For your perusal: jobs, competitions, and places to publish. Find something in this list to help bring you inspiration, fame and fortune. Also, remember to bookmark our new Opportunities page for the most recent jobs and comps around. 

COMPETITIONS

Writers Bloc Workshop Competition

We think it’s important to invest in literature, and in the future of Australian writers in particular. To that end, each month, we curate, edit, illustrate and publish a selection of original creative writing— and pay the writer professional publishing rates. 

Each month, we will choose one short story, poem, or otherwise brilliant piece of writing to be our Bloc Feature. The Writers Bloc team of professional editors, teachers and award-winning creative writers will then work with you to polish the piece and publish it along with specially commissioned cover art. A little like this.

Best of all, we’ll pay you for the story, and include you in our end-of year-anthology of creative writing.

If you’re interested, all you have to do is upload a completed draft of your story to our Workshop section, and join in our community of creative writers.

The Horne Prize

Aesop and The Saturday Paper have announced the launch of a major national essay away. Valued at $15,000 it will be awarded in late December for an essay of up to 3000 words, adressing some part of the theme "Australian Life".

Entries are open from August 6 to October 31 2016.

Fair Australia Prize

The prize encourages artists and writers of fiction, poetry and essays to be part of setting a new agenda for our future.  Five prizes, each totalling $4000, will be awarded to the winning entries for: fiction, essay, potery, graphic or cartoon, and best entry by an NUW member. The total prize pool is $20,000.  

Each of  Winning entries will be published in a special Fair Australia supplement in Overland 225, to be launched in Melbourne in early December.

Competition  closes 11.59 pm, 31 August 2016.

Lord Mayor Creative Writing Awards

The City of Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards encourages emerging writers and promote Melbourne Library Service as a place of ideas and creativity

There are five categories in the Awards: short story, poetry, novella, graphic short story and narrative non-ficiton. 

Each category winner receives $1,000. The Lord Mayor’s Award of $5,000 is chosen from a shortlist made up of the winners of each of the five categories.

Entries close 31 August 2015. 

Hardie Grant Ampersand Prize

The Ampersand Prize from Hardie Grant is open for entries of young adult and middle-grade novels by unpublished authors. The winning writer gets a contract, an advance and serious editorial development to bring their books to market. 

Entries are open September 1 - 16, 2016.

Katharine Susannah Prichard Short Fiction Awards 

Open to short fiction pieces from writers Australia-wide. The prize features two categories: Adult and Youth, both of which attract a cash prize.

Entries close 5.00pm AWST Friday 16 September 2016

A Moveable Feast

A curated list of International writers competitions with a focus on Britain and the United States

Aerogramme Writer's Studio— 23 Short Story Competitions

A comprehensive list of 23 American Short Story Compeitions in 2016.

PUBLICATIONS SEEKING SUBMISSIONS

Creative Nonfiction

The spring 2017 issue of Creative Nonfiction magazine, is looking for original essays about teaching—whether in a traditional classroom or online; in summer camp or college; in preschool or in a prison; in the woods or in a workshop.  $1000 (US) will be awarded to the best essay, with a $500 runner-up prize. A $20 reading fee applies ($25 for US-based writers includes a 4-issue subscription). 

Submissions close August 31.

Scum Mag

Scum is interested in publishing feminist-friendly work of any variety, but as a general rule your piece should be under 1000 words (50 lines for poetry) and able to be classified as “fiction”, “culture”, “memoir”, “column”, “poetry”, and/or “review”. They tend not to publish traditional reviews of books and films—to get a feel for the reviews they do publish, check the review tag. Feel free to pitch to them if you’re not sure if your piece is a good fit. (Please note that they don’t accept pitches for fiction or poetry.) 

Submissions to Scum are open the first week (from the 1st to the 7th) of every month. The rest of the month, submissions are closed. They pay $60 per piece of writing. 

Uneven Floor (poetry)

Uneven Floor, an independent poetry publication based in Perth, Western Australia, is seeking poetry submissions for its online magazine.

Unpaid, editors ask that writers read their website thoroughly to get a feel for their tone before submitting. Ongoing.

The Wrong Quarterly

The Wrong Quarterly are a London-based journal who publish "inventive" works of nonfiction, life writing and essays up to 5,000 words and fiction up to 6,000 words. Submissions are accepted from both British and international writers. Ongoing.

Right Now

Right Now is committed to covering human rights issues in Australia through free, accessible, creative and engaging online, print and radio media. Creative writing is a great way to explore human rights in Australia: from poetry to flash fiction to long and short pieces. Ongoing.

Make sure you stay up to date with the best writing opportunities and more by subscribing to our weekly newsletter.

Have you got something the community should know about? A job vacancy, competition or call for submissions? Write to us [email protected] or let us know on Twitter and we'll include it in our next month's list of wonderful opportunities.