foundation?’)
Details here.
Richard J. Margolis Award
The award is for non-fiction writers of social justice journalism. It is for a promising new journalist or essayist whose work combines warmth, humour, wisdom and concern with social justice. Applications should include 2-3 non-fiction writing samples, up to 30 pages. At least one sample should be non-memoir material.
Value: $10,000, residency at Blue Mountain Centre artists’ colony
Deadline: 1 July 2022
Open for: Unspecified
Details here and here.
A couple of contests with later deadlines are:
— The H G Wells Short Story Competition: This is an international short story contest on the theme of ‘Switch’, of 1,500-5,000 words. There is no fee for those under 21 years; for the Junior Award, i.e. for those aged under 21, the prize is £1,000; deadline 11 July 2021. Details here.
— Mason Jar Press: The 1729 Book Prize in Prose: This is an international contest for a prose manuscript. “We’re open to most prose genres, though we tend to lean toward semi-experimental works with a strong literary bent. Hybrid works are welcome.” They want novels, novellas, story collections, memoirs, auto/biographies, and essay collections. The prize is $1,000, and more; deadline 15 July 2022. Details here.)
PRIZES FOR WRITERS IN US/CANADA
(Writers in the US, Canada, and Australia should also see the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, in the UK/Ireland section below.)
PEN America: US Writers Aid Initiative
This is intended to assist fiction and non-fiction authors, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, translators, and journalists. To be eligible, applicants must be based in the United States, be professional writers, and be able to demonstrate that this one-time grant will be meaningful in helping them to address an emergency situation. Various deadlines are listed for 2022, and the next one is 1st June. Other deadlines are in August, October, and December. Writers do not have to be PEN members to apply.
Value: Unspecified
Deadline: 1 June 2022
Open for: US writers
Details here.
Poetry Foundation: Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships
These fellowships are for young poets who are US residents or citizens; you can read about last year’s winners here. Writers have to submit 10 pages of poetry as part of the application.
Deadline: 2 June 2022
Value: Fellowships of $25,800 each
Open for: US poets aged 21-31 years
Details here.
Bard Fiction Prize
This residency and cash award is for a writer who is a US citizen aged 39 years or younger. Submissions should write a cover letter explaining the project they plan to work on while at Bard and submit a CV, along with copies of the published book they feel best represents their work – no manuscripts will be accepted. The winner receives an appointment as writer in residence at Bard College for one semester, without the expectation that he or she teach traditional courses. The recipient gives at least one public lecture and meets informally with students. The deadline for the 2023 prize is mid-June.
Value: $30,000, residency
Deadline: 15 June 2022
Open for: Published US writers
Details here.
Fraser Institute Student Essay Contest
For this year’s essay contest, the main theme is ‘What in the world would Adam Smith say?’ (See their extensive guidelines for details). The contest is for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students studying in Canada and Canadian students studying abroad.
Value: CAD1,500, CAD1,000, CAD500 each in high school, undergraduate, and graduate categories
Deadline: 15 June 2022
Open for: Canadian students
Details here.
Eugene C. Pulliam Fellowship for Editorial Writing
This award is for an outstanding mid-career editorial writer or columnist to help broaden his or her journalistic horizons and knowledge of the world. The annual award can be used to cover the cost of study, research and/or travel in any field. The fellowship results in editorials and other writings, including books. One of the eligibility requirements is, the candidate must hold a position as a part-time or full-time editorial writer or columnist at a news publication located in the US. Applications also are welcome from freelance opinion writers who devote a majority of their time, or derive a majority of their income, from that pursuit. The application includes five samples of editorials or columns.
(There is also the Eugene S. Pulliam First Amendment Award of $10,000, for a person or persons who have fought to protect and preserve one or more of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment; the entrants need not be journalists.)
Value: $75,000
Deadline: 20 June 2022
Open for: Editorial writer/columnist at a news publication in the US
Details here.
PRIZES FOR WRITERS IN UK/IRELAND (+ AUSTRALIA)
The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting
This is for anyone residing in the UK or Ireland or British Overseas Territory or with a British Forces Post Office address, and some playwrights from other countries. They want a play script of 1 hour or above. Their guidelines also say, “An International Award of £8,000 – open to international playwrights invited to anonymously apply via our named international partners” (see guidelines – the partners are certain theatres in the US, Canada, and Australia). Value: First prize £16,000, Judges’ Award of £8,000, Original New Voice Award of £8,000, an International Award of £8,000
Deadline: 6 June 2022
Open for: UK playwrights; some international playwrights (see guidelines)
Details here.
Faber Children’s: Faber and Andlyn BAME (FAB) Prize
This is for undiscovered BAME writers and illustrators. Entrants must be of black, Asian or minority ethnic background and UK- or Ireland-based. For writers, they want a maximum of 5,000 words of text (no minimum word count). Entries must be text or artwork for children.
Value: £1,500 each for a writer and an illustrator, and mentorship
Deadline: 17 June 2022
Open for: UK BAME writers
Details here and here.
Society of Authors: K. Blundell Trust Award
They have two grants for works in progress and the form is the same, for both. There are two rounds of funding annually, and deadlines are 1 February and 1 July. The Society of Authors also has other grants it administers. They have the Authors’ Foundation Grants, for which there is no nationality or age requirement, and the K. Blundell Trust Award, for British writers. The K. Blundell Trust Award is a work-in-progress award for young British writers of fiction or non-fiction. The work must contribute to the greater understanding of existing social and economic organisation.
Value: Up to approximately £6,000
Deadline: 1 July 2022
Open for: British writers under 40 who have had at least one book published (See guidelines and FAQ, ‘What is the difference between the K Blundell Trust and the Authors’ Foundation?’)
Details here (scroll down).
Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached here.
