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Poetry Contest Guidelines:
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Entry Fee: $10
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Submit: 2 poems / Entry Fee
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Maximum of 30 lines
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Place name, address, telephone
and email address on back of each piece
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Deadline:
July 30, 2009
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3 winner and 10 honorable
mentions will be selected
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Author retains all rights
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By entering, author consents to
allow the Guild to publish winners in an Anthology and on the Guild's
website and in any publications used to announce winners and promote
future contests
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Fiction
Contest Guidelines:
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Entry Fee: $10
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Submit 1 Story / Entry Fee
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Maximum words: 2000
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Use Standard Manuscript format
with name, word count, address, tel and email on title page.
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Deadline: July 30,
2009
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3 winner and 10 honorable
mentions will be selected
-
Author retains all rights
-
By entering, author consents to
allow the Guild to publish winners in an Anthology and on the Guild's
website and in any publications used to announce winners and promote
future contests
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Paul Laurence Dunbar,
 born in Dayton, Ohio, on June
27, 1872, was the first African-American poet and novelist to attain
international recognition. Dunbar was known for his use of dialect, but was
also an accomplished poet and novelist in standard English. At age seventeen
he published his own newspaper, the Dayton Tattler, an
African-American newspaper printed by his high school classmate and friend,
Orville Wright. His first book of poems, Oak and Ivy, was published
in 1893. The book contained Dunbar's first dialect poem, "A Banjo Song."
Dunbar published numerous books of poetry, novels and music during his
career. He died in Dayton on February 9, 1906. |
Margaret A. Walker,
 best
known for her neo-slave narrative Jubilee and the poem “For
My People,” was born Margaret Abigail Walker on July 7, 1915, in
Birmingham, Alabama. Encouraged by her parents, Reverend Sigismund and
Marion Dozier Walker, Margaret read much poetry and philosophy as a young
child. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree at Northwestern University
in 1935, and in 1936 began working with the Federal Writer’s Project along
with writers such as Frank Yerby and Gwendolyn Brooks. A few years later,
she would meet and become acquaintances with Richard
Wright; the two would work together on
several of his texts—in 1988, she published Richard Wright, Daemonic
Genius: A Portrait of the Man, a Critical Look at His Work.
She completed her master’s degree in creative
writing at the University of Iowa in 1942, which is when she was also
awarded the Yale Award for Young Poets for “For My People.” She then became
a professor at Jackson State University; in 1966, Alexander published
Jubilee, the life story of a slave daughter. Two years after receiving
critical acclaim for Jubilee, she founded the Institute for the Study
of the History, Life and Culture of Black People in 1968. She worked as the
director of the program for 11 years; later, it would be renamed in her
honor. Ms. Walker then toured, lectured, and worked on For Farish Street
Green, February 27, 1986 (1986) and This is My Century: New and
Collected Poems (1989).
In 1988 Ms. Walker sued author Alex Haley,
alleging that his book Roots infringed on Jubilee’s copyright;
the case was dismissed from court.
Among Ms. Walker’s awards are the Rosenwald
Fellowship (1944), a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the
Humanities (1972), and the WHite House Award for Distinguished Senior
Citizen. She died in Chicago of cancer on November 30, 1998. She was 83
years old. |
