Take your latest heatwave-induced existential crisis and turn it into art. Or a machine that magically saves us from ourselves WAIT THAT’S ART.
Here are thirteen competition and submission opportunities for writers exploring climate change, our place in the world, and wtf we do now.
A note on submission fees:
£0 – £12 are marked green
£13 – £19 are marked orange
£20 are marked red
Waikiki Beach Refugees
Crime fiction that has a surfing/sailing/fishing/coastal connection - not necessarily set in or around O'ahu/Honolulu. So whether you're a grommet with a foamie, or a barnacle Kahuna still in love with their wall-hanger, or a windjammer with a wealth of scuttlebutt and a taste for tramp steamers, pull up a bollard, share a tot, and spin us your dits.
Short story Earth Water
Poetry & Polar Science: Oregon State University
Scientists working in the Arctic and Antarctic are documenting some of the most rapid environmental changes on Earth. Through ice cores, ocean measurements, satellite imagery and ecological observation, they help us understand how polar regions are changing and why those changes matter. Poets work differently. Through image, rhythm, metaphor, story and attention, poetry offers another way of engaging with a changing world. Poetry can linger with uncertainty, wonder, grief, beauty, contradiction, and imagination. It can ask questions that data alone cannot answer. PRAx, Spring Creek Project and Terrain.org invite poets to create original poems in response to a selection of polar science papers from Oregon State University researchers. Participants are encouraged to read one or more of the featured papers and allow the research to spark creative inquiry
Poetry Climate change Water
Reckoning
Reckoning is looking for creative writing and art about environmental justice. “Reckoning” is an imperfect means of navigation by which one determines where they’re going using only where they’ve been. It can also mean a settling of scores: justice. Here at Reckoning, we acknowledge that the determination of justice is as difficult as enacting it, but that we must continue to strive towards it, even—maybe even especially—in all our imperfections. Environmental justice is a social and political movement centered around changing the fact that the people most often affected by environmental policy and practice are not the people creating and enacting those policies and practices.
Creative Non-fiction Essays Fiction Poetry Short story Climate change Ecofiction
The Wild Muse Nature Writing Prize 2026
Personal stories, poems, and essays that explore our relationship with the living world and where nature participates in the story. What happens when the outer landscape meets the inner one and something shifts as a result: perhaps a river changes how you think, or a hillside holds your grief. It could be that a tree, a season, or a stretch of wild ground asks something of you. We’re seeking writing in which the land is alive on the page – influencing thought, feeling, and transformation. You might write about a time when being outdoors altered your sense of who you are. A moment when the wind challenged you. When birdsong steadied you. When frost, mud, heat, or darkness became teacher.
Essays Fiction Poetry Short story Climate change Earth Nature
The Moth Nature Writing Prize
The Moth Nature Writing Prize is an international prize. It aims to encourage and celebrate the art of nature writing and is awarded annually to unpublished pieces of prose or poetry which best combine exceptional literary merit with an exploration of the writers’ relationship with the natural world. The winners are chosen by a single judge each year, who reads the stories anonymously.
Fiction Poetry Climate change Nature
Anthology Nature Writing Competition
The Anthology Nature Writing Competition is created to celebrate the beauty of the natural world, inspire literary excellence and encourage Anthology’s readers to explore the great outdoors. Whether it’s the wonder of life right in your own garden, an encounter with wildlife, the serenity of a forest, a reflection on environmental challenges, or the healing power of nature, we welcome your stories.
Essays Climate change Earth Nature
Changing Skies: Nod To The Natural World
Changing Skies highlights creative nonfiction that focuses on the voices of those experiencing our constantly evolving existential reality. It aims to educate, inspire, uplift, and ground those who read it through a hand-curated compilation of prose, poetry, and artwork submitted from all corners of the globe. Submissions must address or centre the environment.
Creative Non-fiction Poetry Climate change
Terrain.org
An online journal for material that reaches deep into the earth’s fiery core, or humanity’s incalculable core, and brings forth new insights and wisdom. We are seeking work in English (or translation) from around the world, and particularly Indigenous, Native, Black, Brown, and other historically marginalised and underrepresented voices.
Essays Fiction Poetry Short story Climate change Earth Ecofiction
The Tiger Moth Review
We are looking for work that emphasises the connections between human activity and the environment that produces it, work that displays an awareness of ecology and concerns over environmental disaster. We also want work that is hopeful, in spite of the ecological horrors that exist today. Send us work that is eco-conscious and critical, work that celebrates the beauty/ bounty of nature, work that is cognisant, curious and contemplative of the relationships between humanity, modernity, cultures and the environments in which we live in or imagine ourselves to inhabit.
Fiction Climate change Ecofiction
Tractor Beam
We are looking for original written and graphic works exploring anti-apocalyptic futures on Earth that have actionable soil-based technologies as their premise. We’re seeking stories with an emphasis on soil and agriculture in food, culture and entertainment, politics and social issues. We’re also interested in co-existent ecosystems, the ocean and soil under water, nature and beauty, and soil as the origin of life. Interrogate what it would mean for us to successfully take on the climate crisis. What technology would have to exist? A perfect Tractor Beam story gets readers thinking: What if this really happens? What’s the (soil) science behind it? What makes a thriving planet? Please think beyond farming, develop complex, human characters with nuanced conflicts, find humor. Think cross-genre! A soilpunk romance, a comedy, a coming of age story.
Fiction Climate change Earth Nature Soilpunk
Sans Press: Again
Doomed by fate or driven by never-ending hope, following destiny or refusing to follow the signs, stories & characters are often shaped by cycles and patterns. Sometimes by being unknowingly framed by them, or by being unable to fully escape the traps laid by fate. For anthology #12, we want to read stories that deal with time, cycles and patterns, and how characters respond to and are shaped by them. We are looking for broad responses to the theme AGAIN, and what that prompt may mean to different people in different contexts. As always, these patterns may take any shape or form – the generational struggles of magical realism, the self-fulfilling prophecies of fantasy, or the contemporary fight against destructive behaviours – as long as they are a sincere exploration of the theme. AGAIN will be an anthology that recognises the obstacles against change, and the structures that can maintain repetition despite individual will; of how people are affected by trying to challenge what has always/will always be; and how meaning is found in any kind of narrative, ever-changing or cyclical.
Fiction Climate change Earth Ecofiction Nature
The 2026 Earth Amulet Poetry Prize
The Earth Amulet Poetry Prize™ seeks poetry that engages deeply with the natural world—its landscapes, elements, and all living beings, while reflecting on our shared responsibility toward the planet. We welcome work that arises from careful observation, reflection, and ecological awareness, and that speaks to the interconnectedness of humans, nature, and all living beings with whom we share the planet. Submissions may also explore themes such as environmental threats, as well as the impact of war, human greed, lack of awareness, and the neglect of responsible care for the planet.
Poetry Climate change Earth Nature
Crooked Spine
Short fiction, poems, and art exploring folk horror & water: rivers, bogs, baptisms, and what surfaces when the rain stops.
Fiction Short story Horror Water
