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How to Submit to the BARN Annual Collection

Learn to successfully submit your work to a writing contest.

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How to Submit to the BARN Annual Collection

How to Submit to the BARN Annual Collection

Learn to successfully submit your work to a writing contest.

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About

Learn the basics of how to successfully submit your work to our contest in a way that gives you the best chance of getting published! Our submission guidelines are standard to most contests, which can help you in the future.

BONUS: We'll help you submit your work to the Annual Collection in real time. Tutors on site! Bring your laptop and submission-ready work.

Details

  • Skill level: All
  • Bring a laptop and your submission-ready work if you plan to submit during class.

Class Policies

Ages 14 and up are welcome.

Instructor
Kassia Sing

Kassia has been creating stories her whole life. As a child, her family told her she had an “overactive imagination and she actively fosters it today. After trading the corporate ladder for small-town life, Kassia joined BARN's Writers Studio and it changed her life. She’s had three short stories published in a digital publication, Context Journal. In 2023, she won third place in short story in the annual Pacific Northwest Writers Association contest. She is a member of Sound Writers, hosts weekly writing sessions for the Writers Studio, and serves as a volunteer for several nonprofits including BARN. Kassia has one terrible novel that she will bury in her backyard, one novel that needs serious re-writing, and one good novel that she hopes to finish editing soon. She enjoys sharing the love and support offered by BARN’s writing community.

Instructor
Molly Tallon

Molly is a Puget Sound-based, California-born writer. After earning a bachelors of arts degree in creative writing from San Francisco State, she went on to bartend for several years before meeting her beloved partner and becoming a parent. Experiencing the horrific state of perinatal care in America drew her to birth work and reproductive rights advocacy and then eventually back to writing. She is a member of BARN Writer’s Studio, and an editor for its Annual Collection. She is a founding member of Content Hospital, a rowdy critique group of speculative fiction writers. Her stories are populated by characters that aren’t always heroes, often reckoning with systems of power and control, with echoes of, and reverberations into, our own world. When she is not inviting readers to think acutely about the future of humanity, she is parenting her three children, or throwing a stick for her two dogs.

Instructor
Emily Smiley

Emily, a writer from South Carolina who now calls Seattle home, crafts stories that reflect the world back to her readers, inviting them to explore deeper truths within themselves. Her novel, Treading Water, came in first in the horror category of the 2024 Pacific Northwest Writers' Association (PNWA) unpublished competition. She’s the programming coordinator for the Writer’s Studio at BARN. She’s also a member of the PNWA and the Seattle Chapter of the Horror Writers Association. Emily is a co-founder of Content Hospital, a speculative fiction writers marketing collective, and is represented by A.J. Van Belle at the Booker Albert Literary Agency. When she’s not giving her readers nightmares, she’s running, traveling, reading, or playing video games.

Instructor
Kathleen O'Brien

Kathleen has been involved with the BARN as an active member of the Writer's Studio (including serving on Studio's Steering Committee) and a member of the Editorial Team producing the BARN's 2025 Writers' Studio Annual Collection. She had a long career of technical writing, including two full-length books and many articles on the subject of sustainable building. She is returning to her first loves, poetry and short fiction, and has published in Kerning, The Gift, Poetry Breakfast, The Journal of Expressive Writing, The Literary Nest, and Academy of the Heart and Mind. Her poem “Ode to Time” was included in the 2024 Ars Poetica program at BARN and her poems have been featured in the local ‘Poetry Corners’ Collections 2024 and 2025. Her full-length poetry collection Novena to Loss and Other Love Poems earned Honorable Mention in Moonpath Press' Sally Albiso Award Competition. Moonpath has scheduled publication of the collection for Fall 2026.

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