The emerging writer opens her refrigerator door, reaching blindly for the green bottle of Belgian lager. She lets the chilled bottle ground her in the comfort of her own kitchen. The old cabinet drawer refuses her access to the bottle opener. Undisturbed by the small inconvenience, she places the bottle lid at the edge of the kitchen counter and smacks it with her fist.
The cold bottle rim touches the writer’s lips. She lets out a sigh of pleasure as the beer soothes her throat, hoarse from teaching all day. Then, she heads to her desk, where a few more hours of work await.
The emergent writer knows that she must endure this struggle. Reasons to give in abound because the effort invested in the demands of several small jobs is inversely proportional to the stamina left for writing and submitting work. Those jobs suck most of the energy from her before she gets home to writing. But writing she does, even if it is just one line in her journal a day.
She writes and submits. Every month she sets a different focus: journals, chapbooks, and workshops. This month she is particularly interested in contests. Meeting deadlines motivates her to overcome the fatigue common for teachers at the end of the school year. It’s only a possibility, but if she wins, the award translates as a credit in her bank account.
She puts behind the disruption of the day – three lanes closed on the freeway due to a car accident –, and slowly starts tweaking her submission letter template to the guidelines of several contests for emerging writers opened in the browser. The beer starts getting warm, which prompts her to keep an eye on the clock on the top of the screen. She has less than half an hour before she has to go to sleep if she wants to be on time for work the next day.
When she is ready preparing the letters, she logs in to Submittable, and starts sending her best possible work to five contests for emerging writers (below) with prizes that start at $25 and go up to $2500. She hits submit three times, finishes the warm lager, and turns off the light.
2018 JuxtaProse Nonfiction Prize
Genre: Nonfiction
Deadline: June 30, 2018 before 5:00 p.m Mountain Time
Submission Fee: $15
Prize: 1st. $1,000 plus publication and three (3) runner ups with “Honorable Mention” status, $100 and publication
Word count: 500 – 7000
May / June Glimmer Train 2018 Short Story Award for New Writers
Genre: Short Story
Deadline: June 30, 2018
Submission fee: $18
Prize: 1st. $2,500, publication in Glimmer Train, and ten (10) copies. There are two more prizes.
Word count: 800 to 12,000 (up to 4,000 recommended).
Sequestrum New Writers Awards: Fiction & Nonfiction
Genre: Fiction & Nonfiction
Deadline: October 15, 2018
Submission fee: $15
Prize: $200 and publication. Two runner ups with publication and payment
Word count: up to 12,000
Miami Book Fair – Paz Prize for Poetry 2018 – 2020
Genre: Poetry (in Spanish)
Deadline: June 15
Submission fee: not specified in guidelines
Prize: $2,000 and publication by Akashic Press
Not limited, but 48 to 64 pages suggested
Genre: Fiction, Memoir, Poetry, and Children Picture Books
Deadline: June 30, 2018
Submission fee: $60
Prize: 1st. $3,000, marketing consultation, free ads and other perks. 2nd and 3rd prizes.
Word count: Limited to 150,000 words.
Lisbeth Coiman is an emerging, bilingual writer wandering the immigration path from Venezuela to Canada to the US. She has performed any available job from maid to college administrator. Her work has been published in Hip Mama, the Literary Kitchen, YAY LA, Nailed Magazine, Entropy, and RabidOak. She was also featured in the Listen to Your Mother Show in 2015. In her self-published memoir, I Asked the Blue Heron (Nov 2017), Coiman celebrates female friendship while exploring issues of child abuse, mental disorder, and her own journey as an immigrant.
She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches and speaks for NAMI about living with a mental disorder. She dances salsa to beat depression.