THE FINAL COUNTDOWN | One Day Left to Enter Write or Die's First Ever Fiction Contest (and win up to $1000)
SUBMIT! SUBMIT! SUBMIT!
SUBMIT! SUBMIT! SUBMIT!
IT’S THE LAST DAY TO SUBMIT!!
Our guest judge, Nora Lange, author of the acclaimed novel, Us Fools, will be selecting our longlist and top three submissions.
In addition to cash prizes, you’ll also get the bragging rights to being part of our VERY FIRST CONTEST.
The Details
🖤 General Submission Window 🖤
May 1 – July 1, 2025
🏆 Prizes 🏆
1st Place: $1000
2nd Place: $400
3rd Place: $200
Winning stories will be published in Write or Die Magazine.
💸Submission Fee 💸
$18 per entry
We also have an option that includes a contest entry, plus detailed margin notes from our fiction editors. Trust me, they are brilliant.
💗 Guest Judge 💗
Nora Lange
👀 What She is Looking For 👀
Shock yourself. Take a risk. Loosen the reins of plot. Let the idea in your story shine. Get lost and call it found.
📞 Winners Announced 📞
September 2025
This workshop is filling up fast 🔥
How To Never Run Out of Essay Ideas with Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya
Date: Tuesday, July 8
Time: 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM (EST)
Duration: 3 hours
Location: Live on Zoom
Have a biweekly newsletter that's losing steam? Itching to pitch but fresh out of exciting ideas?
This workshop is designed to give you the tools to find inspiration for creative nonfiction even when you think the well is dry (spoiler alert: the well is never dry). Through readings of unconventional essays and prompts designed to help you pull inspiration from unexpected places, I'll give you the tools, confidence, and discipline to keep finding things to meaningfully write about from your everyday life, memories, and environment.
I bring knowledge and experience to this workshop from my combined career as a freelance writer pitching personal essays for over a decade as well as half a decade as a magazine editor on the other side of the pitching and essay development process. Throughout the years, I have often had to maintain consistent essay output as part of my literal job, so I couldn't afford to run out of ideas. This workshop is crafted from the various challenges of those experiences and how I eventually overcame them.
What you will learn
The "anti-rules" of essay writing
How to develop easy, organic practices for collecting potential essay ideas
How to answer the question: "is this an essay?"
How to experiment with form in essay writing
How to pull inspiration for essays from unexpected places (including fiction!)
How to NEVER RUN OUT OF ESSAY IDEAS
Course Takeaways
Early, nascent drafts of SEVERAL essays
Practical tips and tools for never-ending essay idea generation
An expansive understand of what essays are and can do
Take-home revision prompts to build upon the writing done in class
Additional info
If you can't attend this class live, it will be recorded! Students will receive a recording the day after the class, and it will be available for 30 days.