SewaneeLetters.com

Attention English teachers! Meg alerted me to the following opportunity for young writers of Creative Nonfiction:

NCTE/Norman Mailer Writing Award

The Norman Mailer Writers Colony and the National Council of Teachers of English will jointly sponsor the 2010 Norman Mailer High School and College Writing Awards.

Writing Category:  Creative Nonfiction
Norman Mailer produced extraordinary works in many genres, including the category of this year’s award: creative nonfiction. Students may submit work in any of the many subgenres of creative nonfiction: memoir or autobiography, essay, literary journalism, profiles of people or places, and so on. Whatever its type, the best work will be true material presented with compelling literary merit.

Winners
One winner in each category will receive a cash award and will be an honored guest at the Colony’s National Award Ceremony in New York City on October 19, 2010. Winners will be notified by mid-September.

You can learn more about the competition here. If for those of us who are neither teachers or high school/college writers, check out the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown, MA.

Here’s a great sounding opportunity from John Grammer:

Finally, after a winless football season, a competition in which Sewanee has a chance. I’m talking about the “MFA Program-Off” sponsored by “Creative Nonfiction” magazine. It’s an essay contest, in (obviously) Creative Nonfiction, for students in any MFA program. The prizes are publication in the magazine, a reading at the Associated Writing Programs Conference in Denver this spring, and (above all) “bragging rights” for the program whose student wins

.If–I mean, when–we win, naturally we’ll be sending the School of Letters Marching Band and Flag Corps to Denver to help the winner celebrate. Gimme an “S”! (”ESSSSS!”) Gimme an “O”….

Details are at this site.

I hope some of us will give this a try.