Winter 2012 Writing Contest

Win $100, One of Sheila Bender’s Books & a Phone Consult w/ Sheila

Send us your unpublished prose of up to six double-spaced pages on any topic or up to four of your poems (previously unpublished) on any topic. Multiple submissions are okay but you must notify us if your work is accepted.

Our reading period is December 15 to March 15. Winners will be announced by April 15th.

  • The first-place winner will receive $100, a book of their choice by Sheila Bender, and a 30-minute phone consult with her on up to five poems or on any piece of writing up to 3750 words.
  • The second place winner will receive $50 dollars, a book of their choice by Sheila Bender, and a 30-minute consult on up to 3750 words of prose or on up to 5 poems.
  • The third place winner will receive  a book of their choice by Sheila Bender and a30-minute consult on up to 3750 words of prose or on up to 5 poems.
  • Ten runners up will receive Sheila Bender’s detailed response to the work they submitted
  • First, second and third place winners will be published as Writing It Real articles with the permission of the authors.

Prepare your entries and enter soon!

The contest fee for nonmembers includes a $35 Courier level year’s membership to Writing It Real, plus the contest reading fee of $5. Please use the Add to Cart button below to  join now. If you are already a member, please login now to pay the $5 reading fee and make your contest submission.  After you submit your payment, you will be routed to the contest submission form.

If you have questions, email us;  be sure your submission is attached as a double-spaced Word document. We will not be able to read submissions that are in another file type. If you prefer, send your double-spaced manuscript and a check to 394 Colman Drive, Port Townsend, WA 98368. Either way, include a cover letter with your name, address, email address and phone number as well as the name of your submitted pieces. Do not put your name on the submission itself.

Need some encouragement?

“At the core of the personal essay,” Philip Lopate writes, “is the supposition that there is a certain unity to human experience.” As essayists and, to my mind, poets, in writing about ourselves and our experiences, we are in some way talking about everyone. It is not only our experience that matters, but our interest in sharing it that moves others.

Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, put it this way in his acceptance speech, “All true literature rises form this childish, hopeful certainty that we resemble one another.”

As personal essayists and as poets, we work very hard to catapult ourselves, via our words, into new territory. When we are done, the beautiful web of our thinking and associations glistens. It is as if we are working toward the creation of love and compassion even when we are writing of horrors. The Dalai Lama says that love and compassion are not luxuries but necessities because without them we lose our humanity. For those of us who write, words on the page are our way of moving toward those necessities.

To judge a personal essay contest means first to be an interested reader, honoring that I am being let in on all manner of human experience. For me, this work is not only pleasurable, but elicits my gratitude.

— Sheila Bender