We've read the Internet cover to cover to bring you these opportunities.

For your perusal: jobs, competitions, and places to publish. If you'd like us to add an opportunity to this list, let us know.

Otherwise find something in this list to help bring you inspiration, fame and $$$.

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 choose one short story, poem, or otherwise brilliant piece of writing to be our Bloc Feature

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 $100 for the story, and include you in our end-of year anthology of creative writing.

​In February, it was our pleasure to publish the very excellent short story  'The Dry', by Hannah Donnelly.

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.

Monash University Undergraduate Prize for Creative Writing

Monash University in conjunction with the Emerging Writers’ Festival is pleased to present the Monash Undergraduate Prize for Creative Writing. The Prize is open to all undergraduate and honours students from all universities across Australia and New Zealand.

All forms of creative writing will be accepted, including short stories, non-fiction narative and narrative verse. Submissions should be between 1500 - 3000 words. First prize is $4000, with $1000 going to the higest-placed Monash student. 

Closing date: 17 April

Winners will be announced on 26 May at the opening night of the 2015 Emerging Writers’ Festival. Shortlisted winners will receive VIP tickets to the opening night and gala.

The Lifted Brow & non/fictionLab Experimental Non Fiction Prize

Competition for boundary pushing non-fiction. First prize $5000, two runner-ups at $500 each. Entry fee is $7, or free to 'Brow subscribers, RMIT students and alumnus. 

The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction is looking to unearth new, audacious, authentic and/or inauthentic voices from both Australia and the world.

This prize seeks work that is unlike any other. They want to hear from writers they've never read before, and they want writers they already know and love to challenge themselves to create work unlike any they’ve previously produced.

Deadline:  May 29th, 2016

2016 Peter Cowan 600 word Short Story Award

The competition has an open theme and entrants may submit stories up to a maximum of 600 words.  Entries must also be unpublished and not have received any previous awards or recognition in any other competition.

The ‘Open’ category carries a $200 First Prize, with $100 for Second and $50 for Third Prize. The ‘Novice Award’ is $50. The ‘Julian Cowan Youth Award’ prize is $100 which has been donated by Mrs. Diana Cowan. There are also four, Highly Commended and four Commended Certificates to be awarded in the competition.

The competition opens on 12th February and will be closing on 1st April 2016.

Sheila Malady Short Story competition

Shakespeare on the River presents a short story competition for writers all over the nation. Entrants must submit a short story not exceeding 2,000 words along with the theme of Friendship. There is a prize for ‘A Young Writer Aged 18years and Under’ with first prize being a $50 Collins Bookstore voucher.
Closing date for entries is the 23rd March and email to [email protected] 

Whitlam Institute: What Matters? Writing Competition

The competition involves writing a 400 to 600 word opinion piece, with one entry allowed per student. The questions include ‘What actions do you think should be taken to build a better society?’, ‘What would you change if you could?’ and 'What do you want other people to care about?’
Entries close – 6th May 2016

Limnisa short story competition 2016

Short Fiction competition to win a  Writers’ Retreat or Workshop in 2016 or 2017 at Limnisa, a seaside location near Agios Georgios, Methana, Greece: http://www.limnisa.com. 

All inclusive: Full board, 7 nights accommodation in single room, optional daily yoga sessions, literary evening, use of all Limnisa facilities: beach, bikes, international library.

Open to original, unpublished fiction of up to 3000 words in English, by writers anywhere in the world. 

Submissions due by April 15, 2016, and free to anyone who shares the competitin on social media. 

Write 4 Fun – Student Poetry and Short Story 

Write4fun encourages young student writers and artists with fantastic competitions. In this case, a competition for school students. There is no theme and students can write on any topic in any style. You could win a $1000 cash first prize - $500 to the student and $500 to the school.

Students can enter online at www.write4fun.net

Entry is free and the closing date in Thursday 31st March, 2016.

THE WHITE REVIEW SHORT STORY PRIZE 2016 (UK)

The White Review Short Story Prize is an annual short story competition for emerging writers. Made possible by the generous support of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation in 2013, the prize awards £2,500 to the best piece of short fiction by a writer resident in the UK and Ireland who has yet to secure a publishing deal. In addition to the £2,500 prize, the winner will be published in a quarterly print issue of THE WHITE REVIEW. Submissions will close on 1 March 2016.

Ubud Writers Festival AAWP Short Story Competition.

The winner of this Prize will receive a ticket to Ubud Writers & Readers Festival (UWRF), accommodation for the duration of the festival and $500 towards economy airfares. In addition, you will receive a one-year annual membership to the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) and fully subsidised conference fees to attend the annual conference of the AAWP, where you are invited to read from your work. In addition, the editors at Meniscus will consider your work for publication. 

The Prize opens on the 21st January 2016 and closes at midnight on 15th May 2016. Late submissions will not be accepted. 

GAT Literary Prize (Canada)

The GAT Literary Prize is an international prize established by Toronto-based Global Asian Times to promote the finest in short fiction by rewarding the most outstanding and compelling short stories of the year from across the world. We honor talented writers by bringing their work to wide international readership. Top 5 contestants will win cash prizes totaling $2000. A video of their story being read by an acclaimed Canadian writer will be shared separately for each winner on multiple platforms for optimum exposure. The winning stories, along with a personalized interview with the winner, will also appear in print in Global Asian Times and GAT Literary Prize.

Aerogramme Writer's Studio— 23 Short Story Competitions

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

Thee Ginosko Flash Fiction Award is for an unpublished work of flash fiction of up to $800 words.  $500 Award, $10 entry fee.

Deadline for Contest March 1, 2016.

Griffith Review The Novella Project IV

Submissions are now open for Griffith Review’s The Novella Project IV competition. Winning novellas will share in a $25,000 prize pool and will be published in Griffith Review 54: The Novella Project IV (26 October 2016). Each entrant will receive a free one-year digital subscription to Griffith Review. Submissions close 13 May 2016. Early submissions are encouraged.

Jobs and Internships

Express Media – Designer

Express Media are seeking an in-house designer to bring a fresh perspective to communicating the Express Media brand and help us to inspire, inform and captivate their community of young writers. Based in Melbourne, this position offers a unique opportunity for regular, national exposure of creative work, in a well-established literary organisation. 

While you don’t need to be under 25 to apply for this role, they strongly encourage young people, design students and recent graduates to apply. 

Applications close at 9am on Monday March 14, 2016. Interviews for the position will take place in the week commencing Monday March 21. The successful candidate is expected to begin in the role on Monday April 4. 

Express Media – Schools Program Producer

This new position has been created in order to support the national expansion of the Express Media Schools Program. The Schools Program Producer will be responsible for building and maintaining relationships with secondary schools across the country as well as developing resources and workshop content to suit their needs. They will also be required to coordinate workshop bookings, engaging teaching artists to deliver Express Media workshops Australia-wide. 

Applications close at 9am on Monday March 14, 2016. Interviews for the position will take place in the week commencing Monday March 21. The successful candidate is expected to begin in the role on Monday April 4. 

Scholarships, Residencies and Agencies. 

The Wheeler Centre’s Hot Desk Fellowships 

The Wheeler Centre’s Hot Desk Fellowships are back for 2016 once again made possible by the generous support of the Readings Foundation. 20 writers will be offered fellowships throughout the year – and, for the first time, with two Hot Desk Fellowships for illustrators developing work with a literary focus (from a graphic novel, to a zine or an illustrated book cover), supported by the generosity of private donors.

The fellowships, which offer a $1000 stipend and workspace in the Wheeler Centre over a ten-week period, have been created simply to give you the space to write and create.

Hot Desk fellows will also have the opportunity to meet, network and work with the Wheeler Centre’s resident organisations and perform their work in a special a special Hot Desk Edition of The Next Big Thing series. 

Applications are now open, and will close on Friday, 11 March 2016.

PitchLab

PitchLab is an innovative new approach to selling long-form feature articles to magazines, radio programs, websites, and newspapers. It follows the same successful business model that works in the book publishing industry. Their team of mentors will take your idea out to the market and find it the best possible home. They oversee the business side of the publishing process, negotiate the contracts, and process the billing so that you can focus on what is really important. PitchLab aims to develop new and established writers into world-class journalists. PitchLab charges an industry standard 15% commission for the pieces that we agree to work on, and our experience suggests that writers who use agents generally make more than they would if they negotiated on their own. 

Publications Seeking Submissions

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. 

Alien She Zine

Alien She publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, art and review. They are looking for work that doesn’t fit neatly into the above categories. They want you to show us things we don’t even know about – to take them out into the night, point to the stars and show us something we’d never seen before. They are excited by the diverse, original, subversive, pioneering, political, open-minded, sexual, intellectual, confronting, perverse, heartfelt and hateful. 

Alien She Zine encourage previously unpublished submissions from all voices of every background, nationality, race, sexuality, and gender.

The current deadline for submissions is 10 April 2016.

Pilcrow & Dagger

We accept short stories, essays and poetry. We are looking for original works that are thought-provoking and creative with literary merit and interest for a wide audience. We encourage simultaneous submissions but please let us know if your work has been accepted for publication with another periodical. If you’d like to attach a photo or an original piece of artwork that compliments your submission that would be awesome.

One Teen Story

One Teen Story publishes Young Adult writing, providing opportunities to established adult authors and emerging teen authors of YA. Offering $500 (US) to twelve accepted submissions, rights revert to the author upon publication.

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.

Stereo Stories

Stereo Stories is a Melbourne-based website that publishes well-written, evocative, concise stories. About songs.

You’re welcome to write about all sorts of songs, including songs that are already on the site.

You can send us a story or you can send us an idea, just a few sentences. Either way, we’ll get back to you.

Please include song title, a place and a time at the top of the story and, if possible, a link to a film clip of the song at the end of the story.

Word length for stories? Up to 800 words, thanks.

The Wrong Quarterly

We accept fiction of under 6,000 words, fully edited, and previously unpublished. We also accept non-fiction, life-writing, and essays of under 5,000 words.

The Pear Drop

We want to tell stories that document and explore the human condition from all perspectives. We are curious about how local culture blends with international identity to transcend the personal and achieve a greater resonance. We believe arts, culture and information should be open and free for all.

Byte Stories

A place to share stories around a digital fireplace, and a publisher of very short fiction. 

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.