The January 2025 edition of "Get Submitting" is a monthly hand-curated list of the top five contests, grants, scholarships, submission calls, and awards. We try to prioritize opportunities that are at least one of the following: open to all genres, local, free to apply, and/or committed to celebrating and supporting writers from historically marginalized communities. We do the research, so you have more time for what matters: the writing.

Contests & Awards

The Big Moose Prize | The Black Lawrence Press

Fee: $28; Award: $1,000; Deadline: January 31st

Each year Black Lawrence Press will award The Big Moose Prize for an unpublished novel. The prize is open to new, emerging, and established writers. The Big Moose Prize is open to traditional novels as well as novels-in-stories, novels-in-poems, and other hybrid forms that contain within them the spirit of a novel. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

The Iowa Review Awards | The Iowa Review

Fee: $20; Award: $1,500 & first runners-up receive $750; Deadline: January 31st

Each January since 2003, The Iowa Review has invited submissions to The Iowa Review Awards, a writing contest in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Judges for the 2025 Awards are Amy Hempel (fiction), Julietta Singh (nonfiction), and Brandon Shimoda (poetry). Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Fellowships & Residencies

Emerging Voices Fellowship | PEN America

Fee: $25; Honorarium: $1,500 & mentorship; Deadline: January 31st

The Emerging Voices Fellowship provides a virtual five-month immersive mentorship program for early-career writers from communities that are traditionally underrepresented in the publishing world. The program is committed to cultivating the careers of Black writers, and serves writers who identify as Indigenous, persons of color, LGBTQ+, immigrants, writers with disabilities, and those living outside of urban centers. Through curated one-on-one mentorship and introductions to editors, agents, and publishers, in addition to workshops on editing, marketing, and creating a platform, the five-month fellowship nurtures creative community, provides a professional skill-set, and demystifies the path to publication—with the ultimate goal of diversifying the publishing and media industries. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Submissions

Boston Art Review | Open Call to Writers for the Un-monument Partnership

Fee: $0; Deadline: January 7th

For the years 2024 through 2026, the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture (MOAC) received a major grant from the Mellon Foundation to bring free public art installations and programming to the City of Boston that grapple with these questions. Some projects and programs are being presented through partnerships with five cultural organizations that are serving as curators, while others are being supported through direct grants from the City to create new, temporary public art.

Boston Art Review is pleased to be serving as an Un-monument partner by providing opportunities for writers to research, write, and publish work about the projects and ideas that are being developed through the Un-monument initiative. In 2025, Boston Art Review will publish a series of texts that will serve as a compendium to the Un-monument projects. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Tell-All Boston | Open Submission Call

Fee: $0; Deadline: January 26th

Tell-All Boston is seeking nonfiction pieces that evoke a time, place, person or experience that defines you. In other words: How did you become who you are? Selected writers will read their work alongside Theresa Okokon, author of the new memoir in essays, Who I Always Was, at our upcoming February event. See more details here.