Parkdale Street Writers

PSW's advice for young writers...

#1: Publish Yourself!
Seriously, our best advice for young writers is to publish yourself. You will never send yourself a rejection letter or edit your writing in an invasive way. Easy and cheap ways to do this are to create a blog, a webzine, or a printed zine. Then make sure to get critical feedback from your friends, enemies, frenemies and anyone else who will sit still long enough read your rants, reviews, interviews, poetry or stories.

#2: Beware Submission Fees!
Usually, if there are fees involved in a contest or call for submissions, it's because someone wants to make a lot of money off of already struggling writers. We tend to stay away from things like this, because if you look around a little, there are always equally excellent places to send your work that are free.

#3: Fight Discouragement!
This is easy to say, not so easy to do. It can be hard to get noticed and/or paid when you're just starting out. Plus there is nothing worse than working really hard on a piece only to receive a form letter rejection when you send it out. Sadly, most magazines get so many submissions, they can't possibly write personal notes to everyone. Hence our #1 good advice (above): publish yourself!

#4: Join Our Group!
Although the program is full for this year, we'll be running it again. Let us know if you want to be put on the registration list by sending us a message or calling 416-779-1448. We want to hear from you!

Below, we'll post calls for submissions and contest information (including deadlines) that are sent our way.