Punctuation Fun/Market for fiction, poetry, essays

Writer’s Thought for the Week: If you want to change your life, remember that change starts with you. ~ Jeffrey Keller

Best take on punctuation since Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: http://writerunboxed.com/2013/05/02/take-a-punctuation-mark-out-to-lunch/

CONFRONTATION MAGAZINE
Accepts works from new and established writers – from a talented 14-year-old to Nobel prize winners. The current reading period ends May 15, 2013. Publishes fiction, poetry, memoirs and essays. Pays up to $125. U.S.-based writers must submit by snail mail; others may submit by e-mail.

Pitch an Agent/Poetry and Essay Markets

Writers Thought for the Week: The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time. ~  Mary Oliver

AGENT QUERIES

Want some help crafting your query to prospective agents? Here are 23 actual pitch letters that grabbed an agent queries. Why 23? Because they represent 23 different genres.

HOW I SURVIVED

Deadline: April 30, 2013

Did you survive an illness, personal tragedy, abusive relationship, financial ruin, or other life experience that brought you to your knees? Did Gloria Gaynor's disco-era song “I Will Survive” inspire you to rise and thrive? If so, share your story in a new book of personal narrative essays about survival and how the song influenced your life. The book will include 50 stories of 1,000-2,000 words each. If your essay is selected, you will receive $75 and a copy of the book signed by Gloria Gaynor. Submit to either glolo2004@me.com or susancarswell@aol.com

THE FREEMAN

Deadline: June 1, 2013

Theme: Power

You may submit up to 6 unpublished poems up to 60 lines each. Pays $50/poem, plus one copy of the issue containing your poem, for FNASR. The theme changes monthly.

Writing Tips/Agents/Fabulist Literature

Writer’s Thought for the Week: Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. ~ Albert Einstein  

Web Find: Freelance writer and Senior Publicist with Entangled Publishing Stacey O’Neale’s website has writing tips as well as interviews with literary agents.

PHANTOM DRIFT literary journal focuses on fabulist literature - the literature of fabulism, the fantastic and the surreal in fiction, non-fiction,  and poetry. Submission deadline for the next issue is March 31, 2013. Phantom Drift publishes flash fiction, short stories, poetry, essays, interviews, artist features and reviews.

Copyright protection/Prose contest

Writer’s Thought for the Week: Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. ~ Henry Ward Beecher 

The U.S. Copyright Act isn’t just about copyrights. The law includes other issues writers with book contracts should be aware of, such as a termination clause that may help some authors escape onerous contracts. For details, read “Will the CopyrightAct Open a Floodgate of Contract Rewrites for Authors?” 

LIBARTS LONDON PRIZE
Deadline: February 28, 2013

First prize: £200. Second prize: £100.

Word limit: 1500
No entry fee

If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be? Use text, video, audio, photographs, or a combination of these to tell your story. Your story can be about anything: Freedom, Politics, Parents, Religion, Sex, Nature, Race, Education, Beauty…anything. Open internationally but text should be in English.

Hope Clark, Essay Contest, and Nashville Review

Writer’s Thought for the Week: Books don't get written by talking about them, by looking for a 'secret formula' or by agonizing over them. Books get written by gluing one's behind to the chair and writing them.  ~ Mercedes Lackey

Hope Clark, editor and founder of FundsforWriters, is the guest at the Writers Chatroom Sunday, Sept. 18 at 7:00 pm U.S Eastern time. The chat is moderated and no password is needed to enter. Join the chat and ask any writing related question you have. For details and info on Hope and future guests, see http://www.writerschatroom.com/schedule.htm

10th Annual FundsforWriters Essay Contest
http://fundsforwriters.com/annualcontest.htm

Deadline: October 31, 2011  (received, by midnight ET)

This year’s theme is “diligence”: “Your definition of diligence…might involve a personal relationship, a child, a career, a manuscript. Maybe you weathered a difficult phase in your life, and now… you’ve come out on the other side relieved yet wiser, stronger and empowered.”

You may choose to pay a $5 entry fee or not. Without an entry fee, writers are eligible for cash prizes of $50/$25/$15 for 1st/2nd/3rd. With a fee, prizes are $400/$100/$50. Winners will be published in the Dec. 2, 2011 FundsforWriters newsletters. Other submissions will be considered for publication but will be paid the standard rate of $45 if selected.

Nashville Review

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/english/nashvillereview/submit

The current submission period ends October 1. This journal publishes flash, short stories, novel excerpts, poetry, creative nonfiction, and comics. Fiction and nonfiction may be up to 8,000 words. You may submit up to 5 poems at a time. Pays $100 for fiction, nonfiction, and comics, $25 per poem. No reprints.

Their other submission periods are Jan. 1 to Feb. 1 and May 1 to June 1.

Orion Magazine Open for Submissions June 15

Writer's Thought for the Week: "What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."  ~  Samuel Johnson

Orion Magazine
hhttp://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/mag/guidelines_for_article_submissions/

Due to the high volume, Orion now only accepts submissions twice yearly, during designated submission windows. The next submission period will be June 15-30, 2011. Manuscripts received during this time will receive a response by September 30, 2011.

Orion welcomes "thoughtful submissions concerning the collision of nature and culture, the commingling of people and place." Orion considers unsolicited essays, narrative nonfiction, interviews, profiles, short fiction, and picture essays. They also consider submissions for their Place Where You Live and Coda departments. Sample articles are available on their web site.

No more than two submissions of no more than 6,000 words each per person. Feature articles range from 1,500 to 6,000 words, departments from 350 to 1,200 words. Lead time is typically six to nine months. Pays $400 to $1,000 for feature pieces, $50 to $450 for shorter texts. They purchase first North American serial rights, as well as exclusive worldwide electronic rights for sixty days and nonexclusive permanent web rights for their electronic archive.

Paul Goodman Essay Contest

PAUL GOODMAN ESSAY CONTEST
http://dissentmagazine.org/essaycontest/

Original 1000 to 3000 word essays in the spirit of Goodman’s "utopian essays and practical proposals." What is one of the pressing social and political issues of our time, and how would you address it?

Deadline: May 1, 2010. No entry fee.

The winning author will receive a $1,000 cash prize and his/her will be published in Dissent. Two runner-up essays will be published on the Dissent web site and receive $250 and a signed DVD copy of the film.

Essays should be sent in PDF or DOC format to essaycontest@paulgoodmanfilm.com.

Essay picked for anthology

My memoir essay, "School Days," will appear in the From the Porch Swing anthology to be released by Silver Boomer Books later in 2010. It recalls how I played "school" as a child with my 74-year-old grandfather and what I learned from him.

RAY BRADBURY CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST
http://www.waukeganpl.org/programs/bradcontest.html
http://www.waukeganpl.org/programs/2010rbflyer.pdf

Deadline: postmarked by March 19, 2010. (No e-mail submissions.)
No fee, but a limit of one entry per individual
Categories: Creative writing (poems, essays, short stories), visual arts, multimedia

The three categories are divided into separate ones for high school students and adults, and Illinois residents and non-residents for a total of twelve categories. Creative writing entries may be no longer than two pages.

The theme for this year's contest is the relationship between life and death. The non-Illinois resident winner in each of the twelve categories receives $100. The Illinois resident winners receive $200.

The winning entries will be announced April 14.