Held annually on Labor Day weekend. Rules, survival guide, prizes, and past winners.

An annual competition for writers, editors, publications staff, and both business and non-profit communicators.

Annual awards of $2,000 (plus publication) are offered for original, unpublished, book-length work in each of three categories: novels, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Reading fee: $20. Deadline: February 28. Open to U.S. residents only.

San Jose State University sponsors this yearly challenge "to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels". No entry fee. Official deadline: April 15.

Annual competitions honoring excellence in all areas of communication, with separate categories for print (177 sub-categories), video (216 sub-categories) and audio (140 sub-categories).

6th Annual Flyway Sweet Corn Prize. $150 and a book bag of Iowa sweet corn for top entries in each category: fiction, nonfiction (maximum: 4,000 words) and poetry. Reading fee: $18. Deadline March 1st.

An awards program for self-published authors, independent book publishers, university presses, small/ medium publishers. Cash awards and a chance at professional literary agency representation.

Milkweed Editions is a non-profit publisher of literature for adults and young adults based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Milkweed National Fiction Prize is awarded annually for the best fiction manuscript submitted by an author not previously published

Publishers of the magazines, "Scribble" and "Countryside Tales", holding quarterly competitions for original, unpublished short stories and poems, some open, some limited to specific themes.

Offers free monthly contests for poetry and fiction. Open worldwide, but to teenagers only.

SFWP provides resources for authors and features online fiction as well as an annual writing contest for prose, both fiction and non-fiction, including short stories, essays and sample chapters of novels. $6,000 in cash prizes. Deadline: mid-January.

Writing contest for women seeks a story, memoir or book chapter on a given theme. Deadline; December 31, thence monthly. Entry fee: $7. First prize: $70.

The Gauntlet is a new format, underground writing contest for speculative fiction.