New River Valley Voices Spring 2018 Competition

Juried selections of works by NRV writers will be featured in the Spring Valley Voices Writing Celebration on Sunday, April 29th, 2018 at 3 p.m. at the Blacksburg Public Library.

NRV writers are invited to submit up to three poems, with a maximum of 65 lines per poem, and/or up to two prose entries (flash fiction, short stories, creative non-fiction, standalone excerpts from a longer prose work) with a maximum cumulative total of 2,200 words.

The jury’s selections are based on literary merit and assessment of how the piece complements the overall presented program.

Submission Details

DEADLINE: March 06, 2018

Eligibility:

1. Submissions must be unpublished at the time of entry and must not have been presented in a public venue in the New River Valley.
2. Winners must prepare to present their works before a live audience by attending a one-on-one session, at no cost, with a Valley Voices coach. The purpose of this coaching session is to polish the readings, increase writers’ comfort level in presenting before an audience, and enhance the overall quality of the program.
3. Winners must attend an informal group rehearsal on Friday, April 27th, 5-6:30 p.m.
4. All winners are expected to be present on Sunday, April 29th to read their winning entries.
5. Autumn 2017 winners are asked to withhold submitting work until the Autumn 2018 competition.

Formatting:

• 12-point Times New Roman or Palatino font
• One-inch margins
• Double-spaced type for prose
• All documents should be formatted using only normal text formatting with no layout and design features (e.g., no tables, columns, graphics, paragraph outlining, or drawing features such as text boxes or text following a curve, etc.).
• The top of each page should include title, category (prose or poetry) and page number.
• Include a cover page with title, name, phone & email, word count, and category (prose or poetry).
• Author’s name should appear only on the cover page. Submissions are judged anonymously.
• Submissions that do not follow these guidelines will not be considered.
• Submissions should be emailed as attachments (Word document, .doc or .docx) to nrvalleyvoices@gmail.com

You will receive an email confirmation of your submission within five business days. Please contact Valley Voices if you do not.

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