While funding for the arts remains an uphill battle for universities, literary nonprofits, independent presses, and literary magazines, those organizations are still giving a significant amount of money to writers annually through writing contests. This past year was no exception. In the six issues published in 2012, Poets & Writers Magazine’s Grants & Awards section, the editorial feature announcing both contest deadlines and recent winners, listed 844 winning poets, writers, and translators. Together, they received a total of $9,595,066—an increase of nearly $3 million compared with our last annual count, published ten years ago. The charts below take a closer look at the numbers behind Grants & Awards.
Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.