The Woman’s National Book Association (WNBA) has launched the 1st Annual WNBA National Writing Contest. Prizes include $250 cash and publication in the WNBA’s Bookwoman.

Contestants may only submit previously unpublished work. The contest will accept fiction (2,500 word limit) and poetry (35 line limit or 1-page double spaced) entries. For fiction, writers can enter with a short story or a stand-alone excerpt from a novel in progress.

Novelist Valerie Martin and Louisiana Poet Laureate Julie Kane will serve as judges. A deadline has been set for November 1st. The winner will be revealed on April 1, 2013. Follow this link for more details.

In the ancient tradition of connecting poetry with the Olympics, this week NPR is hosting the NPR Poetry Games, a sports-inspired poetry contest.

All week NPR is bringing together poets from around the world who will recite their works in a friendly competition. The contest features the poets Kazim Ali from the United States; Ales Steger from Slovenia; Mbali Vilakazi from South Africa; Monica de la Torre from Mexico; and Ouyang Yu from China and Australia.

Every morning, NPR listeners can hear the poems read on the show Morning Edition. Listeners are invited to vote on their favorite poem at www.npr.org/poetrygames, where audio recordings and texts of the poems will be saved. Read more

What’s the best young adult novel of all time? NPR Books wants to know. The media outlet is running its annual poll, asking readers to nominate their favorite young adult titles for its top 100 list.

Voting has been narrowed down to 235 choices including: Lord of the Flies, Anne of Green Gables Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. A panel of book experts helped select this list of titles based on the quality, themes and readability of these books. Panel members include: Pamela Paul, The New York Times Book Review’s features editor and children’s book editor; Diane Roback, Publisher’s Weekly’s children’s book editor; Tasha Robinson, book editor for The Onion’s A.V. Club; and teacher/librarian Ted Schelvan.

Every reader gets 10 votes. Follow this link to see the full list and cast your vote.

To promote G. Willow Wilson’s debut novel Alif the Unseen, Grove/Atlantic has a new “Create-a-Genie” contest, inviting artists, photographers and other digital creators to imagine a mythical jinn.

Here’s more about the contest: “Click on “The Five Types of Jinn” to learn about the five different species of jinn that appear in the book, and have a look at illustrator Lisa Brown’s beautiful depictions of each jinn for inspiration. Then pick your favorite jinn and show us your original vision for how it looks. We’ll accept drawings, paintings, collages, photos, just about anything you can send digitally! E-mail your entry to aliftheunseen@gmail.com.”

The winner will get a $100 gift certificate for a local bookstore, a copy of the novel and piece of art from Willow’s graphic novel Cairo. Two other winners will get a signed copy of Alif the Unseen. The contest closes at 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday, August 13.

GalleyCat readers spend their whole lives crafting sentences, and we want to see some of your hard work. What is the best sentence you’ve ever written?

Share your favorite sentence on Twitter with the #litfest hashtag and you could win a free webcast pass to Mediabistro’s Literary Festival & Workshops that start next week. The online festival will be your chance to learn from famous writers, editors and agents along with a community of writers over the next three weeks.

The virtual festival starts on Monday, so you have until Saturday, July 14 at 11:00 p.m. ET to submit your entries. Below, you can read the official rules for the contest.

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You can win a free bike from The Paris Review by writing a short short story about a devilish illustration (embedded above). However, you must write your story in the style of one of five great writers.

While writing about the contest, editor Lorin Stein recalled how Paris Review co-founder George Plimpton used to ride his own bicycle around the city–a literary tradition you can continue with your new bicycle.

Check it out: “in celebration of the Tour de France—and thanks to the generosity of Hudson Urban Bikes—we, along with Velojoy, are giving away one of Hudson Urban Bikes’ Beater Bicycles Roadster. This classic city bike comes in a men’s and a women’s model, both of which may be seen in the diabolical and rather enigmatic illustration below. To win the HUB Beater, tell us what you see in this picture: in three hundred words or fewer; in the style of (choose one!) Elizabeth Bishop, Ray Bradbury, Joan Didion, Ernest Hemingway, or P. G. Wodehouse.”

Alan Averill won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for general fiction with The Beautiful Land. At the same time, Regina Sirois won the young adult fiction category of the same award for On Little Wings.

Here’s more from the release: “Both authors have received a publishing contract from Penguin Group (USA) that includes a $15,000 advance … This year’s competition drew thousands of submissions from aspiring writers around the world – the most entries in the history of the contest. Through several rounds of judging, six finalists rose to the top. An expert panel of authors, agents and editors weighed in with comments on the finalists’ work, and in the end, Amazon.com customers voted to select the winners.”

Click here to read a free sample of The Beautiful Land. Follow this link to read a free sample of On Little Wings. Above, we’ve included a photo of Averill (via Sue Nyre).

Novelist Ernest Cline has created a unique strategy to encourage readers to buy a print copy of his book, Ready Player One. Cline outlined his new contest in a video message to readers (embedded above).

Both the paperback and hardcover edition of the book contain a secret web address hidden in the text–an “Easter egg” that will lead readers into an online quest. The first reader to find the hidden address and solve the online challenges will win a major prize.

Here’s more about the contest: “If readers can find this hidden clue, it will lead them to the first of three increasingly difficult video game challenges. The first video game challenge is an Atari 2600 game that contains another Easter Egg that will lead you to the Second Challenge. Completing the Second Challenge will lead you to the Third and Final Challenge. The first person to complete all three of these challenges will win the grand prize, a 1981 DeLorean automobile, complete with a Flux Capacitor!”

The 7th annual “Brooklyn Lit Match” teen writing contest has started accepting submissions. All of the winning entries will be compiled into an anthology which will be published by Akashic Books. The grand prize winner will also receive a new laptop.

The contest is open to high school students who reside in Brooklyn or those who attend a high school located in Brooklyn. Eligible candidates should feel free to turn in their stories, poems, essays, spoken word pieces and raps before the deadline on June 29th. Follow this link for more information.

Here’s more from the release: “A committee of publishers, editors and literary agents will select 10 finalists, including a first place winner. The 10 finalists will be invited to read their work at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday, September 23, 2012 … Entries should be sent to Brooklyn Book Festival Lit Match, Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 or e-mailed to ekoch@brooklynbp.nyc.gov.”

Non-profit StoryCode and the Film Society of Lincoln Center are bringing together writers, filmmakers, tech gurus, publishing experts, advertisers and designers in its first annual ”story hackathon,” a 36-hour multimedia writing competition called Story Hack: Beta.

The event will take place for 36 hours this weekend at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, during which time creatives will have to write theme-based narratives using three different media platforms that are output into one platform.

StoryCode’s CEO Aina Abiodun explained in the release: “We can no longer afford to think of narrative content as objects to be stuffed through a static electronic (or analog) pipeline. StoryCode’s goal is to provide a space where story and technology germinate side-by-side to produce the best experiences for demanding and savvy audiences. The Story Hack came into being as a practical way to begin this incubation process. By engaging the many talented minds in our community, we have set up a challenge which will provide glimpses into the future of storytelling.”

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