Call for entries 30th open mike - Competition for Young Literature
13.04.2022
This year, the Haus für Poesie is organising the 30th open mike competition for young literature.
The open mike promotes the next generation of literary talent and offers young writers a stage, brings them into contact with the literary public, and enables them to form networks. The open mike supports young talents on a sustained basis and helps them to develop their unique literary voices.
Prize money of EUR 7,500 in total will be shared out for the 30th open mike.
Participation requirements
1) Young authors who are not older than 35 years (deadline 19 June 2022) and who have neither published an independent literary book (this also applies to e-books) nor concluded a contract with a publishing house for a book publication may participate in the open mike.
2) Submissions may be either prose (e.g. short prose, a short story, or a self-contained excerpt from a novel) or poetry and must be written in German or translated into German (see also point 4).
3) The texts must be unpublished, i.e. including publication online, as an e-book, in magazines or journals, in anthologies or publications of any kind, and may not have been successfully submitted for any other competition or fellowship award.
4) Authors who do not write in German and who live in German-speaking countries may submit their text to the competition together with a translator in a translation into German, provided that both the original text and the translation are unpublished.
Submission
The length of the submitted texts (poetry or prose, not both together) should correspond to a 15-minute reading time. Submissions that are significantly too long or too short will be excluded from the competition. Neither the author's name nor a password may appear on the manuscript pages.
Each participant may submit only one entry. Entries must be submitted online between 19 May and 19 June 2022 at 23:59 (CET) at haus-fuer-poesie.org.
Conditions of entry
Round 1: Selection by the preliminary jury
An independent preliminary jury consisting of editors from the publishing house will select up to 20 texts from the anonymous submissions for the final. The selected applicants will receive a personal invitation at the beginning of October 2022. The names of the finalists will also be announced on haus-fuer-poesie.org.
The invited authors will be reimbursed for travel expenses (2nd class train) up to 150 euros upon submission of receipts and invoices. (This does not apply to authors from Berlin).
The selected texts will be published as an anthology to coincide with the competition final in November. Participants not selected for the final will not be informed separately.
Round 2: Public Final
The final will take the form of a public reading on the weekend of 18 to 20 November 2022 in Berlin. Each finalist will have exactly 15 minutes of reading time to present the text and convince the jury and the audience.
The jury will select three winners and award prizes together worth EUR 7,500. At least one prize will be awarded for poetry. The jury will decide on the distribution of the prize money. In addition, the taz audience jury will award the audience prize, which will be to have the winning text printed in the Tageszeitung newspaper. The radio station Deutschlandradio Kultur will also broadcast a feature about the competition this year.
The open mike online
www.openmikederblog.de
www.facebook.com/openmikeberlin
Contact
Saskia Warzecha
openmike@haus-fuer-poesie.org
The open mike is an event organised by the Haus für Poesie in cooperation with the Heimathafen Neukölln and the Allitera Verlag.