fillers, and crisp epigrams all of a distinctly frisky character. The editors do not want any material that is actually raw, however, or that leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Contributors may count on quick readings and prompt payments on acceptance. Lawton Mackall is the editorial director. The T. P. A. Magazine, published by the Travelers Protective Association of America, St. Louis, and devoted to literature and the advancement of the traveling man, is not in the market for anything but constructive business messages, particularly those relating to transportation conditions, and the extension of our foreign trade, particularly to Latin America. The magazine does use some fiction, but could hardly be considered a market for fiction. The Boys' Magazine (Smethport, Penn.) is particularly desirous of securing humorous stories. The magazine is always in the market for first-class boys' stories, of from 3,000 to 5,000 words. At present the editors are well supplied with serials. Telling Tales (New York) in its new and enlarged size wants short stories, of 3,000 to 5,000 words; prose fillers, of 200 to 500 words; novelettes, of from 12,000 to 15,000 words; and verse. Almost any subject is acceptable, except straight adventure stories, detective stories, war stories, or smutty stories. Decisions are rendered in ten days, and payment is made on acceptance. Current History (New York) is a purveyor of history, and the editors are anxious to receive manuscripts that relate to current history up to date. The facts must be related without bias and must be based on authentic information. Articles covering controversial topical discussions are not desired. All subjects of current history are included in the scope of the magazine, that is international affairs, or international events in science, sociology, industry, commerce, and politics. The editors pride themselves upon the accuracy of the statements admitted to the columns of Current History. They prefer articles within 5,000 words, and can handle illustrations. The American Agriculturist (New York) is well supplied with manuscripts at the present time. Mr. Burkett, the editor, says that the trouble with most of the writers for professional publications is that they write from the city end of things and do not cover topics from the farm point of view. In other words, they are writers of city copy but not of farm copy.. The requirements for the Garden Magazine (Garden City, N. Y.) are for articles that interpret the fact and the spirit of gardening. They must be true to technique, and they must exhibit a knowledge and acquaintance with plant material and its use. The demands of the magazine are very highly specialized, and the average writer does not know anything at all about plants or gardens. Mr. Barron, the editor, says that not one per cent. of the material that comes to him in the general way is worth a second consideration, so that he feels that unfortunately he cannot attain much assistance from the general writer. Travel (New York) is always glad to receive colorful articles on interesting places in any part of the world. If possible, these articles should be accompanied by unusual and effective photographs. The National Magazine (Boston) is not using fiction at the present time. The material for the magazine is "Mostly About People," but the editor reports that the editorial appropriation has been exhausted, and that the magazine is unable to pay for any sketches of this kind at present. Boy Life, Girlhood Days, and Pure Words, all published at Cincinnati, are overstocked with manuscripts, and will be out of the market for months to come. Social Progress (Chicago) is flooded with manuscripts, and will not be in the market again before April 1. Miss Huling, the editor, says that she is getting a great deal of high-class matter from the notice printed in THE WRITER, which it breaks her heart to return, but she has a list of high-class contributors from whom she orders special material, which leaves very little for her to take from general contributors. Raw Material (New York) offers a good market for men and women employed in the industries to which it caters, who want to utilize their leisure time in writing about the commodities they handle during the workaday, and is in the market for articles on finished mechanical parts which manufacturers buy. Farm and Fireside Magazine (New York) has an abundant supply of manuscripts on hand, and will not be in the market until after March 1. The American Press Association, 225 West Thirty-ninth street, New York, announces that the American Press will add the features that made Pep, the magazine for newspapermen formerly published in Cleveland, helpful. What Pep was to the editorial man, the American Press is to the man who is and who aspires to be the chief factor in allaround newspaper making. The editor will be glad to consider manuscripts dealing with progressive newspaper-making and experiences, as well as to receive news items. The Southern Review has discontinued publication. The Touchstone (New York) is to have a new department of poetry and criticism, to be edited by Mrs. Marguerite Wilkinson. The magazine offers a prize of $50 each month for the best poem or group of poems submitted anonymously, so that they may be criticised impersonally. Mrs. Wilkinson's review of the prize-winning poem will be printed with it. This department will also have an article on poetic technique each month, to which other critics are invited to reply. Mrs. Wilkinson hopes that the department will prove to be a pleasantly argumentative open forum for poets, critics, and all who enjoy poetry. The Bank of the United States, Fifth avenue and Thirty-second street, New York. offers prizes in gold of $100, $50, and $25 for the best essays, written by salaried women, on the subject, "How I Earn My Salary and What My Salary Earns for Me." The competition will close on Washington's Birthday. Grenville Kleiser, 1269 Broadway, New York, offers a prize of ten cloth-bound books on public speaking, valued at $12.50, for the best list of fifty prose similes selected from standard writers in English. The similes may be long or short; each must be complete in itself; poetic similes should not be included; and the sources are not to be given. Lists must be mailed on or before February 15, and any number of lists may be sent in by contestants. Mr. Kleiser thinks that searching for similes in this way is highly beneficial to the student in English. Mana-Zucca, president of the American Music Optimists, offers a prize of $500 for the best quintet (piano and strings) by an American composer. Manuscripts must be sent with an assumed name or motto, and be accompanied by an envelope bearing the name or motto, with the real name and address inside. The contest will close November I, and manuscripts should be sent to M. Gobert, Secretary American Music Optimists, 4 West 130th street, New York. Prize offers still open : Prizes in Letters offered by the Columbia University School of Journalism: For the best American novel published this year, $1,000; for the best play performed in New York, $1,000; for the best book of the year on United States history, $1,000 ; for the best American biography, $1,000. Also, Prizes in Journalism, amounting to $3,500 and $500-medal, and three traveling scholarships having a value of $1,500 each. All offered annually under the terms of the will of Joseph Pulitzer. Particulars in April WRITER. Prize of $500 offered by Dodd, Mead & Co., for a story for girls from nine to fifteen. Contest to close April 1. Particulars in November WRITER. most Thomas A. Edison prize of $500 for the meritorious research on "The Effects of Music," contest to close May 31. Particulars in December WRITER. Nine prizes of $25, $15, and $10, and additional prize of $20, in three contests, for best worth-while stories of work in rural communities, offered by Home Lands, New York. Competition closes February 10. Prizes of $5,000, $2,500, $1,000, and $500, and twenty prizes of $250 each for the best twenty-four short stories published by the Photoplay Magazine during 1921. Particulars in August WRITER. Hart, Schaffner, & Marx prizes of $1,000, $500, $300, and $200 for the four best studies in the economic field submitted by June 21, 1921. Particulars in August WRITER. Prize of $500, and five prizes of $100 each, offered by the True Story Magazine for the best success stories published between November, 1920, and March, 1921. Particulars in September WRITER. Prizes of $50 and $25 offered by the New Paris Prize of $2,000 offered by the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris for the two best essays on "Tolerance in Economics, Religion, and Politics." Particulars in February WRITER. The Rose Mary Crawshaw Prize for English Literature, value to £100, offered annually by the British Academy. Particulars in May WRITER. Annual Hawthornden prize of £100 offered in England for the best work of imaginative literature in English prose or poetry by an author under forty years of age that is published during the previous twelve months. Two prizes offered by Poetry for the best work printed in the magazine in the twelve numbers ending with that for September $200 for a poem or group of poems by a citizen of the United States, and $100 for a poem or group of poems by any author, without limitation. Honorarium of $50 for the most meritorious piece of poetry published in the Granite Monthly during 1921. Particulars in January WRITER. Prize of $1,000 for a new air for the Yale song, "Bright College Years," offered by the Yale class of 1899. Particulars in April WRITER. Monthly prizes offered by the Photo-Era (Boston) for photographs, in an advanced competition and a beginner's competition. Post for Weekly prizes offered by the Boston original short stories by women, published each day. Particulars in May WRITER. Prizes of two dollars and one dollar offered monthly by Everygirl's Magazine, formerly Wohelo, (New York) for stories, short poems, and essays, written by Camp Fire girls. Particulars in October WRITER. WRITERS OF THE DAY. Christine Kerr Davis, who wrote the poem, "The Stay-at-Home," which was published in the January number of Scribner's Magazine, is a Canadian, of Irish descent, and most of her best work is Irish. Miss Davis has been trying to write verse ever since she learned to print, but she has written little for the past two years, as she was taking a graduation course in music, which she completed last September. She is now devoting much more time to writing, and has also composed eight or ten songs to her own words, which she has not yet offered for publication. She has had perhaps thirty or forty poems published in the New York Times, the People's Home Journal, St. Nicholas, American Cookery, the Farm Journal and other magazines. Her Irish poem in Scribner's for April, 1919, was widely copied and brought her many charming letters. Elizabeth Holding, author of the story, "Mollie The Ideal Nurse," in the Century for January, is a New Yorker, married to an Englishman, and has two little daughters. She has been writing since she was sixteen, with complete lack of success until last year, editors with one accord calling her short stories "too grim." Her novel, "Invincible Minnie," was published last spring by the George H. Doran Company, and she had stories in the July and August numbers of Smart Set and in the December and January numbers of the Century. Munsey's will publish a serial from her pen, called "Angelica," beginning in the March number. Mrs. Holding is much interested in women, and likes to write about them, for them, and from a frankly feminine point of view. "The Rebecca N. Porter, whose story, Wives of Xerxes," came out in Scribner's Magazine for January, resides in Santa Barbara, and returned there at the close of the war, after having been employed by the government in doing newspaper publicity work throughout California. After finishing at the University of California, Miss Porter went into newspaper work in San Francisco and began writing short stories which she sold chiefly to the Ladies' Home Journal and other women's magazines. During this time she also engaged in settlement work on the Oakland waterfront in the evening. Owing to a physical breakdown she was forced to give up journalism, and she went to Santa Barbara and devoted herself to free-lance writing. Henry Holt & Company brought out her first novel, "The Girl from Four Corners," last spring, and the book is now in its second edition. The story in Scribner's is the first of several which will appear in that magazine during the year. Thyra Samter Winslow, who had a story, "Her Own Room," in the January Century, wrote her first story when she was seven the year she started going to school. Her mother sent the story to the St. Louis PostDispatch, which was running a series of children's stories, and it won first prize. The daughter entered the University of Missouri when she was sixteen, and while there wrote feature stories for Missouri newspapers. After two years at the University and a couple of months at school teaching, she went back to Fort Smith, Arkansas, her native town, and joined the staff of the Fort Smith Southwest American as society editor, feature writer, general news reporter and anything else that was needed in a small newspaper office. Mrs. Winslow says that this was the best training she ever had, and her advice to any one who wants to be a writer is to "join a small-town paper and work hard." After a time on the stage, she got a place as feature writer on the Chicago Tribune, and while there married John Seymour Winslow, who was then in the local department of the paper. Five years ago she wrote her first short story. She says she wrote it with the Smart Set in mind, sent it there, and it was accepted in four days. During the next three years the Smart Set printed all the stories she wrote, with the exception of four, which Mrs. Winslow now acknowledges were n't worth accepting. Besides the stories in the Century and the Smart Set, Mrs. Winslow has just sold a story to the Pictorial Review, and she is working on her first novel. The cost of living is higher every day Because transportation cost too much to pay; Invent your own imagery, metaphors, and epithets. Do not remind us of Bartlett's Quotations. Do not write such conventional spring verse as : And now I tune my rustic reed To pipe beside the babbling brook, My shepherd's crook on flowery mead I lay, and sigh with pensive look. But, on the other hand, mere eccentricity does not win a place. Don't do this: : I embrace the scarlet Revolution It is more dear to me than apple pie, Or the lush murmurs of the sea lions at the park, Or enclose stamps for the returned man.1script. The Independent. |