Contests, prizes and periodicals, and why you shouldn't get discouraged by rejection

You’ve assembled your best work – maybe even written a brand new piece, and you feel pretty confident about it.

You mail it off with high hopes; certain it will wow the judges and could very well earn the top prize in the competition.

A few weeks pass, and you receive a big envelope in the mail. Enclosed? A big fat rejection letter, thanking you for your submission but telling you – in language somewhat more formal – that you stuff just wasn’t good enough this time around.

You are devastated, and feel discouraged from ever submitting a piece of your heart and soul to a writing competition ever again. What do they know, anyway, right?

Wrong. I did not paint this unfortunate – but extremely common – scenario in efforts to even remotely discourage anyone from applying to writing competitions.

Anyone who can call themselves a writer has at one time received their share of rejection letters. In fact, it is those who take the plunge and really force themselves to apply that many consider to be true writers; which means that while you shouldn’t be discouraged by a rejection letter, you should allow yourself to see past it – and learn from it.

With this in mind, I have compiled a list of the top local and national periodical contests open to everyone – and I encourage everyone to apply.

• The Fiddlehead: Canada’s longest running literary journal published four times a year at the University of New Brunswick sponsors an annual writing contest, with a total of $5000 in prize money to be won along with the chance to appear in The Fiddlehead spring 2014 issue.
• The Writers Federation of New Brunswick: The WFNB hosts an annual literary competition dating back to 1984. Prizes of up to $1500 are awarded every year, with open entry for New Brunswick residents.
• CBC Short Story Prize: The first prize winner of the CBC Short Story Prize through CBC’s Canada Writes receives $6,000, has his/her story published in Air Canada’s enRoute magazine and on the Canada Writes website, and will also be awarded a two-week residency at The Banff Centre's Leighton Artists' Colony. Runners up will each receive $1000.
• The Canadian Authors Association: The CAA offers a number of prizes up for grabs every year, including the CAA Award for Fiction (for “full-length English language literature for adults by a Canadian writer”), the Lela Common Award for Canadian History (for “historical nonfiction on Canadian topics by a Canadian writer”), the CAA Award for Poetry (“full-length English-language book of poems for adults, by a Canadian writer”), and the Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award (for “a writer under 30 years of age deemed to show exceptional promise in the field of literary creation”).

So there you have it; while some of these competitions may be closed to 2013-2014 submissions, they are always gearing up for the next year – and you should, too!