Free Download from Donald Maass

Although written in 1996, the information in The Career Novelist: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success is still valid. The book covers a wide range of topics such as pitching errors, choosing an agent, the marketing game, collaborations, and electronic rights. You can download a free copy by going to: www.maassagency.com/books.html

FREE PODCASTS ON WRITING CRAFT - FICTION AND POETRY

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/podcasts/media/more/writingchallenges

This web site from the UK Warwick Writing Programme has free podcasts on various aspects of writing fiction. The site also includes a link to a poetry podcast series: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/podcasts/media/more/slowpoetry/

THE BORDIGHERA POETRY PRIZE
http://www.gioseffi.com/Prize.html

No fee.
Deadline: postmarked by May 31, 2010
Prize: $1,000 plus publication in a bilingual edition by Bordighera.
Winners will be announced by October 30.

This competition seeks the best manuscripts of poetry in English by an American poet of Italian descent, to be translated upon selection by the judges into modern Italian, for the benefit of American poets of Italian ancestry and the preservation of the Italian language. The poet must be a U.S. citizen of Italian descent and surname or maiden surname.

To enter, submit ten sample pages of poetry in English. The final booklength manuscript should not exceed 48 pages to allow for up to 48 additional pages of Italian translation. Your poems may have appeared in magazines, anthologies or chapbooks. The publisher will commission a translator unless the author is qualified to do the translation.

Both the author and translator will share in the royalties per Bordighera's standard contract.

Hillerman Mystery Competition

2010 HILLERMAN MYSTERY COMPETITION
http://www.wordharvest.com/novel_contest.php

Deadline: June 1, 2010. No e-mail submissions
No entry fee. Limit of one entry per writer.
Prize: publication with St. Martin's press and a $10,000 advance.

The competition is open to any professional or non-professional writer who has never published a mystery novel and who is not under contract with a publisher for publication of a mystery. All submissions must be original, unpublished book-length works (no less than 220 typewritten pages or approximately 60,000 words).

Novella Contest

FAILBETTER NOVELLA CONTEST
http://www.failbetter.com/Novella.php

Your novella must be 8,000 words or more and suitable for serial publication. For the contest, send only the first 5,000 words. You must submit via e-mail, either pasted in the body of your e-mail or as an RTF or TXT attachment. Limit of one entry per person.

Note: All entries are considered for publication, but they do not pay for regular submissions. If you only submit to paying markets, don't let the no pay possibility stop you here. They would need to contact you for the full manuscript if they wanted to publish your novella, so you could withhold it.

The prize is $500. There is no entry fee and the deadline is May 15, 2000.

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.