News of the Month – November 2025
If you did not get a chance to participate in our semiannual slush pile event last month, you can find a recording here. Even if you did not submit a piece, the feedback from our panel of judges is useful.
We will not be hosting Writers Discuss Writing this month due to the North Carolina Writers’ Network fall conference November 7-9, but WDW will return next month!
Saturday, November 15, 2025 at 1:00pm – Writers’ Morning Out NCWN Fall Conference Recap
Several of our WMO members will attend this years NCWN fall conference. With the great variety of courses to choose from at the conference, we will return to share with you what we learned! You can visit the NCWN website here to learn about the course descriptions to get an idea of what we will discuss.
Holiday season is upon us! Writers Discuss Craft will return in the new year.
News from the North Carolina Writers’ Network
Not a member?
You’re missing out on discounts on Network-sponsored programs and events. What are you waiting for? Membership is open to writers of all experience levels and genres across the state and beyond. Join now by clicking here.
The Jacobs/Jones Prize is now open.
WINSTON-SALEM—The Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize, which honors the best in short prose by African-American/Black writers in North Carolina, is now open for submissions.
The contest, sponsored by NCWN and administered by the Creative Writing Program at UNC-Chapel Hill, is open to any African-American/Black writer whose primary residence is in North Carolina. Entries may be fiction or creative nonfiction, but must not have been published before (including on any website, blog, or social media), and must be no more than 3,000 words.
The deadline is January 2, 2026. The winner will receive $1,000 and possible publication of their winning entry in the North Carolina Literary Review.
The final judge of this year’s Jacobs/Jones contest will be Gabriel Bump. Bump grew up in South Shore Chicago. His debut novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Fiction, the Heartland Booksellers Award for Fiction, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s First Novelist Award. His second novel, The New Naturals, was a Washington Post, Boston Globe, and New York Times Notable Book of 2023. His third novel is forthcoming from Algonquin Books. Bump’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. He teaches at the UMass MFA for Poets and Writers, his alma mater.
The Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize honors the nineteenth-century writers Harriet Jacobs and Thomas H. Jones. Jacobs was born in 1813 near Edenton, escaping to Philadelphia in 1842, after hiding for seven years in a crawl space above her grandmother’s ceiling. She published her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, under a pseudonym in 1861. Jacobs died in 1897 and was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 1997.
Jones was born into slavery near Wilmington in 1806. Able to purchase the freedom of his wife and all but one of his children, he followed them north in 1849 by stowing away on a brig to New York. In the northeast and in Canada, he spoke as a preacher and abolitionist, writing his memoir, The Experience of Thomas Jones, in 1854, as a way to raise funds to buy his eldest child’s freedom.
This Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize was initiated by Cedric Brown, a Winston-Salem native and graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The literary award was borne out of my frustration with being unable to readily find much fiction or creative nonfiction that conveys the rich and varied existence of Black North Carolinians,” Brown said. “I wanted to incentivize the development of written works while also encouraging Black writers to capture our lives through storytelling.”
Mildred Kiconco Barya of Asheville won the 2025 Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize for her entry “Sing for the Women.”
The full competition guidelines are listed below and can be found here.
Eligibility and Guidelines
- The competition is open to any African-American/Black writer whose primary residence is in North Carolina.
- Entries may be fiction or creative nonfiction, but must be unpublished*, no more than 3,000 words, and concerned with the lives and experiences of African-American/Black North Carolinians. Entries may be excerpts from longer works, but must be self-contained. Entries will be judged on literary merit.
- To submit your entries via Submittable, please follow one of these links:
NCWN members, click here
Nonmembers, click here - An entry fee must accompany each submission: $10 for NCWN members, $20 for nonmembers. You may submit multiple entries, but the correct fee must accompany each one.
- You may pay the members’ entry fee if you join the NCWN when you submit.
- Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
- If submitting by mail, submit two copies of an unpublished manuscript, not to exceed 3,000 words, on single-sided pages, double-spaced, in black 12-point Times New Roman font, with 1-inch margins.
- The author’s name should not appear on the manuscript. Instead, include a separate cover sheet with name, address, phone number, e-mail address, word count, and manuscript title.
- To submit by USPS:
Jacobs/Jones African-American Literary Prize
c/o NCWN
P. O. Box 21591
Winston-Salem, NC 27120
- When you submit online, Submittable will collect your entry fee via credit card ($10 NCWN members / $20 non-members). (If submitting online, do not include a cover sheet with your document; Submittable will collect and record your name and contact information. For more information about Submittable, click here.)
- Entries will not be returned.
- The winner will be announced in February.
For questions, please contact mail@ncwriters.org.
Barrax/Bayes Poetry Contest
Submissions Accepted: October 1 – November 15
The Barrax/Bayes Poetry Contest, sponsored by the North Carolina Writers’ Network, is open to poems written by veterans or current members of the United States Armed Forces, active duty or reserve, with a close connection to North Carolina: place of birth, current or former residence, current or former posting. Poems are not limited by length or subject matter. The Barrax/Bayes Poetry Contest honors Gerald Barrax and Ronald Bayes, poets and military veterans, and seeks to encourage creative writing among members of an essential but often overlooked segment of our state’s population. The contest is administered by the MFA in Creative Writing Program at North Carolina State University. The winner receives $250 and possible publication in the North Carolina Literary Review.
Eligibility and Guidelines
- The competition is open to veterans and to anyone currently serving in the United States Armed Forces (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard), whether active duty or reserve, who has a connection to North Carolina: place of birth, current or former residence, current or former posting.
- Entries must be unpublished* single poems.
- Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
- To submit online, go to https://ncwriters.submittable.com/submit. Do not include a cover sheet with your document; Submittable will collect and record your name and contact information.
- If submitting by mail, submit two copies of each poem, single-spaced on single-sided pages, in black 12-point Times New Roman font, with 1-inch margins.
- If submitting by mail, do not include the author’s name on the poem(s). Instead, include a separate cover sheet with name, military branch, mailing address, phone number, e-mail address, and poem title(s).
- To submit by USPS:
Barrax/Bayes Poetry Contest
NCWN
PO Box 21591
Winston-Salem, NC 27120
- Entries will not be returned.
- The winner will be announced before the end of January on ncwriters.org.
- For questions, please contact ed@ncwriters.org.
- Please read the Network’s statement on “A.I.” in contests and other Network-administered programs.
*“Published” means the work has appeared for public consumption in any form: print, online, digital, etc.
Has it appeared in a magazine or journal, of any size or circulation? Then it’s been published. Has it appeared on a blog, even one hardly anybody reads? Then it’s published. Audio book? E-book? Free download? ‘Zine, mimeographed and stapled in 1995? Published.
For our contests, we’re looking for new work, fresh work, work unseen by anyone outside your immediate family and/or critique group. Shine a light on your published work in your portfolio, and submit your new work for one (or more) of our annual prizes. Good luck.
Postscript:
WMO’s programs and meetings are a collaborative effort with Penny Cottrell, Tracy Crow, Tom Dow, Catherine Duncan, George Kauffman, Carol Phillips, and Judith Stanton—plus our ex-officio member and IT wizard, Josh Cottrell—all contributing.
Wishing you all the best in your writing endeavors!
Penny Cottrell, NCWN Regional Rep, Central Piedmont