Birmingham Writers’ Group

Theme

Poetry is a universal form of language hobnobbing with other souls and minds. It is means to understand our feelings and to find our place in the universe. Poetry is a divine antidote to our inner upheaval and is a medium of peace in itself. The goal of anthology is to display the greatest contemporary poems wrapped up in one book. The title is self-explanatory and will showcase the greatest single poem of the poet being featured i.e. your poem that has been best appreciated or adjudged by the readers, reviewers, critics, social media or journals etc.  It is also self-revealing that one cannot submit more than one poem and each poet will be evenly and equally represented. It is also evident that such poem would mostly be previously published. If you think that your unpublished or freshly composed poem can be your magnum opus you can submit it as well. It is in those aforementioned senses we use the term ‘Universal Oneness’ in the subtitle.

Submission Requirements

• Send only one poem, of no more than 50 lines at magnumopuspoem@gmail.com.Poem should originally be written in English. No translation, please.
• Include a bio in maximum 100 words.
• Submission of more than one poem shall be rejected without intimation.
• Save MS word file with your name, paste your bio, email id and poem into it. Send it as an email attachment.

Further details on the website

Submission window is open until 30th November for:

• Lost Gods
• Forgotten Sidekicks
• Unexpected Heroines

Submissions should be (ideally) between 4-7,000 words.

Payment will be £15 per story and a physical copy of the final anthology for which the story appears

More details here

The Emma Press has launched a call for poems about insects, for a children’s anthology to be edited by Fran Long and Dr Isabel Galleymore.

The call opens on the 14th August 2018 and ends on 5th October 2018.

The anthology will be part of the publisher’s continuing series of themed anthologies of poetry for children.

Dr Isabel Galleymore is an award-winning writer and lecturer at the University of Birmingham. Her poems, which explore ecology and our human place within it, have been published in a number of PRESS RELEASE For immediate release magazines in the UK and US, whilst her first collection, Significant Other, is forthcoming from Carcanet in 2019. In 2016, Isabel’s curiosity for animals took her to the Amazon Rainforest where she spent a month as a poet-in-residence and encountered howler monkeys, caiman, pink-toed tarantulas and lots and lots of mosquitos. Long says: ‘With literacy a high priority on the primary curriculum, it is vital to ensure that there are quality resources to support creative cross curriculum delivery. Poems that are factually and scientifically correct are essential, and a fantastic way to embed key scientific vocabulary. All mention of bugs is banned! Enjoy delving deeper into the fascinating world of insects: habitats, characteristics, anatomy (exoskeletons, invertebrates), names (check out famous scientist Carl Linnaeus), classifying, food sources (food chains), how living things depend upon each other, superpowers, life cycles, dangers they are facing, extinction, similarities and differences, how they have changed over time (peppered moth). Be insect champions!’ Galleymore says: ‘While big animals like pandas and dolphins get a lot of attention, the smaller creatures of this world often get overlooked despite the fact that they play a crucial role in the ecosystem. How can we begin to write poems about a few of the 950,000 species of insect currently said to live on Earth? What similarities and differences can we find between these weird and wonderful beings and ourselves? To engage with these inhabitants, we need to explore scientific fact about insect bodies and behaviour, but we also need to engage our empathy and our imagination.’

Poets are invited to send in up to 3 poems, which should be suitable for readers aged 8+.

The submissions guidelines are available on the publisher’s website: https://theemmapress.com/about/submissions/

Awarded by the University Centre Grimsby, the annual Hammond House Literary Prizes are open for submissions.

The theme, entry fees and submission deadline are the same across all three categories.

See website for details

David Bassett, a wildlife writer from Hampshire, UK is collating flash fiction pieces to form an anthology based on wildlife issues entitled ‘Wild Voices’.

When completed, all proceeds of this anthology will be donated to wildlife charities in order to raise money for threatened species, their protectors and the fight against the extinction.

All are invited to get involved and submit pieces of writing, contributing to a great cause.

See the link for more details:

https://www.facebook.com/Wild-Voices-an-anthology-on-wildlife-issues-220912515127041/

An open submission call for stories featuring a robot dinosaur.

Stories must be 750-1200 words, and there is payment of $60

See the website for more details

The Emma Press is launching a call for ‘night-time stories’ for their debut anthology of short fiction.

The call opens on 30th May 2018 and it ends on 3rd August 2018.
Writers are invited to send in up to 2 short stories of up to 2250 words each to be considered for the anthology.

This will be The Emma Press’s first short fiction anthology. It will be edited by Yen-Yen Lu, a member of the Emma Press core team.

Find out more here: https://theemmapress.com/2018/05/call-for-night-time-stories/

Tor.com Publishing are open to unsolicited novella submissions! Starting May 1, 2018, Lee Harris, Carl Engle-Laird, and Ruoxi Chen will be reading and evaluating original novellas submitted by authors to https://tor.moksha.io/publication/tornovellas. You can find full guidelines here, and we highly recommend you read the guidelines before submitting. We will be open for two weeks beginning on May 1 around 9:00 AM EST (UTC-1:00) and ending on May 15 9:00 AM EST (UTC-1:00).

This open period is intended for authors who have completed works ready or close to ready for submission. We will reopen slush a second time in July 2018 for authors who are actively working on (or beginning) something that would fit our list. In other words, don’t panic if you’re not ready to submit in May! We would rather see a polished novella in July than a rushed one in May.

Look at the website for more details

We are pleased to announce that the Winchester Poetry Prize is now open for entries for the 2018 prize.
The prize will be judged by Liz Berry who will read all the entries and will be present the prizes to winners at the prize-giving event at the Winchester Poetry Festival on Saturday 6 October 2018.

First prize will be £1000, second prize £500 and third prize £250.
Long-listed poets will be invited to read at the special prize-giving event in Winchester at which the winners will be announced. Winning and commended poems will also be published in a competition anthology to be launched on the day.
Festival chair, Stephen Boyce said: “We’ve been exceptionally pleased with the response to the Winchester Poetry Prize. It’s very rewarding to receive so many thoughtful, well-crafted and original poems, and we enjoy all the more celebrating the poets’ work at our prize-giving reading and in our anthology. I am delighted that Liz Berry, who made such an impact at the 2014 festival, has agreed to be our judge for 2018.”

The competition is open to anyone aged 16 or over and entries may be on any subject in any form or style and no longer than 40 lines. Entry fee is £5 for the first poem and £4 for each subsequent entry.

Closing date is 31 July 2018. Full details of how to enter are on the Winchester Poetry Festival website.

Amazon Announces Return of Literary Prize, The Kindle UK Storyteller Award

Winning author to receive £20,000 cash prize and be recognised at central London award ceremony later this year

After the success of the first award in 2017 with thousands of entries, the Kindle UK Storyteller Award returns for its second year

London – 10th April 2018 – Amazon UK today announced The Kindle Storyteller Award 2018, a literary prize recognising outstanding work by authors, independent of genre around the country. The prize is open to all authors who publish their book through Kindle Direct Publishing on Amazon.co.uk from 1st May 2018 to 31st August 2018.

Readers will play a significant role in the competition with the award shortlist compiled based on a number of factors that measure customer interest in the titles, followed by an esteemed panel of judges made up of book and publishing industry experts who will select the Kindle Storyteller 2018 winner.

The prize will be announced at a central London ceremony in the Autumn, with the winning author awarded a cash prize of £20,000 and a marketing campaign to support the book on Amazon.co.uk as well as the opportunity to have their book translated for international sales.

Claire Johnson, Head of Kindle Content, Amazon UK said, ‘we are delighted to bring back the Kindle Storyteller Award for a second year. Our aim is to encourage aspiring authors and those who have already been published, to start writing and release their first – or next – story. Publishing a book has never been easier’.

Alessio Santarelli, Director of Kindle Content EU, added ‘this award encourages people to be creative and pursue their passion. Great books deserve to be celebrated and that’s what we want to do with the Kindle Storyteller competition’.

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a fast, free and easy way for authors to keep control and publish their books in print and digital to a global audience, and receive up to 70% royalties on their work. On any given day, up to 25% of the Top 100 books on the Kindle store are published through KDP.

David Leadbeater, the winner of the 2017 UK Kindle Storyteller Award said, ‘Winning the 2017 Storyteller Award has been a dream, and its enabled me to go further in my career than I ever thought possible, taking my readers along with me. When I started publishing independently in 2011, Kindle Direct Publishing changed my life. I can’t wait to see what tales and stories authors come up with for this year’s competition’.

Claire Allfree, the Metro’s Literary Editor added, ‘My favourite thing about this prize is the diversity of literary genres and authors, as I witnessed whilst on the judging panel this year. I’m excited to read the shortlist again and to see what brilliant and talented writers from across the country submit again’.

The Kindle Storyteller prize is open to submissions of new English language books from eligible authors and genres, and entries must be submitted using Kindle Direct Publishing. Titles must be previously unpublished, with a minimum of 24 pages in paperback. Readers can access all titles entered into the prize in print or in the Kindle store on any device with the free Kindle app for iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, PC and Mac, and on Kindle e-readers and Fire Tablets.

For the Kindle Storyteller Award, at least five books from all submissions will be selected for the shortlist. The shortlist is ultimately chosen by the readers themselves, as positive reviews are a focal point of the shortlisting process. The judging panel will then select a winner.

The Kindle Storyteller Award 2018 opens for entries on 1st May 2018, and titles must be entered into the KDP Select programme and remain there for the duration of the competition. For further information authors can visit www.amazon.co.uk/storyteller.