Poets & Writers Grants & Awards Database

ABOUT

Poets & Writers, the nonprofit founded in 1970 to support the professional development of creative writers, maintains this database as one of the most widely used clearinghouses for literary contests, grants, fellowships, and book prizes in the English-speaking world. Pulled from the same editorial operation behind Poets & Writers Magazine, the listings are vetted by P&W staff for legitimate sponsorship and track record before inclusion, which has made the database a de facto trust signal in a field full of vanity contests and fee-harvesting operations. It covers poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, translation, spoken word, and cross-genre work, ranging from small journal prizes with $500 awards to major fellowships like the Academy of American Poets' First Book Award.

The database itself doesn't accept submissions — it's a directory pointing to hundreds of individual contests and grants, each with its own entry fee (commonly $0–$30, occasionally higher for book awards), deadline, judge, and prize amount, all searchable and filterable by genre, fee range, and deadline. Entries include a short description and a 'read more' link to full guidelines on the sponsor's own site, so poets still need to visit each contest's actual page to confirm current rules before paying a fee. Listings update continuously (new contests appear weekly) and the site also offers an email Weekly Update digest and a separate Submission Calendar; because it's crowdsourced from sponsor submissions and staff review rather than fully automated, some entries can lag behind a contest's actual current-year deadline, so cross-checking the sponsor's own site is standard practice.