An Audacious Writing Contest: Love Is in the Air
In April, Debbie Millman published Love Letter to a Garden, a beautiful, book-length visual essay on a lifetime of gardening with varying degrees of success and failure, and what it means to learn how and love making things grow.
I spent months watching Debbie write and illustrate this lovely book and what struck me, in addition to her talent, was the unique way she created a love letter. It wasn’t only about the glories of gardening, the abundance of the natural world, it was also about the trial and error, the perseverance, the losses, and the abundance.
A good love letter embodies these qualities and so much more. Throughout history, we have seen some stunning examples of a good love letter, whether it is James Joyce’s bawdy missives to Nora Barnacle or Frida Kahlo expressing her affections to Diego Rivera or countless others.
In celebration of Love Letter to a Garden, we are launching a love letter contest for paid subscribers. Write a love letter to a person, a place, an idea, whatever inspires you. We are only interested in prose or visual stories, which is to say we are not considering poetry despite the inherent romance of that genre.
We will be accepting entries from now until June 30th at midnight. Letters should be no longer than 1,500 words. The winner will receive $1,500, publication in The Audacity, and a one-hour Zoom session where I offer feedback on up to 25 pages (double-spaced) of your fiction or non-fiction prose. Winners will be announced by September 1st. All entrants who are annual Audacity subscribers will also receive a copy of Love Letter to a Garden. Books will be shipped out in early July.
P.S. Love Letter to a Garden makes a lovely Mother’s Day gift if you have a maternal figure in your life who gardens or likes a beautiful story.
BEHIND THE PAYWALL: THE SUBMISSION LINK