Ekphrastic Prompt Challenge: John Di Leonardo

Nude Study, by John Di Leonardo (Canada) 2020

Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. 

The prompt this time is Nude Study, by John Di Leonardo. Deadline is November 27, 2020.

We are very pleased to have the artist, John Di Leonardo, who is also a widely published ekphrastic poet, as our guest editor! (Check out our recent interview with John here.)  

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, or short fiction. 1000 words max please.

Guest editor: 

John Di Leonardo was born in Pescina, Italy. He is a visual artist and poet whose most recent ekphrastic  poetry collection, Conditions of Desire, was published by Hidden Brook Press in 2018. He has published two award-winning chapbooks; Book of Hours (2014), and Starry Nights (2015). He is the recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award  2017. He is currently working on his Corona, a series of large format drawings based on the Covid 19 pandemic, and is looking forward to the ekphrastic writing responses to his drawing Nude Study. John writes and paints in Brooklin, Ontario. You can visit him at johndileonardo.ca.

The Rules

1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination.

2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF.

3. Have fun.

4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.

Send your work to [email protected]. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry.

5.Include DI LEONARDO WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line. 

6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your poem. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 

7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight, November 27, 2020.

9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is.

10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline.

​11. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
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12. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! ​​