Selected stories on the link below.
| Poetry | Short Story | Prose 500 | Drabble |
| Short Fiction |
Magazine
Sunday, 15 August 2021
Wordweavers Contest 2021
Welcome to the Twelfth year of Wordweavers!
| Poetry | Short Story | Prose 500 |
| Drabble |
Short Fiction |
As we had said we are slightly changing the contest this year. Kindly read the complete guidelines.
Here are the Guidelines for Submission for all contests.
All Winning And Featured Writers get ebooks from a pre-selected collection.
Poetry Contest
Word Limit: 6-1000 words
Jan 10, 2021 to June 30, 2021
Short Story Contest
Two categories: Magazine and Contest
Word Limit: 2000-6000 words
Jan 10, 2021 to June 30, 2021
Longlist declared on August 15, 2021 Magazine Writing
Theme: Any for the Magazine Category
This writing could any kind of fiction work. It will have no
Winners. It has only two qualifying rounds, Longlist and Featured
Writers. Only Featured Writers will be published in an anthology.
Contest Writing
Theme: Only Historical, Political, Literary Fiction
will be considered for the contest. Writers will need to include a bibliography and interviews
where relevant as part of the research.)
Submission Form (Opens in a new window)
Jan 10, 2021 to June 30, 2021
Prose 500
Short Fiction
(200-500 words) via email wordweavers.submissions@gmail.com
April 1, 2021 to April 30, 2021
Drabble
via email wordweavers.submissions@gmail.com
March 1, 2021 March 31, 2021
Kindly go through the basic spell check routine. You could opt to read
out your work to someone in the profession of writing who could offer
you some invaluable suggestions.
Please read the following before submitting your work to us.
Submission of your work tells us that you've read this, agree with it, and still want us to publish your work.
- Participation is open to all participants across the world.
The Contest is FREE is free for all countries. - Please understand that we reserve the right to accept or reject your work. Several factors are considered in our final decision whether or not to include your work in our publication, including the message, the method by which it's conveyed, the style, and how much of it works when combined.
- Entrant should be above the age of 18, having completed 18.
- Please fill every detail of the Submission Form including your entries.
- Your work must be your own, original, unaided work. Kindly avoid any Copyright hassles.
- All the entries must be in English only.
- Your original work must be submitted by email and received by the deadline posted on the page to be considered for the contest.
- We will not be accepting previously published entries. We reserve first publication rights to the work published on our site.
Terms and conditions
- These terms apply to the entrants for of Wordweavers Contest 2021, Escribes Publications. You agree to abide by these terms in their entirety. If you do not agree to any of these terms and conditions, you should not use this service. The organisers reserve the right to modify these terms and conditions at any time.
- You agree that you are legally capable of entering the Wordweavers Contest and agree to the Terms and Conditions, and that you are competent (i.e. you are of sufficient age and mental capacity) and eligible to enter into a legally binding agreement with its rules and terms and conditions.
- By submitting your creative work, you declare that the it is your own, original work, that it contains no matter which is defamatory or is otherwise unlawful in India, or which invades individual privacy or infringes any proprietary right or any statutory copyright; and you agree to indemnify and hold the organisers harmless against any claim to the contrary.
- You agree that while you retain ownership of your work, and by submitting an entry to the contest, you give Escribes Publications, permission to use your entry, with acknowledgement, but with no payment to you, in their websites, as part of Press Releases (from where they may be reproduced by media organisations). Should your entry be selected for publication, you give the editors and publishers of the compilation the right to edit your work as they see.
- Should you be declared a prize winner, you will be contacted solely through the name and address you had given at the time of entry submission, so that the organisers can get your mailing address. You therefore agree that you will respond to this notification within 30 days from the day of the results, and should you fail to do so, (1) the organisers have the right to award the prize to the next highest scoring entry, and (2) you forfeit all claims to the prize.
- You agree that the decisions of the screening jury and the contest judges are final and binding, and no correspondence will be entertained regarding these decisions.
Jayant Kashyap, Poetry 2021 Featured Writer
Bonfires
“They make a desolation and call it peace.”
– Agha Shahid Ali
When we were nothing we loved
them so much our bodies broke, nothing
remained to love back even for once;
today we are four letters, uncanny and
still in love; we are shadows, quiet
and together, and when the sun’s lucky
we’re hardly visible; the nights observe
us burning, our lips trembling, silent
and yet nothing crackles. When we
stand to reason, they burn half a country
down, merely, for the sake of names;
when the bonfire spans storeys, they
gather in the streets and chant again. We
are still nothing, and we flicker like
dying flames; when they stand we’re not
heard, our words untrustworthy, our
bodies only soil and salt. We’re still
nothing, but always more than a lie,
always no less than truth.
Nivedita N, Poetry 2021 Featured Writer
That Stench At The Train Station
The winter fog blanketed the station
In its own embrace but that stench
of god-knows-what-not
had entered surreptitiously
The two-hour wait before the train arrived
was the time for our game:
dashing our brown and
green VIP suitcases
as our parents watched
soon when we’d stop and
that stench would return
crowding our minds like
the hurried passengers
on those arthritis-inducing staircase
we followed suite,
entering the compartment
and there the stench was:
awaiting,
like the seat passenger
looking into your plate of lemon rice
curious about its texture.
Shrehya Taneja, Poetry 2021 Featured Writer
TIP-TOE
There are some nights
when great trees fall.
You see me sitting quietly,
with the whispers of leaves.
The great trees fall, they cast
shadows on the wall.
The leaves begin whispering
a fearful trill.
As the shadows on the walls keep growing,
I keep on dying...
hearing that fearful trill,
getting lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
I keep on dying. Again,
you write me down in history.
All lost now in the gloom of dust and ages.
Unaccustomed to courage,
history writes me down.
Father sits on the bench:
I look at him, always accustomed to courage,
“Give me your hand.”
Calmly, my father sits on the bench.
You see me sitting quietly,
I give him my hand
on some nights.
Source: A Pantoum composed from a single line of poems by Maya Angelou (On the Pulse of Morning,Caged Bird, Still I Rise, A conceit, The Lesson, Insomniac, Song for the old ones,On Aging, When great trees fall, Our Grandmothers, Touched by an Angel)
Anushree Bose, Poetry 2021 Featured Writer
Sons Afar
I wash my face
along the river's bruised lip,
carrying blood of those
split open by war.
I dream of undulating
paddy fields from homeland
with eyes wide open
by the moonlit minefields.
Seven seas away
bent over a bowl, my mother
is slicing gourds
slender as river snakes.
Rolling her tongue,
as tireless as worn prayer beads
felt in aching fingers.
Let him live, God, she pleads,
take me instead!
Aishwarya Vedula, Poetry 2021 Featured Writer
Bye Myself: Bi-self
I've just been by myself.
Though life was never easy,
I was thankful that I drowned in living waters...
I didn't realize it was all I wanted.
And though life is never easy,
for someone who doesn’t know what they wa-ant,
I didn't realize I knew what I wanted...
love can be hard.
To someone who doesn’t know what they wa-ant,
I was thankful that I drowned in living w
a
t
e
r
s.
Though love can be hard,
I've just been bi myself.
Source: A Pantoum under Remixed category of poem, composed from selected lines & phrases of song lyrics.
Mad tsai- boy bi-
And love can be hard
For someone who doesn't know what they wa-ant...
I've just been bi myself.
Sufian Stevens - mystery of love -
Drowning in living waters
Alec Benjamin- If we have each other-
And though life was never easy,
I didn't realize it was all I wanted
Anjali Manhas, Poetry 2021 Featured Writer
THE LAMENT OF A MUSE
One day he will come soaked in guilt
Trampling the walls, I heartily built
Severing every bond, I had held to the ground
In order to statuette me in an iron clad mound
Affectionately calling me his muse
Abjecting the tears rolling down the face
My sinister laugh of a definite ruse
Chiming its way out without any trace
He marks the beauty, it’s every layer
Naming the carves on the bodice
Sculpting my pains for people to stare
I turn mute for the formidable spears
Capitulating to the staple whims
Compiling the thoughts and sending them into an abyss
Walls cave in and darkness stiffens
The yonder yelps of yearning staggers
He will tell how I moved him
I will remember how I never set a foot ahead,
channelling my thoughts on a thorny bed.
A soul full of desperation,
Residing in a body which serves as inspiration
I remain the hollow shell,
And he blows his breathe and gave voices to me,
Then claim that I have music in me,
The music I never heard, the voices I never spoke.
Devika Dhond, Poetry 2021 Featured Writer
Labyrinth
The Garb
of assorted fabric has
set the trend, the yarn unfused
almost unwoven,
Conflicting chiffons skin
the hollow lace-phony face
Denim frameworks-Velvet cores
Shrouded Entities-Cacophony halves
Gone are the days
of Tericots and cotton-silks
Two hearts, one soul
Tie dyes and ties that die
Are now the talk of the town
aftermaths
of a tortuous fusion
of discrete, defiant
‘Gray’ and ‘White’ labyrinths
The Garb
of assorted fabric has
set the trend, the yarn unfused
almost unwoven,
Conflicting chiffons skin
the hollow lace-phony face
Denim frameworks-Velvet cores
Shrouded Entities-Cacophony halves
Gone are the days
of Tericots and cotton-silks
Two hearts, one soul
Tie dyes and ties that die
Are now the talk of the town
aftermaths
of a tortuous fusion
of discrete, defiant
‘Gray’ and ‘White’ labyrinths
Ermelinda Makkimane, Poetry 2021 Featured Writer
Mother's Song
I caught my mother's song, a piece
of yearning twisted with woolly bits of love,
and deftly put it in the narrow neck
of a memory jar that broadened
into highways to all songs she'd ever sung.
And when I need to sleep
all I have to do is uncork the wispy jar:
mother's song envelops me
like a snug hammock.
Sleep is not long in coming.
Sneha Gaud, Poetry 2021 Shortlist
Pen Warrior
She fell like a dew-drop on the fresh morning canvas..She took her pen
And was a warrior now...
And then she switched
into a warrior fairy,
tasked to sprinkle the effervescent fairy dust
Onto the words she carved...
And then she played Picasso
The colors she painted with those letters..
They motioned like a river..
Her text on the paper
Like a violin
played the symphony
Of a forgotten folklore
Her words - soothing
To the spirit of the conscience.
What a poet
She’s become
She could even change a heart...
Preetha Vasan, Poetry 2021 Featured Writer
Shivaratri
On Shivaratri we did
Many things at home,
In our different spaces.
Like Amma who would
Make some payasam, vadai or chakrapongal,
Appa who would endlessly unseeingly
Chant rudram, chamakam
And me cyclically
Learning my lessons
For exams that
Never rewarded my endless
Efforts.
Unlike
My father who was
Amply rewarded
When he quickly
Died two days before
Shiva ratri.
Leaving behind
The saligramam, spatika lingam.
Now our rudrams come
From wynks, you tubes
Even an old CD
That struts and stammers in
My father's laptop.
This shiva ratri
I bought mangoes
Raw like a wound
That won't heal.
To make pickles
Multiply flavored
Like the ones
Appa would pompously
Make and
Flamboyantly strut
Under our upturned noses.
The many miniscule pieces of
Mango I cannot see
sans my reading glasses
I shift and shuffle
Them
With sharp red chilly powder
Asfoetida, turmeric, and bitter
Fenugreek like a bad afterthought, then
The copious gingly oil.
And after soaking in the spices
Like two years of loss
I add the brilliant salt
Always to be added in the end
Like my father used to say
Else it will release water
Like tears interminable.
Salt
Like appa
Taut with its wit
Whose availability
I took for granted
Impossible to be absent
But nevertheless mortal.
Payasam: sweetened watery rice pudding; Vadai: a savoury made out of lentils and fries; Chakrapongal: a rice and jiggery dish made on special occassions
Rudram and Chamakam: sacred verses for Shiva, supposed to be sung only by upper caste Hindu men.
Saligramam: sacred stone of Vishnu ; spatika lingam: lingam made out of crystal or quartz.
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