Tom Howard & Margaret Reid Poetry Contest News

Welcome to Tom Howard Contest News. These Newsletters are issued twice a month and are also posted on http://writing-events.blogspot.com and http://writeway.exactpages.com for easy reference.

For writing advice you can send me questions by using the "ask for advice" form at http://SearchWarp.com/Advice-Columns/Prose-and-Poetry-Advice

The annual $5,550 Tom Howard Short Story, Essay & Prose Contest has now closed. It will re-open on July 15. Results for the current contest will be announced in this Newsletter on September 15.

This year, as you know, the prize pool for our prose and poetry contests has been increased to $5,550 (including a First Prize of $3,000). Entry fees have not been raised. 

To enter your poems in our current poetry contests, you will find full information at http://margaretreid.exactpages.com OR http://poetrycontests.exactpages.com. You will also note that although the prize-money has been increased, entry fees do remain at $7 for every 25 lines.

Unlike almost all other poetry contests, we impose no limits on the number of lines or number of poems you may submit. 

For full details, you can also visit the home page of http://www.winningwriters.com and click on the contests at the top left of the screen.

The latest Margaret Reid poetry anthology is Love & City Dreaming: Poems by Margaret Havill Reid. Margaret's range and versatility in this book provide an excellent guide to the verse we are seeking for the Margaret Reid Prize.

You'll also find plenty of rousing titles and attention-getting poems in our previous anthologies of winning entries from both the Margaret Reid and Tom Howard Contests such as SAILING IN THE MIST OF TIME: Award-Winning Poems in which no less than 108 award-winning and commended poems from both contests are gathered together in a large-format, 196-page book!

Other recommended anthologies are ACROSS THE LONG BRIDGE: An Anthology of Award-Winning Poetry (this is also available in a very attractive hardcover edition) which contains 133 winning and commended entries from both contests and TRAVELING: An Anthology of Award-Winning Poetry  which contains 58 winners from the Tom Howard Contest, plus 10 additional poems.

Finally, I'd like to recommend my own book, Write Ways to WIN WRITING CONTESTS: How To Join the Winners' Circle for Prose and Poetry Awards, NEW EXPANDED EDITION If you've been wasting your time and money sending out great stories and magnificent poems to Contests that immediately place them in the reject basket, here's an essential book to help you select the RIGHT CONTESTS. 

For example, there are a number of prestigious Poetry Contests that NEVER award prizes to traditional verse, even though they imply in their rules that such forms are acceptable.  So how do you separate a suitable contest for your work from one in which you'll just waste your time and money? One of the key recommendations in my Write Ways to WIN WRITING CONTESTS is that you take a look at some of the entries that have won prizes in previous years. This will give you some idea of the types and varieties of poems and stories that have won prizes in the past. Judges may change from year to year in some contests but the sponsors always remain the same. The sponsors always appoint judges who are sympathetic. So if the XYZ Poetry Contest has never awarded a cash prize for traditional rhyming verse, it's not going to do so this year, even though the judge may be a new face!