Our goal is to help writers at all stages of their writing journey. Learn more with the resources below. Have we forgotten to cover something? Let us know here.
Opportunities
Lambda Literary is here to help connect you with opportunities to get your writing into the world. We try to keep this list as up to date as possible. If you would like us to share an opportunity, send us an email! We post calls for submission, writer’s retreats, grant opportunities, festivals, and more.
Residency
Submissions due December 15, 2023
*Application fees are cheaper the earlier you apply!
Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship
Since its creation 50 years ago, the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship has become one of the leading residency programs in the world.
Each year, the Work Center offers 20 seven-month residencies to a juried group of emerging visual artists, fiction writers, and poets. Each Fellow receives an apartment, a studio (for visual artists), and a monthly stipend of $1,250 plus an exit stipend of $1,000. Residencies run from October 1 through April 30. During this time, Fellows have the opportunity to pursue their work independently in a diverse and supportive community of peers.
The Fine Arts Work Center has hosted more than 1,000 Fellows since 1968, nurturing an accomplished and far-reaching alumni network. The impact of the experience is best illustrated by the extensive list of awards Fellows have gone on to win, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship, Prix de Rome, Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Employment Opportunity
Deadline to apply: November 15, 2023
Two Job Openings at Fine Arts Work Center
CURRENT OPPORTUNITIES INCLUDE:
Title: Fellowship Director
Title: Artist Services Manager
About the Organization: The Fine Arts Work Center is an artist-led organization based in Provincetown and connected to the world. We support artistic freedom, nurture creative connections, and make possible artistic achievements important to the larger culture.
The Work Center is internationally known for an acclaimed seven-month residency program granting fellowships to 20 emerging writers and artists, as well as an open enrollment Summer Workshop Program, an online writing program 24PearlStreet, and an extensive series of year-round cultural events and exhibitions.
Since its creation 50 years ago, the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship has become one of the leading residency programs in the world. Each year, the Work Center offers 20 seven-month residencies to a jury-selected group of emerging visual artists, fiction writers, and poets. Residencies run from October 1 through April 30. During this time, Fellows have the opportunity to pursue their work independently in a diverse and supportive community of peers. Each Fellow receives an apartment, a studio (for visual artists), and a monthly stipend of $1,250 plus an exit stipend of $1,000.
The Fine Arts Work Center has hosted more than 1,000 Fellows since 1968, nurturing an accomplished and far-reaching alumni network. The Work Center’s Fellows, who arrive in Provincetown as emerging and mostly unknown writers and artists, have gone on to win multiple Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, Prix de Rome scholarships, Whiting Awards, Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Visual artists have presented their work at the Venice Biennale, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney, The New Museum, MASS MoCA, Friends of the High Line, and many other venues around the world.
The Fine Arts Work Center also presents an open enrollment Summer Workshop Program, an online writing program entitled 24PearlStreet, and an extensive series of year-round cultural events and exhibitions, which take place in the Hudson D. Walker Gallery in Provincetown.
Call for Submissions
Submissions due January 15, 2024
Queer Halloween Feminist Bicycle Sci-Fi
Please submit your original queer Halloween short fiction (in written or comics form) about bicycling from a feminist perspective. We’re looking for stories that give us a shiver or make us leave the hallway light on at night. Raise our hair and make our spines tingle. We’ll also consider Halloween-themed stories that aren’t as frightful, but they should still be infused with all things spooky season.
Stories should be written by authors who consider yourself queer (in whatever way you identify), and should feature Halloween and/or otherworldly elements, and queer characters/themes, as well as feminism. All four elements should be intrinsic to the narrative:
- Halloween (or stories sufficiently scary or thematic enough to be read around Halloween)
- Queer
- Feminism (it is sufficient to simply not include sexist themes or tropes)
- Bicycles
The genre can be anything fantastical—ghost stories, horror, hard sci-fi, comedic fantasy, slipstream, or anything in that constellation—despite the series title, stories need not be be set in space. No fanfic, poetry, nonfiction, or erotica for this series, please. Stories should not include extreme body horror or graphic violence.
For this volume of the anthology, we ask that all authors be queer/part of the queer/LGBTQIA+ community, in some way, shape or form. We aren’t the queer police (which sounds both fabulous and like a bad idea) and if you identify as queer/LGBTQIA+, that’s good enough for us.
We welcome submissions from marginalized authors and first-time authors.
Stories are submitted in consideration for inclusion in the anthology. Submission is not a guarantee that any given story will be accepted or included. All stories are selected by the editors.
Word count: 500 – 6,000 words
Format: MS Word or PDF. Comics submissions of up to 6 pages can be submitted in thumbnails. Contact us if you are unable to submit in one of these formats.
Payment: A portion of profits after expenses from the Kickstarter project used to fund this book is split between contributors, with a guaranteed minimum of $50 each, plus copies of the book.
Call for Submissions
Submissions due December 15, 2023
Queer Poetry Anthology: A project of the Washington State Poet Laureate Arianne True
Calling all queer poem writers of Washington State and adjacent tribal lands!
As part of my term as the Washington State Poet Laureate, I’m putting together an anthology of poems from queer writers of all stripes across the state. I want to hear from people trying out poetry for the first time, as well as regular writers and widely published poets. I want to include work by folks across spectrums of sexual orientation, gender, and sexuality in general (ace/aro family, I’m looking at you—send me work!), and from across the full breadth of our state.
Poems can be on any topic. This anthology takes the stance that all art made by queer artists is queer art, whether it draws explicit attention to an identity or not. Send me your love poems, the poem you wrote on the bus or in the park, poems where you wrestle with yourself, poems where you love existing, poems that take a metaphor and run with it, tribute poems, grief poems, ecstatic poems, sleepy poems, poems that barely know what they are or what they’re becoming, I want it all. Traditional and experimental work are both welcomed.
The final anthology will be published online and made available as a free resource. I’ll organize poems in a tagged and searchable format (like a database), making sure the tags are correct to the poem and its author. There is no payment available but chosen writers will appear in a publicized, widely available anthology and may get opportunities for readings and events following the anthology’s launch.
Fellowship
Applications due October 27, 2023 at 11:59 pm ET.
Application for the 2024 Periplus Fellowship — which provides mentorship and community for writers of color — is now open!
Periplus is a collective of writers engaged in mentorship and community-building for writers of color. Each year, we select about 50 new Fellows to join our community and be mentored one-on-one by an established writer. Fellows also have access to other resources, including a large and growing community of fellow writers of color and regular events about the craft and business of writing. In assessing applications, we consider the promise we see in applicants’ writing samples, while also paying attention to how helpful a Periplus Fellowship could be for their craft and career. Applying and participating is free.
Call for Submissions
Submissions due August 15th 2023
CNF Video Game Writing From LGBTQ+ Writers of Color for ANMLY!
This folio seeks to collect novel, experimental, and personal approaches to video game writing from queer & trans writers of color.
Video games are fun! They can be challenging and weird and chock full of orientalism and homophobia; many of us love them despite it. This folio is interested in those kinds of tensions; what is the cost of escapism, in cases where your people are positioned as the enemy? What does it mean to execute a male power fantasy as someone affected by misogyny? Alternatively, what has escapism taught players about themselves — gender, ability, goals? What is fulfilling about inhabiting a different self?
This folio is interested in the art of video games, too; writing on music, sound effects, writing that challenges what “good” graphics look like, writing that explores labor; critical engagements, too, in the politics and approaches of narratives across franchises or individual games.
Video games are a vast medium — visual novels, RPGs, life sims, battle royale, puzzle matching — writing on any and all of them will be considered! In the spirit of this, the category of “creative nonfiction” is broad — list essays, lyrical works, prose poem sequences, comics, hybrid works and uncategorizable attempts alongside more standard essays are encouraged.
Both pitches and full drafts will be considered! Send your pitch or draft to summerisfarah@gmail.com with the subject line FOLIO SUBMISSION; include a brief bio and a line about your favorite game :) Only one pitch/piece per person will be considered, with an 1,800 word limit.
Call for Reviewers
Rolling Submissions
The Lesbrary
Do you love reading sapphic books? Feel like talking about them at least once a month? Want to be buried in an insurmountable pile of free sapphic ebooks? Join the Lesbrary!
I am looking for more reviewers at the Lesbrary! You just have to commit to one review a month of any sapphic book and in return you get forwarded all of the sapphic ebooks sent to us for possible review. You also get access to the Lesbrary Edelweiss and Netgalley accounts, where you can request not-yet-released queer titles.
I’m looking particularly for more reviewers of color, disabled reviewers, and trans reviewers, but anyone who regularly reads sapphic books is welcome!
If you’re interested in joining the Lesbrary, send me an email at danikaellis at gmail with an example of a book review you’ve written. (It doesn’t have to have been published/posted anywhere before.) We’d love to have you on board!
Call for Submissions
Rolling Submissions
Full Stop Magazine
Full Stop Magazine, a forum for writing on contemporary small press literature and literature in translation, is looking for reviewers, interviewers, and essayists. Since 2011, we have sought to support the work of critics, small presses, and the aesthetically, linguistically, and socially marginalized communities of writers they represent.
We aren’t currently able to pay writers for reviews. However, we think that the serious editorial support and freedom we’re able to provide to our critics to creatively engage with books and pursue their interests and projects in the process makes Full Stop an attractive site for writers nonetheless. If you are interested in writing for the site but aren’t able to do so for free, we do pay quite competitively for features ($150 per essay) and would be open to pitches for features pieces as well. Examples of features can be found here.
If you’re interested in contributing, please reach out to managing editor Emily Alex at emily@full-stop.net, or to the relevant section editors: https://www.full-stop.net/masthead/.
We would be happy to send you a list of books that we’re looking to have covered in the coming months, or to hear your pitches.
Festival
Equity Library Theater of New York Summer 2023 Virtual and In Person Play Festival
Submission Deadline: September 30th, 2023
Submissions are now being accepted for the Equity Library Theater of New York Summer 2023 Virtual and In Person Play Festival. Seeking short plays (no more than 15 pp/minutes), from playwrights from around the globe. Also seeking monologues (no more than 4pp/minutes). Musical’s welcome! We post your YouTube link of the performance to the festival site for voting. We will also present selected plays in person in the summer of 2023 in Midtown Manhattan, at no cost to anyone. One submission per playwright. No submission fees. Please include name, address, telephone number and email address on your submission. We do not produce your work; we provide a venue for you to present actors performing your play. There are no costs involved for anyone. Seeking actors and directors, too! Deadline: September 30, 2023. Email: equitylibrarytheater@gmail.com.
