WinningWriters.com

Regarding the Winning Writers website, for a while I took only their free email newsletter listing poetry contests without entry fees. Curious, and so you don't have to, and so I have the info for the people who ask me, I finally subscribed to their Poetry Contest Insider, for which I pay $9.95 per quarter. This admits me to a well-organized database of more than 750(!) U.S. and U.K. poetry contests, both free and with entry fees.

Winning Writers sponsors its own 2 poetry contests, and "assists" in 3 more, all prominently offering top prizes in the unusually high and attractive $1500-$2000 range, and judged by their staff. One contest has no entry fee. The others do. As a premium subscriber I am permitted to see the prizewinning poems and the honorable mention poems. They tend to be lengthy and craft-free, in the way beginning poets' works are. And now I have a better sense of how the site and its staff support themselves, and who supports them: thousands of poets artificially hungry for artificial prizes.

Titles for Contest Entries

"Bake Sale" was the poem's working title; it's about bake sales. I wanted to enter it in a contest, but knew a title such as "Bake Sale" was a liability. That's because contests are run by organizations that like to appear serious, having boards and grantors to answer to. They' re reluctant to announce that a trivial-sounding book or poem -- good or not -- has taken their prize. Therefore, at great psychic expense to myself (just kidding), I sought another title that might sound better in a list of winners, finally settling on the title "Homemade."

I retitled another poem, "Soda in Bottles," as "Delight."

I retitled "Aunt Emily" as "Pure as the Driven."

You see the kind of thing I'm getting at.

Prize: $2500 and Publication in Esquire

Esquire
Short Story Contest
A prize of $2,500 and publication in Esquire will be given for a short story with the title “Twenty-Ten,” “An Insurrection,” or “Never, Ever Bring This Up Again.” The fiction editors will judge. Using the electronic submission system, submit a story of up to 4,000 words by August 1. There is no entry fee. Visit the Web site for complete guidelines.
Esquire, Short Story Contest, Hearst Communications, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019. Camille Perri,
Fiction Editor.
fictioneditor@hearst.com
www.esquire.com/fiction/fiction-contest

AND NO ENTRY FEE!