Issue Four Hundred Fifty Four – Authors Publish Magazine

Moss Puppy Magazine: Now Seeking Submissions

Ella Peary — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 15:51:10 +0000

Moss Puppy Magazine is a new online and print publisher of fiction, creative nonfiction, flash writing, and poetry. Right now through April 1 they’re seeking submissions for their upcoming edition themed “Puppy Love.” They’re looking for writing about romance and, “what makes your heart howl.”

In general, Moss Puppy is looking for unexpected and thoroughly creative writing. They want, “your weird, muddy, and messy—the turtles without shells, boiled frogs, & mushroom-capped fairies.” They emphasize, “Show us what’s in your swamp.”

Moss Puppy Magazine plans to publish two editions a year, in May and November. Their “Puppy Love” issue will be their second publication. Their first edition was themed “Swampland.” It’s a large volume, containing work from around 70 authors. You can download the journal for free to get a sense of what they publish. Each edition is also available to purchase in print.

Moss Puppy Magazine holds two open submission period each year: from January 1 through April 1 for publication in their May edition, and from July 1 through October 1 for publication in their November edition.

Poets may submit up to three poems. Authors of fiction and creative nonfiction may submit one piece, 3,000 words or fewer, or up to three flashes, 1,000 words or fewer each. Submitting authors can expect a response within two weeks.

Moss Puppy Magazine accepts submissions via email, not online or by post. They accept simultaneous submissions, but they do not accept previously published work.

Moss Puppy Magazine only accepts submissions that follow the guidelines they’ve posted online. Please read these guidelines in full before submitting.

If you would like to learn more or submit to Moss Puppy Magazine, please visit their website here.

Bio: Ella Peary is the pen name for an author, editor, creative writing mentor, and submission consultant. Over the past five years, she’s written hundreds of articles for Authors Publish, and she’s also served as a copywriter and copy editor for a wide range of organizations and individuals. She is the author of The Quick Start Guide to Flash Fiction. She occasionally teaches a course on flash fiction. You can contact her at ellapeary@gmail.com.

8 Funding Opportunities for Writers this February 2022

A Guest Author — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 15:50:04 +0000

by NmaHassan Muhammad

Below are a number of funding opportunities for writers that are open to submissions. If a deadline is known, it is included.

Whale Rock Workshops’ 2022 Diversity Grant

Whale Rock Workshops is working in conjunction with Greatest Stories Never Told (501c3) to offer BIPOC and other under-represented students full tuition coverage to participate in one of their programs. Students who demonstrate talent and financial need will be prioritized. Applicants do not have to be published or agented, but the student who must reside in Canada or USA, must have writing samples and be working on a writing project. Students must have access to a laptop and Zoom technology AND must be able to participate in the full duration of each program. Grants are designed for their full immersion programs: The Virtual Master Skills Workshop and Mentorship Program.

Also, candidates must be new to Whale Rock Workshops and must submit a writing experience statement (tell us what you write and why, and what your writing journey has been like to date). For the week-long master’s workshop, please submit a 1000 word writing sample of a manuscript geared towards middle grade or young adult readers. For the mentorship program, please submit a complete picture book manuscript or a 1000 word middle grade or young adult sample.

Deadline is March 1, 2022.

For details, go here.

2022 Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award

The Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award is a grant of $12,500 to support the work of a promising early-career nonfiction writer on a story that uncovers truths about the human condition. The award proceeds from the recognition that many important stories need to be reported from afar, and that publications do not always have the resources to send a writer where the story is. The money need not be used exclusively for travel, but we expect that most successful applications will include such expenses.

The award will not fund proposals to report on armed conflicts where journalists are already imperiled, nor projects that are mainly investigatory. The winner will normally receive visiting scholar privileges at NYU, including library access.

Deadline is March 3, 2022.

For details, go here.

Highlights Foundation New Scholarships

Highlights Foundation have put a new, streamlined process in place for scholarship applications and will award more than $75,000 in scholarships in 2022! The application period is open to all aspiring and published storytellers. The awards will be made as follows: 25 full tuition scholarships and 20 partial tuition scholarships for workshops that take place at the Highlights Foundation Retreat Center, 30 full tuition scholarships for online courses, and 15 scholarships for personal retreats at the Highlights Foundation Retreat Center. Recipients will be notified in April, and will choose the workshop or retreat that meets their interests during the 2022 or 2023 program seasons. Awards will be based on the following criteria, evaluated by a scholarship committee via the application: seriousness of purpose (including time and effort devoted to craft), talent (displayed via a writing or art sample), and financial need.

Deadline is March 13, 2022.

For details, go here.

The Princess Grace Awards 2022

The Princess Grace Awards recognize both creative generators (including but not limited to theater directors, designers, choreographers, film directors, etc.) and performance-based creatives (including but not limited to actors, dancers, etc.) currently living and working in the United States. Applicants who are not U.S. citizens must have permanent work authorization from USCIS. It also offers a Playwriting Fellowship through a partnership with New Dramatists.

The award is an unrestricted cash grant of $10,000 paid directly to the artist. All applicants must be nominated by a non-profit university, organization, media arts center or previous Princess Grace Award winner.

Deadline is March 15, 2022.

For details, go here. To apply, go here.

Sustainable Arts Foundation Individual Award (for parent writers)

This year, SAF will make awards of $5,000 each to twenty artists and writers with children. Their awards offer unrestricted cash, which recipients can use as they see fit. Their selection process is focused almost entirely on the strength of the submitted portfolio.

To be eligible, the applicant must have at least one child under the age of 18. Parents of older children with a disability or special needs may also be eligible.

Artists and writers with at least one child under the age of 18 and a strong portfolio are welcome to apply.

Details here.

Groits Well Poetry Development Program

Writerz and Scribez CIC is accepting submissions for Griot’s Well – a 1 year poetry development programme for Black and ethnically diverse UK poets over the age of 25. Only one entry per applicant will be accepted. Over the course of a year the selected eight poets will be supported through a range of activities including monthly critique workshops, five masterclasses, one to one mentoring, 3 day writing retreat, and paid artist residencies. Poets must be able to commit to the duration of the project.

Deadline is February 18, 2022.

Details here.

Emergency Fund for Diverse Creatives and Educators

WNDB provides emergency grants to diverse authors, illustrators, publishing professionals, and K-12 educators who are experiencing dire financial need. They aim to bolster these marginalized groups by giving grants between $500 and $1,000 each.

Details here.

Educators Making a Difference Grants

WNDB established the Educators Making a Difference Grants for educators who believe in the importance of incorporating diverse books by diverse authors into their schools, libraries, and educational organizations. These grants will provide up to $2000 per recipient and can be used toward buying diverse titles, hosting diversity-focused student or community events, or any other project that supports diverse literature.

Details here.

The Writing Barn Scholarship

The Writing Barn has a small but budding scholarship program available for our programming. Scholarships are awarded on the following criteria: seriousness of purpose, talent and financial need. They also offer specific Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity scholarships for B.I.P.O.C, LGBTQIA+, Neurodiverse writers, and writers with disabilities.

Full or partial scholarships are awarded on a rolling basis and those being awarded scholarships will be notified as soon as possible. If you have any other questions please email info@thewritingbarn.com.

Details here.

Whole Novel Historical: A Virtual Course for Historical Novelists

The Whole Novel Workshop by the Highlights Foundation is offering writers the rare opportunity to have the entire draft of a novel (up to 80,000 words) read with written feedback provided. The course will run from April 24 – June 16, 2022. This multi- month online program focuses on the Historical Novel, with sessions dedicated to: planning for revision, writing history as a contemporary author, confronting writer’s block, submissions, and building a supportive network of writers. Scholarships are available for this workshop outside of their traditional scholarship process.

Deadline to submit is April 9, 2022.

Details here, submission here.

Miami Book Fair’s Emerging Writer Fellowships

Miami Book Fair’s Emerging Writer Fellowships program offers a life-changing experience to fresh literary voices. EWF supports developing writers who demonstrate exceptional talent and promise by providing them with time, space, and an intellectually and culturally rich artistic community. The program’s goal is to actively support these writers – who are working to complete a book-length project within a year – and help them launch their literary careers. Emerging Writer fellows are granted professional experience in arts administration, teaching creative writing, and other opportunities; a $41,000 stipend; and strong literary community support to allow for 12 glorious months of uninterrupted time to craft their works.

Send inquiries to: wbookfair@mdc.edu.

Details here.

The Joel Gay Creative Fellowship

In memorial of Joel Gay, this fellowship will support three emerging writers for one year as they develop and publish a newsletter on the Substack platform. Fellows, who will contract with Substack, will receive a $25,000.00 stipend, paid monthly from the initial publication of their newsletter, as well as up to $15,000.00 in services from Substack, including editorial support, design assistance in developing a logo for their newsletter, access to Getty Images, Substack Defender and other business support services. In addition, there will be a mentorship on craft and the business of writing for the fellowship duration.

It is open to writers from all backgrounds that do not have a book published or under any contract, with special consideration for those from underrepresented communities. To apply, submit a brief proposal detailing the newsletter you would like to create and why as well as brief summaries of five potential newsletter issues (essays).

Deadline is February 10, 2022.

For details, go here.

NmaHassan Muhammad writes from Minna, Nigeria. He’s working on a collection of Haiku poems to honor the memory of his three-year-old son Abdullateef Hamood who died in a tragic fire accident in November 2021. Two poems from the collection appeared in the January-February issue of The Writers and Readers’ Magazine.

Two New Resources to Find Literary Journals to Submit to

Emily Harstone — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 15:48:55 +0000

If you are seeking different literary journals to submit to, there are two great new places to find journals to submit to. One of these is a database, and the other is a Substack newsletter.

A database: chill subs
chill subs is a new sortable database of places one can submit to. As the name suggests, it is more informal than Duotrope and other databases, and it embraces certain aspects of contemporary internet culture much more. It also feels to me much more practical than a lot of the databases out there.

You can search by magazine or contributor name, response time, and vibe, and also if they are open for submissions and offer expedited submissions (mostly for a fee or to historically excluded communities). It also allows writers to only see publishers that allow reprints, simultaneous submissions, and free submissions. The fact that they allow you to filter out all the markets that charge submission fees, is personally the most important for me, and something that’s impossible to do with a number of other databases. You can eliminate all markets that don’t pay, as well.

One of the aspects of the site I really appreciate is the promotion and hype section. They share how active literary journals are on social media, and they make it clear which publishers continue to promote the work of authors that previously published with them. I’m also grateful that they make it clear if they are available in print or if examples of the work they’ve published is online.

Currently the only downside to the database that I can see is how limited it is. At the time of my review, it only had 129 literary journals listed, and less than half of these journals were open to submissions. However, they seem to be actively working on it, and you can suggest journals via a link at the bottom of the page.

You can learn more about chill subs here.

A Substack newsletter: Lit Mags News Roundup
Becky Tuch, the founder of the now-defunct Review Review, has started a new Substack about literary journals called Lit Mag News Roundup that does an excellent job, even for free subscribers. It is more like Authors Publish, in that it does more than just list literary journals — it publishes interviews with literary journal founders, links to recently published listings, as well as grant opportunities. For paid subscribers, there are also submission events.

You can get a free 30-day trial right now, and subscriptions cost $5 a month, or $50 a year, but I’ve been a free subscriber for three months now, and am very grateful for the amount of free knowledge that is shared. You can sign up for either version of the newsletter here.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2021 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.

She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.

Literary Journals: A Great Way to Promote Your Book

Emily Harstone — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 15:47:43 +0000

A literary journal is an online or print periodical devoted to literature. Literary journals usually publish short stories, poetry, and essays. Most focus on general literature, but there are others with more specialized interests such as science fiction, children’s literature, horror, and mystery. Some are just focused on a specific subject matter. For example, there is a literary journal that just publishes fiction about travel.

Literary journals are an often overlooked as ways to promote books. But they can be a key component. When my second book was published, I contacted every literary journal that had published one of the poems the book contained. Since ten of the poems had been previously published in literary journals, that was a substantial number of publications.

In the email that I sent to the literary journals, I informed the journal that my book had just been released and it featured a poem, or poems that they had previously published. I asked them to share this news, if they wanted to. I also included a download review copy of the book, an offer to send a print copy if need be, in case someone at their publication wanted to review it.

Because of this three separate journals published reviews of my book, and all ten featured a promotion about it on their Facebook pages. Two also sent out an email that promoted my book along with other books by previous contributors.

If what you are working on in terms of a manuscript does not lend itself to being submitted to literary journals, it could be worth writing shorter work that does and submitting it, to make these valuable connections to promote your work. Many of the literary journals that ended up promoting my second book had not previously published a poem in that book, but they had published other work by me.

It is important when it comes to short story collections and poetry collections to publish your work in literary journals before publishing it in manuscript form. This is because most journals are not interested in work that has been previously published. Also it is a lot easier to find a traditional publisher for short story collections and poetry books if your work has been previously published in literary journals.

Some literary journals also publish excerpts of novels (some are only interested in unpublished ones, others focus on published excerpts) and that can be a good way to promote your work as well.

Whenever your work is published in a literary journal they publish an accompanying 50-word bio, and that can be a good place to promote your work, also.

All of these suggestions require you to submit to literary journals. If you have never done that before it can be a little overwhelming, but once you start the process is easy and relatively painless. This article is a great place to start.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2021 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.

She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.