Opportunities for New York Writers

New Yorkers take note: deadlines for two of my absolute favorite contests are coming up. For writers in New York State, NYFA Artists' Fellowship applications are due October 3; for NYC novelists, the Chapter One Fiction Competition, hosted by the Bronx Writers' Center, has an October 1 deadline. (Both contests are free to enter: reason #1 for my enthusiasm.) For details on these and other deadlines, see the October calendar.

For an opportunity that does not involve paperwork, venture over to downtown Brooklyn on Sunday, September 16, for the second annual Brooklyn Book Festival, hailed by Marty Markowitz as "a book lover’s dream come true." While I might not go that far, this year's roster, with Paul Auster, Edwidge Danticat, and Dave Eggers (and that just gets you to the letter "E"), definitely promises to be stimulating.