EKPHRASTIC WRITING CHALLENGE: Rainy Night at Etaples, by William Edouard Scott

Rainy Night at Etaples, by William Edouard Scott (USA). 1912.

Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

Thank you to everyone who participated in our last writing challenge for Tolima-Region Gold Breastplate, Colombia, which ends today. Accepted responses for the Gold Breastplate challenge will be published on December 7, 2018.

The prompt this time is Rainy Night at Etaples, by William Edouard Scott. Deadline is December 14, 2018. PLEASE NOTE: In order to better organize submissions, we have a new email for challenge submissions:[email protected]

Everyone can participate! Try something new if you've never written from visual art before and discover why there are so many of us devotees. Ekphrastic writing helps artists and lovers of art to look more carefully, from different angles or mindsets, at visual art. And it helps writers discover new ways of approaching their work, their experiences, and writing itself. 

The rules are simple.

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 painting 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.

3. Have fun.

4. Send only your best results to [email protected]. 

5. Include SCOTT WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line in all caps please. Please use this email only for challenge submissions. Continue to use the regular email for regular submissions and correspondence.

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. 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 December 14, 2018.

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!

Please note, next year we are going to have some special guest editors judging some of the challenges! We're hoping this will inspire in unexpected ways, add new flavours and perspectives to the journal, and foster community. When a challenge has a guest editor, it will be announced in advance as well as in this space the day the prompt is posted. We're excited about this and about having a whole year of challenges, now that we've found an ekphrastic prompt system that is working out in terms of consistency and longevity. Many great poems will be written in the year ahead!