"I'm an acquired taste, I think," says the author of nine novels, including The Yips (Open Road, 2012). Barker has been compared to a maggot working into the corpse of fiction, a description that doesn't seem to bother her: "When something irritates you, often it's the most powerful thing," she says.
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.