Call for 2015 Entries
Tips from Amy King of VIDA—TW Contest Judge
A Contest for All Boundary Crossers
This year, we invite poets, flash writers, prose experimentalists, and other literary boundary crossers to submit work for the first Talking Writing Prize for Hybrid Poetry.
Award: $1,000 + publication in Talking Writing
Deadline: October 1, 2015
Judge: Amy King
Length: One to five pages
Submissions: Click here to enter today.
What Is Hybrid Poetry?
It's a mix of old and new, of traditional and experimental approaches to poetic form. Prose poetry is a hybrid; flash fiction or nonfiction can have the compressed lyricism of poetry. Contest entrants are encouraged to cross literary lines, combining poetry with other genres like memoir, fiction, dramatic monologue, essay writing, news, cartoons and other graphics, visual collage, even tweeting.
But TW's emphasis on hybrid writing is not just a matter of literary aesthetics. We also embrace hybrid experience and identity—traveling between cultures, existing as a minority among a racial or ethnic majority, living as more than one gender, and the many other ways a writer mashes up the concept of self.
We're pleased that poet, essayist, and teacher Amy King, who recently won the 2015 Women's National Book Association Award for her efforts on behalf of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, will bring her hybrid spark to selecting a winner. Her four books of poetry include I Want to Make You Safe and Slaves to Do These Things. She was also just named a co-winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize for The Missing Museum.
Amy's tips for going hybrid:
I love fiction and creative nonfiction and derive much of my aesthetic and stylistic pleasures from such genres, just as I do poetry. Laura Riding Jackson and Gary Lutz leap to mind as writers whose short stories read like poems. Zora Neale Hurston's folktales are a penetrating poetics. Gertrude Stein's portraits pluralize people for the page. Nature loves hybridity; species survive and become because of such poetry.
In other words, be subversive—and have fun. Submit work that's intellectually adventurous, personal, weird, magical, risky, and engaging to readers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is there another prize category this year?
A: No. We are only holding one contest this year with a larger cash award.
Q: Do entries that don't win ever get published in TW?
A: Yes. All entries are reviewed by Talking Writing editors for publication in the magazine. Sometimes, the contest judge will also choose a finalist or two in addition to the winner, and we publish work by finalists.
Q: Where will I find more information about TW's annual contests?
A: Go to the TW Contests page or to Talking Writing at Submittable.
Q: Why does TW run writing contests every year?
A: To spotlight wonderful digital literature and first-person journalism—and to support Talking Writing. TW is an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit run by dedicated volunteer editors and board members. Your contest submissions allow them to continue publishing a very unusual digital journal. Thank you!
Art Information
- The detail above is from Joris Hoefnagel’s Guide to the Construction of Letters (circa 1595); public domain. Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program.
