Subtropics Seeks Best Literary Fiction, Essays, and Poetry

Submit to Subtropics

Subtropics seeks to publish the best literary fiction, essays, and poetry being written today, both by established and emerging authors. We will consider works of fiction of any length, from short shorts to novellas and self-contained novel excerpts. We give the same latitude to essays. We appreciate work in translation and, from time to time, republish important and compelling stories, essays, and poems that have lapsed out of print.

For stories and essays, Subtropics pays a flat fee of $1,000 ($500 for a short short) for North American first serial rights. Poets are paid $100 per poem. Subtropics pays upon acceptance for prose; for poetry, we pay after the publication of the issue preceding the one in which the author’s work will appear.

Direct fiction submissions to David Leavitt, essays to David Leavitt or Mark Mitchell, and poetry to Sidney Wade.

Submit in hard copy by mail. Include a short cover letter with your contact information. Please include your contact information on the submission as well. We respond exclusively by e-mail. Manuscripts cannot be returned under any circumstances.

We do not accept simultaneous submissions in poetry. While we will accept simultaneous submissions in fiction, please note, when making your submission, that we respond much faster than do most journals.

Please read an issue of the magazine before you send us your work in order to get a feel for the kind of writing we publish. You’ll see that we don’t publish science fiction, fantasy, genre fiction, or anything with talking animals.

Submissions are accepted from August 31 to May 1. PLEASE NOTE: Subtropics will not be considering prose submissions between January 1 and August 31, 2009. We will resume reading prose in September 2009.

Some Thoughts from the Editors

• We ask that you submit only one story at a time, and wait until you have heard from us before sending more. Once you have received a reply from us, please wait at least one month before sending another submission.
• Please send no more than five poems in any one batch.
• We try to respond as quickly as possible to submissions, and for this reason are not able to write personal replies.
• A preponderance of the stories coming our way are written in first-person present tense; we are starting to grow weary of this perspective. Please keep this in mind.
• We are skeptical of the second person, though willing to be persuaded.
• More thoughts to come as they occur to us.

Thank you for your interest in Subtropics.

Subtropics
P.O. Box 112075
4008 Turlington Hall
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-2075

Writers Digest Short Story Competition: Tenth Annual Short Story Contest

The Writer's Digest 10th Annual Short Short Story Competition

We're looking for fiction that's bold, brilliant...but brief. Send us your best in 1,500 words or fewer.

But don't be too long about it—the deadline is Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

PRIZES
First Place: $3,000
Second Place: $1,500
Third Place: $500
Fourth Through Tenth Place: $100
Eleventh Through Twenty-Fifth Place: $50 gift certificate for Writer's Digest Books

Science Fiction Writing Contest: Short, Micro, or Flash Fiction

Science Fiction - What if?

Imagine what if? and so you ask yourself, what if... what? Well you tell us! We want science fiction short fiction (micro, flash or short stories) that tell us a science fiction story around the idea what if. Where ever you take it, take it interesting! The word limit is 5,000 words.

Schedule: Submission ONLY accepted between June 1, 2008 - August 31, 2009. Winners will be selected by September 30, 2009

Prizes: Winning stories will be paid $50.00, Second place $25.00, Third Place $10.00. The top stories will be published in a science fiction collection to be published in October of 2009. All accepted entries will receive an ebook version of the final collection.

Entry Fee: FREE!

Find more on the contest and submission here.

How Talent Is Grown: New Book Proposes Interesting Theory On Talent

The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.

Where does extraordinary talent come from? Daniel Coyle comes up with an intriguing answer in this highly readable account of the neuroscience of skill and talent.

Though popular perception has often regarded talent as something otherworldly — a gift from a higher power, perhaps, and certainly nothing that anyone could do anything about — in fact, according to modern neuroscience, talent is much more mundane, being nothing more than the wiring of chains of neural circuits inside the brain.

According to the most-recent theories of talent presented by Coyle, it all has to do with myelin, the substance that insulates the synaptic connections among the neurons. Every human skill is the result of the formation of such synaptic chains of nerve fibers. When brain circuits are fired the right way, myelin is generated, insulating those connections, making the signal flowing through them clearer, stronger, faster.

According to Coyle, the degree of this insulation is what is responsible for talent — the more time and energy you put into the right practice, the more myelin is deposited on those neural circuits associated with that practice, the more talent you achieve. It is as if the brain builds more broadband for those circuits that are activated in the right way. The right way is that of deep practice, one of the three key ingredients responsible for the creation of the neural architecture of talent. The other two identified by Coyle are ignition and master coaching.

Read more of the review here, or get a copy of The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.

Airedale Writers’ Circle Announces Writing Competition

Airedale Writers’ Circle has launched its adult open writing competition.

Anyone aged 14 or over is invited to submit manuscripts on a theme of their choice.

There are three categories — short stories up to 1,500 words; poems up to 40 lines and articles up to 1,000 words.

Entrants can make as many submissions as they wish — there is a £3.50 fee for the first entry and £2.50 for subsequent entries. Work must be original and not have been published, read on radio or performed on TV or stage.

A £50 prize will be awarded in each category and the Airedale Writers’ Circle Challenge Cup will be presented to the best overall entry from a circle member.

The name of this year’s judge is yet to be announced.

The closing date for entries is September 8 but submissions sent by post will be accepted later if postmarked by that date.

Winners will be announced and the challenge cup presented at the circle’s Christmas party, on December 8.

Entry forms — together with conditions for submission — can be obtained from Keighley, Skipton, Bingley and Ilkley libraries; Reids Bookshop, in Keighley, or circle secretary Maureen O’Hara, at 20 Glenhurst Avenue, Park Lane, Keighley BD21 4RJ, phone 01535 603119.

Minnesota Magazine Fiction Contest: Call for Entries

Minnesota Magazine Fiction Contest
http://www.alumni.umn.edu/fiction.html

Our 11th-annual fiction contest is now accepting submissions. Charles Baxter, professor of creative writing at the University of Minnesota and author of National Book Award-finalist The Feast of Love, will judge the finalists.

Please read the directions below for submitting entries.

How to enter:
• All University of Minnesota alumni and students are eligible to enter.

• Submit a double-spaced, typed manuscript, 3,000 words or fewer. Submissions must not have been previously published. Past winners of this contest must wait five years before entering again. Poetry, children's stories, plays, and screenplays are not eligible.

• Include a cover sheet that bears your name, year of graduation (or years of attending the University), day and evening phone numbers, address, story title, and word count of the manuscript. To ensure anonymity, please do not put your name on the manuscript itself. Manuscripts will not be returned.

The winner will receive $2,000, and the winning story will be published in the summer 2010 issue of Minnesota magazine and on the magazine's Web site. The editors reserve the right not to name a winner.

Submissions must be postmarked by February 8, 2010.

Send to:
Minnesota Magazine Fiction Contest
University of Minnesota Alumni Association
McNamara Alumni Center
200 Oak St. SE, Suite 200
Minneapolis, MN 55455-2040

Pacific Writers Institute American Title Short Story Contest

PWI's American Title Short Story Contest

Writing instructors everywhere tell us how important it is to get those first couple sentences right. If you want a reader to keep reading, you've got to get his/her interest, "set that hook," as they say.

However, for this contest we at Pacific Writer's Institute want to also point out how very important it is to get your title right! Your title has to interest, amuse, or draw in your reader before he/she even starts reading the story. It has to tickle their curiosity bone.

So we came up with PWI's American Title short story contest.

Guidelines:

As usual our judges will use a number score to judge the entries, and the title will get up to ten points, so make it good. Of course, the story has to be good as well if it's to get to the finals. Clean copy, (always keep a copy for yourself), double space, easy to read font, white paper only. 1200 word maximum for Adult Category. 1000 for Children's Category.

Mail entries to: Pacific Writer's Institute, 60894 Willow Creek Loop, Bend, Oregon 97702. Entry fee is $15 for Adult Stories (no gratuitous sex please), $10 for Children's Stories. Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope. Deadline postmark is July 4. In cases of ties earliest postmark wins. You must have a U.S.A. address to enter this contest.

Cash prize for first place winner, amount to be determined by number of entries. Other prizes include PWI Tuition Credits, PWI Plaques, PWI Certificates and PWI Tee-Shirts.

Excellent Psycho-Medical Novel: Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen

Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel

In one of his best-known jokes (anti-joke is closer to it), the unsmiling comedian Steven Wright says, in a monotone: “I woke up one day and everything in the apartment had been stolen and replaced with an exact replica. I said to my roommate, ‘Can you believe this? Everything in the apartment has been stolen and replaced with an exact replica.’ He said, ‘Do I know you?’ ” This existential conundrum — the question of what makes an original different from a copy (and how anyone can prove that he is who he thinks he is once the matter is called into doubt) — is both the springboard and the ensuing spring of Atmospheric Disturbances, a brainy, whimsical, emotionally contained first novel by Rivka Galchen, a young M.D. turned M.F.A.

Galchen’s narrator, a fussy 51-year-old psychiatrist named Leo Liebenstein, believes that his beautiful, much-younger Argentine wife, Rema, has been replaced by a “doppelgänger,” a “simulacrum,” an “impostress,” an “ersatz” spouse. “Last December,” Leo explains, “a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife.” Like his wife, the newcomer has the same “wrinkly boots,” the same Argentine accent with “the halos around the vowels,” the “same baby blue coat with jumbo charcoal buttons, same tucking behind ears of dyed corn silk blond hair. Same bangs cut straight across like on those dolls done up in native costumes that live their whole lives in plastic cases held up by a metal wire around the waist.” The idea that this cockatiel of a woman could not be the Rema in question is absurd, but the evidence of Leo’s eyes and ears doesn’t persuade him. “Same everything, but it wasn’t Rema,” he maintains. “It was just a feeling, that’s how I knew.”

So far, this could be farce, trompe l’oeil, Ionesco, Magritte. But the story quickly changes course. Seeking a logical explanation for the presence of the interloper (it can’t be a case of “Rema-based psychosis,” he conveniently concludes), Leo delves into the research of a quasi-paranormal scientific association called the Royal Academy of Meteorology, in particular the publications of a man named Tzvi Gal-Chen, whose work on Doppler radar, “initial value problems” and “atmospheric modeling” may contain the key to the “real” Rema’s disappearance. Tzvi Gal-Chen has his drawbacks: for one thing, he appears to be dead; for another, the “fake” Rema may be impersonating him; but at least he’s accessible by e-mail. Also, Gal-Chen once presented a scientific paper in Buenos Aires, and Rema was born there. Could these two random occurrences be related? Leo hops a plane to Argentina to find out, using Gal-Chen’s research on retrieving “thermodynamic variables from within deep convective clouds” to guide his own blundering “attempts at retrieval” of the “real” Rema. No, this is not chick lit.

Read the rest of the review here, or get a copy of Atmospheric Disturbances now!

Writers Circle of Durham Region Wicked Words Contest

When a writing contest deadline is midnight on Halloween, one shouldn't be surprised that the theme is Wicked Words.

But, as a Writers' Circle of Durham Region press release points out, the word 'wicked' doesn't only mean an evil nature or action. It also means playful, mischievous and occasionally malicious, severe and worrying, really offensive and nasty and, of course, something that's really great, as in, 'your new skateboard is wicked, man!'

Take your pick, as the theme of the Wicked Words contest encompasses them all.

The WCDR's open genre, open form prose competition welcomes works of fiction and non-fiction, which will be judged on their demonstration of good writing and power to move the judges.

On the line is a $500 first prize and publication in the arts' magazine Surfacing and the Wicked Words anthology. Second prize is worth $250 and it, and selected honourable mentions, will also appear in Wicked Words. All of the published works earn their writers $25 and every writer who enters the contest will receive written feedback.

The maximum word count is 1,500 and the entry fee is $20 ($25 for international entries). Online entries and secure payment by PayPal are requested. Or mail your entry along with a cheque or money order to Wicked Words, The Writers' Circle of Durham Region, Bayly Postal Outlet, PO Box 14558, 75 Bayly St. W., Ajax, ON, L1S 7K7.

Again, the deadline is midnight on Oct. 31.

To learn more and enter, visit www.wcdr.org.

Romeo and Juliet Re-Imagined as a Swiss Fable: Classic Must Read

A Village Romeo and Juliet (Swiss-German Classics)

Gottfried Keller, better known for his novel Green Henry (1855), is one of Switzerland’s most celebrated 19th century writers. In A Village Romeo and Juliet, an affecting novel written in reply to a newspaper article Keller read about the suicide of a young couple, a timeless love story is reinterpreted into a psychological portrait of rural Swiss life.

Romeo and Juliet Re-Imagined as a Swiss Fable

Everyone knows the story of Shakespeare’s most famous star-crossed lovers. Here, in an impeccable translation by Ronald Taylor, Gottfried Keller takes these legendary characters and places them inside a small village in Switzerland. But Keller doesn’t simply cast Shakespeare in a new setting, he removes any notion of accidental death to explore the folly and legacy of consuming hatred.

Keller uses what begins as a small land dispute between neighboring farmers to weave a fairytale-esque narrative of how quickly an honest man can become corrupted, and how that corruption dirties even the purest of emotions. This is a story of anger gone horribly wrong, of moral decay and the ruinous outcome of such hard-heartedness.

Gottfried Keller’s Realism in A Village Romeo and Juliet

Using Marti and Manz, the feuding farmers, and their children Sali and Vrenchen as his templates, Keller attempts to portray rural Swiss life in accurate, minute detail. This unswerving focus on depicting life and character “as it truly is” – a hallmark of 19th century realism – makes A Village Romeo and Juliet both a historical document and a vivid story.

Keller’s brand of realism is startlingly lyrical, smoothing away what amounts to a harsh criticism of the psychology of village life. His story focuses on the darker qualities of the human soul and doesn’t offer much in hopes of redemption, but the language he employs to bring the reader through these disheartening assertions is quite poetic.

This lyricism is what provides a connection between the story’s realist preoccupations and its fairytale aesthetic – a truly unique combination.

Read more of the review here, or get a copy A Village Romeo and Juliet now!

Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Dark Fantasy Writing Contest

Writers of the Future Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Dark Fantasy Contest

1. No entry fee is required, and all rights in the story remain the property of the author. All types of science fiction, fantasy and dark fantasy are welcome.

2. All entries must be original works, in English. Plagiarism, which includes the use of third-party poetry, song lyrics, characters or another person's universe, without written permission will result in disqualification. Excessive violence or sex, determined by the judges, will result in disqualification. Entries may not have been previously published in professional media.

3. To be eligible, entries must be works of prose, up to 17,000 words in length. We regret we cannot consider poetry, or works intended for children.

4. The Contest is open only to those who have not had professionally published a novel or short novel, or more than one novelette, or more than three short stories, in any medium. Professional publication is deemed to be payment, and at least 5,000 copies, or 5,000 hits.

5. Entries must be typewritten or a computer printout in black ink on white paper, double spaced, with numbered pages. All other formats will be disqualified. Each entry must have a cover page with the title of the work, the author’s name, address, telephone number, email address and an approximate word count. Every subsequent page must carry the title and a page number, but the author's name must be deleted to facilitate fair judging.

6. Manuscripts will be returned after judging only if the author has provided return postage on a self addressed envelope. If the author does not wish return of the manuscript, a #10 (business size) self-addressed, stamped envelope (or valid email address) must be included with the entry in order to receive judging results.

7. We accept only entries for which no delivery signature is required by us to receive them.

8. There shall be three cash prizes in each quarter: a First Prize of $1,000, a Second Prize of $750, and a Third Prize of $500, in U.S. dollars or the recipient's locally equivalent amount. In addition, at the end of the year the four First Place winners will have their entries rejudged, and a Grand Prize winner shall be determined and receive an additional $5,000. All winners will also receive trophies or certificates.

9. The Contest has four quarters, beginning on October 1, January 1, April 1 and July 1. The year will end on September 30. To be eligible for judging in its quarter, an entry must be postmarked no later than midnight on the last day of the quarter.

10. Each entrant may submit only one manuscript per quarter. Winners are ineligible to make further entries in the contest.

11. All entries for each quarter are final. No revisions are accepted.

12. Entries will be judged by professional authors. The decisions of the judges are entirely their own, and are final.

13. Winners in each quarter will be individually notified of the results by mail.

14. This contest is void where prohibited by law.

Find out more on the Writers of the Future website.