Silence Awareness Existence
Thematic residency program in Finland, Winter 2023

Periods: 1 or 2 months
When: January / February / March 2023
Where: Arteles Creative Center, Hämeenkyrö, Finland

Deadline for applications: 21st of September 2022

Thematic residency program in Finland for artists, writers and creative minds attuned to the theme. 
The program brings together creative individuals from different backgrounds. Artistic, scientific, meditative and existentialistic approaches are all equally embraced.



Taking place at the heart of the Northern winter, the conditions are excellent for creative contemplation, solitary introspection, concentrating intensively on your work, thinking and being, as well as for sharing experiences and ideas with other, similarly oriented minds.

There is no pressure to have a concrete productive outcome, in case your focus is more in inner development, self-reflection and research. All participation in group activities is voluntary. 


Read more and apply: https://www.arteles.org

Seeking creative nonfiction essays on any topic (200 - 1000 words) and in any style--from personal essay and memoir to lyric essay and hybrid, and more! The mission of this contest is to reward bravery in real-life storytelling and create an understanding of our world through thoughtful, engaging narratives.

Electronic submissions via e-mail only; reprints/previously published okay; simultaneous submissions okay; reprints/previously published are okay; multiple submissions are okay as long as they are submitted in their own individual e-mail. Open internationally.

Limit: 300 entries.

Prizes (20 winners!):
1st Place: $500, publication, interview, and gift code good for one item from CreateWriteNow's Store
2nd Place: $300, publication, interview, and gift code good for one item from CreateWriteNow's Store
3rd Place: $200, publication, interview, and gift code good for one item from CreateWriteNow's Store
7 Runners Up receive $25 Amazon Gift Cards, publication, interview, and gift code good for one item from CreateWriteNow's Store
10 Honorable mentions receive a gift code good for one item from CreateWriteNow's Store

Entry: $12 entry fee; critique option for an additional $13

TRANSQUEER is a call for you to say something that maybe you haven’t been able to say before. It asks you to find poetry in / between lines, binaries and stultifying categorisations; from the life of flesh, from inside the bleating, many-chambered heart of gender and sexuality. It follows from Joy Ladin’s request that we ‘explore trans identities not as positions to defend but as modes of becoming and thus ways of being human’ (Trans Studies Quarterly, 2016: 640).

Poetry has always shown us where the gaps / gasps lie, where the line does (not) end, how the margin teaches the centre what it is to be always-becoming, always coming-to (writing, the self, the other, each other…). We ask you ‘[to] believe that the world is QUEER, or that oneself is, or both, [and that this] is a window of doubt through which all creative possibility comes into being’ (Mark Doty, The Art of Description: World into Word).

We want transgressive poems, transonic poems, transmontane poems. Transmissible, transitory, transhumanist poems. Poems that transpire. Poems that transact. Poems that transpose. Poems that translate what Mark Doty refers to as ‘that which is not business as usual, not solid identities founded on firm grounds.’ We want poems as transducers, transmuters, transponders. We want to be transported, we want to be transfixed, we want to be queered by your poems. We want poems that queer(y).

We think of gorgeous-sounding words: transalpine, transistor, transmigrate, transfusion, transatlantic, transaminate, transcultural, transmogrify, transcutaneous.

We think of a few lines from Sylvia Plath, ‘Balloons’ – ‘Yellow cathead, blue fish— / Such queer moons we live with / Instead of dead furniture!’ – and of their elegant translucence.

We think of two lines from Tori Amos, ‘Blood Roses’ – ‘You think I’m a queer / I think you’re a queer’ – and of their gaspy / gappy transmission.

Come into being. Send us your gasps, your yells, your manifestos, your moments in the mirror – say something. Send us your work, and ask us to believe it, weeping. The time for TRANSQUEER poetry is here.