Alimentum: Literary Magazine About Food

As we head into the great season of eating, I thought I'd feature a lit mag dedicated to gustatory delights and frights, Alimentum. They publish food-related fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Right now they are hosting a poetry contest.

Deadline: December 1, 2009

Prize: $500 and publication

Entry Fee: $15 (Includes one year subscription)

Submissions: Via Snailmail Only

Alimentum

P.O. Box 210028

Nashville, TN 37221

Here are some menupoems they have online.

I could wax poetic about food, no problem. Now where is that verse I wrote about bread?

Foodlore Anthology Seeks Food Origin Stories

Photo Creative Commons by Eggybird

Dante's Heart says a new anthology seeks stories "wherein writers invent origin myths for their favorite foods." Basically they want you to create your own fiction story of where a certain food came from. The blog entry has examples of some foods that have already been submitted.

They may divide the book by meals -Breakfast, lunch, dinner and maybe tea time and snacks - it's still developing.

Apparently there is a lot of lee way in what you consider food - stories on primordial soup and mudpies have been submitted in addition to more traditional food. They may have a forbidden/taboo food category. So if you want to talk about the first yummy cannibal stew, go for it. (Does it scare anyone besides me that I can find a picture to illustrate human flesh as food?)

Word Count: 2000-5000 words

Deadline: April 15, 2008

Submit to: Jennifer Heath at Foodlore@comcast.net

Sauce Seeks More Food Essays From St. Louis Area Residents

Photo by Dahon from Creative Commons

Sauce Magazine , the St. Louis Metro Area's Restaurant Guide, is seeking food essay submissions for their new column.

So if you live in the St. Louis area and can carry on about cheese, wax rhapsodic about rutabagas, or write drool-worthy prose about your favorite food experiences/memories, write an essay and submit it to Sauce. Essays should be around 900 words and 12 will be featured in their monthly column. The stories can take place anywhere in the world, but must be unpublished.

If you were accepted in the original call for submissions last fall, their current submission guidelines say you can submit another essay but no author will have more than one essay published in a calendar year. I have one appearing in May, so that gives me time to work on another for next year. I'd still send your submission in as soon as you can, so they have time to consider your essay.

Here some advice from editor Katie O'Connor on what they're looking for:

"The essays can be about *anything* (really!), as long as food factors in somewhere -- either directly, as a main character or the main focus of the story -- a description of the first time the author ate an exotic ingredient, for example, or perhaps a story about experiencing the food in Italy -- or indirectly, as a component of the story or as a background element. A look at a family's kooky dynamic as told through a typical family dinner hour is an example; so is the chapter in Ruth Reichl's "Tender at the Bone" where she hints at her mother's mental illness by describing her mother's "quirk" of serving dangerously old food to guests. Absolutely any story is fair game here, as long as it's personal, real and original."

• So get eating - and writing.

New Magazine Looking for St. Louis Food Writers and Common Ties Seeks Holiday Stories

Deborah Ng posted these two freelance opportunties on her website Freelance Writing Jobs. Love her site - it's a great resource for jobs.

The first one is for St. Louis based food writers for a new foodie magazine. Click on the entry that says freelance food writers - the fourth one down.

In the other notice, Common Ties is looking for holiday stories, so click on that heading for more info. They don't have to be sugar plums dancin' either. They can be nitty gritty holiday.

Gee, maybe I should send one about this Thanksgiving. I'm waiting to see if my father shows up at my house tomorrow since he's arguing with my brother about who is having Christmas. See, I incorporate two holidays into the story. Happy freaking holiday, people.

I do hope your Thanksgiving is peaceful and full of bounty. Not the paper towels.

Sauce Magazine Seeks Food Essays

Thanks to Donna V for this notice.

Sauce Magazine , the St. Louis Metro Area's Restaurant Guide, is seeking food essay submissions for a new column. So if you can carry on about cheese, wax rhapsodic about rutabagas, or write drool-worthy prose about your favorite food experiences/memories, write an essay and submit it to Sauce.

Essays should be around 900 words and 12 will be featured in a monthly column published over the next year in the magazine. The deadline for essay submissions is November 15, 2007.

If they get enough gastronomic essays, they may continue the column after 2008. See the editor's letter below for details.

Letter from the Editor of St. Louis's Sauce Magazine:

Hello wordsmiths and friends of Sauce!

I'm really excited to tell you about a new column we'll be starting in Sauce in January: a column made up of personal essays (aka narrative nonfiction or creative nonfiction), featuring an essay written by a different author each month. Having food in the mix somewhere is the reason such essays will fit in Sauce, but the real goal here is to spotlight great stories, exceptional storytelling and beautiful writing. This is one of my favorite writing forms, and I'm convinced that you'd all be great for this.

The essays can be about *anything* (really!), as long as food factors in somewhere -- either directly, as a main character or the main focus of the story -- a description of the first time the author ate an exotic ingredient, for example, or perhaps a story about experiencing the food in Italy -- or indirectly, as a component of the story or as a background element. A look at a family's kooky dynamic as told through a typical family dinner hour is an example; so is the chapter in Ruth Reichl's "Tender at the Bone" where she hints at her mother's mental illness by describing her mother's "quirk" of serving dangerously old food to guests. Absolutely any story is fair game here, as long as it's personal, real and original.

As great writers with diverse and interesting experiences, I'm hopeful that you'll want to contribute an essay to the column. But I'll have to ask you to bear with me a bit. Since this is a new column for us, and a kind of writing that we don't typically publish, I've been working out the best way to collect enough essays (12) to be sure we'll be able to publish a year's worth of columns. I'm casting a wide net, with the hope that enough of you will be interested in sharing your food memories, thoughts and insights that this new column will be a go. I hate to call this a contest, but I guess it sort of is...

So I'd like to invite all of you to contribute a personal essay that has something to do with food to Sauce by November 15, 2007. We'll publish the best 12, one per month throughout 2007 (and beyond, if we get enough responses!). We'll choose those 12 blindly; authors will be paid for published essays (and this column will be an exception to our normal practice of paying upon publication -- since we'll be collecting column content so far in advance, the selected writers will be paid in advance). Word count is 900 words. Please email (or mail) submissions to me, with "essay" in the subject line.

I hope you're as excited about this new project as I am. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to call or e-mail me. Now, go dig up your favorite food memory/story and get writing!!
PS-- feel free to extend this invite to other great writers you know!

Cheers,
Katie O'Connor
Senior Editor

Sauce Magazine
1820 Chouteau Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63103