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The Best Student Writing Contests for 2023-2024

Help your students take their writing to the next level.

When students write for teachers, it can feel like an assignment. When they write for a real purpose, they are empowered! Student writing contests are a challenging and inspiring way to try writing for an authentic audience— a real panel of judges —and the possibility of prize money or other incentives. We’ve gathered a list of the best student writing contests, and there’s something for everyone. Prepare highly motivated kids in need of an authentic writing mentor, and watch the words flow.

1.  The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards

With a wide range of categories—from critical essays to science fiction and fantasy—The Scholastic Awards are a mainstay of student contests. Each category has its own rules and word counts, so be sure to check out the options  before you decide which one is best for your students.

How To Enter

Students in grades 7-12, ages 13 and up, may begin submitting work in September by uploading to an online account at Scholastic and connecting to their local region. There are entry fees, but those can be waived for students in need.

2.  YoungArts National Arts Competition

This ends soon, but if you have students who are ready to submit, it’s worth it. YoungArts offers a national competition in the categories of creative nonfiction, novel, play or script, poetry, short story, and spoken word. Student winners may receive awards of up to $10,000 as well as the chance to participate in artistic development with leaders in their fields.

YoungArts accepts submissions in each category through October 13. Students submit their work online and pay a $35 fee (there is a fee waiver option).

3. National Youth Foundation Programs

Each year, awards are given for Student Book Scholars, Amazing Women, and the “I Matter” Poetry & Art competition. This is a great chance for kids to express themselves with joy and strength.

The rules, prizes, and deadlines vary, so check out the website for more info.

4.  American Foreign Service National High School Essay Contest

If you’re looking to help students take a deep dive into international relations, history, and writing, look no further than this essay contest. Winners receive a voyage with the Semester at Sea program and a trip to Washington, DC.

Students fill out a registration form online, and a teacher or sponsor is required. The deadline to enter is the first week of April.

5.  John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Essay Contest

This annual contest invites students to write about a political official’s act of political courage that occurred after Kennedy’s birth in 1917. The winner receives $10,000, and 16 runners-up also receive a variety of cash prizes.

Students may submit a 700- to 1,000-word essay through January 12. The essay must feature more than five sources and a full bibliography.

6. Bennington Young Writers Awards

Bennington College offers competitions in three categories: poetry (a group of three poems), fiction (a short story or one-act play), and nonfiction (a personal or academic essay). First-place winners receive $500. Grab a poster for your classroom here .

The contest runs from September 1 to November 1. The website links to a student registration form.

7. The Princeton Ten-Minute Play Contest

Looking for student writing contests for budding playwrights? This exclusive competition, which is open only to high school juniors, is judged by the theater faculty of Princeton University. Students submit short plays in an effort to win recognition and cash prizes of up to $500. ( Note: Only open to 11th graders. )

Students submit one 10-page play script online or by mail. The deadline is the end of March. Contest details will be published in early 2024.

8. Princeton University Poetry Contest for High School Students

The Leonard L. Milberg ’53 High School Poetry Prize recognizes outstanding work by student writers in 11th grade. Prizes range from $100 to $500.

Students in 11th grade can submit their poetry. Contest details will be published this fall.

9. The New York Times Tiny Memoir Contest

This contest is also a wonderful writing challenge, and the New York Times includes lots of resources and models for students to be able to do their best work. They’ve even made a classroom poster !

Submissions need to be made electronically by November 1.

10.  Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest

The deadline for this contest is the end of October. Sponsored by Hollins University, the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest awards prizes for the best poems submitted by young women who are sophomores or juniors in high school or preparatory school. Prizes include cash and scholarships. Winners are chosen by students and faculty members in the creative writing program at Hollins.

Students may submit either one or two poems using the online form.

11.  The Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers

The Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers is open to high school sophomores and juniors, and the winner receives a full scholarship to a  Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop .

Submissions for the prize are accepted electronically from November 1 through November 30.

12. Jane Austen Society Essay Contest

High school students can win up to $1,000 and publication by entering an essay on a topic specified by the Jane Austen Society related to a Jane Austen novel.

Details for the 2024 contest will be announced in November. Essay length is from six to eight pages, not including works cited.

13. Rattle Young Poets Anthology

Open to students from 15 to 18 years old who are interested in publication and exposure over monetary awards.

Teachers may choose five students for whom to submit up to four poems each on their behalf. The deadline is November 15.

14. The Black River Chapbook Competition

This is a chance for new and emerging writers to gain publication in their own professionally published chapbook, as well as $500 and free copies of the book.

There is an $18 entry fee, and submissions are made online.

15. YouthPlays New Voices

For students under 18, the YouthPlays one-act competition is designed for young writers to create new works for the stage. Winners receive cash awards and publication.

Scroll all the way down their web page for information on the contest, which accepts non-musical plays between 10 and 40 minutes long, submitted electronically. Entries open each year in January.

16. The Ocean Awareness Contest

The 2024 Ocean Awareness Contest, Tell Your Climate Story , encourages students to write their own unique climate story. They are asking for creative expressions of students’ personal experiences, insights, or perceptions about climate change. Students are eligible for a wide range of monetary prizes up to $1,000.

Students from 11 to 18 years old may submit work in the categories of art, creative writing, poetry and spoken word, film, interactive media and multimedia, or music and dance, accompanied by a reflection. The deadline is June 13.

17. EngineerGirl Annual Essay Contest

Each year, EngineerGirl sponsors an essay contest with topics centered on the impact of engineering on the world, and students can win up to $500 in prize money. This contest is a nice bridge between ELA and STEM and great for teachers interested in incorporating an interdisciplinary project into their curriculum. The new contest asks for pieces describing the life cycle of an everyday object. Check out these tips for integrating the content into your classroom .

Students submit their work electronically by February 1. Check out the full list of rules and requirements here .

18. NCTE Student Writing Awards

The National Council of Teachers of English offers several student writing awards, including Achievement Awards in Writing (for 10th- and 11th-grade students), Promising Young Writers (for 8th-grade students), and an award to recognize Excellence in Art and Literary Magazines.

Deadlines range from October 28 to February 15. Check out NCTE.org for more details.

19. See Us, Support Us Art Contest

Children of incarcerated parents can submit artwork, poetry, photos, videos, and more. Submissions are free and the website has a great collection of past winners.

Students can submit their entries via social media or email by October 25.

20. The Adroit Prizes for Poetry & Prose

The Adroit Journal, an education-minded nonprofit publication, awards annual prizes for poetry and prose to exceptional high school and college students. Adroit charges an entry fee but also provides a form for financial assistance.

Sign up at the website for updates for the next round of submissions.

21. National PTA Reflections Awards

The National PTA offers a variety of awards, including one for literature, in their annual Reflections Contest. Students of all ages can submit entries on the specified topic to their local PTA Reflections program. From there, winners move to the local area, state, and national levels. National-level awards include an $800 prize and a trip to the National PTA Convention.

This program requires submitting to PTAs who participate in the program. Check your school’s PTA for their deadlines.

22. World Historian Student Essay Competition

The World Historian Student Essay Competition is an international contest open to students enrolled in grades K–12 in public, private, and parochial schools, as well as those in home-study programs. The $500 prize is based on an essay that addresses one of this year’s two prompts.

Students can submit entries via email or regular mail before May 1.

23. NSHSS Creative Writing Scholarship

The National Society of High School Scholars awards three $2,000 scholarships for both poetry and fiction. They accept poetry, short stories, and graphic novel writing.

Apply online by October 31.

Whether you let your students blog, start a podcast or video channel, or enter student writing contests, giving them an authentic audience for their work is always a powerful classroom choice.

If you like this list of student writing contests and want more articles like it, subscribe to our newsletters to find out when they’re posted!

Plus, check out our favorite anchor charts for teaching writing..

You Might Also Like

Best 2024 Competitions for Students in Grades K-12

Competitions in STEM, ELA and the arts, and more! Continue Reading

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Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

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Writing Contests, Grants & Awards

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• G&A: The Contest Blog

The Writing Contests, Grants & Awards database includes details about the creative writing contests—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, and more—that we’ve published in Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it. Ours is the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Poetry Prize

A prize of $1,000 and publication in Oberon is given annually for a single poem. Submit up to three poems of no more than two pages each with an $18 entry fee, which...

Omnidawn Publishing

Single poem contest.

A prize of $1,000 is given annually for a single poem. The winner also receives 20 copies of a letterpress broadside of the winning poem. Claire Marie Stancek will judge. Using...

Desperate Literature

Short fiction prize.

A prize of €1,500 (approximately $1,628), publication in the Desperate Literature prize anthology, and a weeklong residency at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation’s castle in the...

Poetry Foundation

Ruth lilly and dorothy sargent rosenberg poetry fellowships.

Five fellowships of $27,000 each are given annually to U.S. poets between the ages of 21 and 31. Using only the online submission system, submit 10 pages of poetry and an...

University of Arkansas Press

Etel adnan poetry prize.

A prize of $1,000 and publication by University of Arkansas Press is given annually for a first or second poetry collection by a writer of Arab heritage. Series editors Hayan...

New Ohio Review

Literary prizes.

Three prizes of $1,500 each and publication in New Ohio Review are given annually for a poem or group of poems, a short story, and an essay. Submit a poem or group of...

Florida Review

Editor’s prizes.

Three prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Florida Review are given annually for a poem or group of poems, a short story, and an essay. The editors will judge....

Pen Parentis

Writing fellowship for new parents.

A prize of $2,000, a year of mentorship, and publication in Dreamers Creative Writing Magazine is given annually to a fiction writer who is the parent of a child under...

Whiting Foundation

Creative nonfiction grants.

Up to 10 grants of $40,000 each are given annually for creative nonfiction works-in-progress to enable writers to complete their books. Creative nonfiction writers under...

Poetry and Short Story Awards

Two prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Sixfold are given quarterly for a group of poems and a short story. Using only the online submission system, submit up to...

Australian Book Review

Elizabeth jolley short story prize.

A prize of $6,000 AUD (approximately $3,931) is given annually for a short story. A second-place prize of $4,000 AUD (approximately $2,621) and a third-place prize of $2,500...

Ghost Story

Supernatural fiction award.

A prize of $1,500 and publication on the Ghost Story website and in the 21st Century Ghost Stories anthology series is given biannually for a short story with a...

Chapbook Prize

A prize of $1,000, publication by Oversound , and 50 author copies is given annually for a poetry chapbook. Diana Khoi Nguyen will judge. Using only the online submission...

University of Iowa Press

Iowa poetry prize.

Publication by University of Iowa Press is given annually for a poetry collection. Using only the online submission system, submit a manuscript of 50 to 150 pages with a $20...

Poetry International

Poetry international prize.

A prize of $1,000 and publication in Poetry International is given annually for a single poem. Using only the online submission system, submit up to three poems of any...

Tadpole Press

100-word writing contest.

A prize of $2,000 is given biannually for a work of flash poetry or prose. Manuscripts written in a language other than English are accepted when accompanied by an English...

Autumn House Press

Nonfiction prize.

A prize of $1,000 and publication by Autumn House Press is given annually for a book of nonfiction. The winner also receives a $1,500 travel and publicity grant. Clifford...

Inlandia Institute

Hillary gravendyk prizes.

Two prizes of $1,000 each, publication by the Inlandia Institute, and 20 author copies are given annually for a poetry collection by a U.S. resident and a poetry collection by...

Short Story Contest

A prize of $1,000 is given biannually for a short story. Using only the online submission system, submit a story of 1,001 to 7,500 words with a $15 entry fee...

Tupelo Press

Berkshire prize.

A prize of $3,000, publication by Tupelo Press, and 20 author copies is given annually for a first or second poetry collection. English translations of works originally written...

University of Pittsburgh Press

Agnes lynch starrett poetry prize.

A prize of $5,000 and publication by University of Pittsburgh Press is given annually for a debut poetry collection. Using only the online submission system, submit a...

Marsh Hawk Press

A prize of $1,000 and publication by Marsh Hawk Press is given annually for a poetry collection. John Keene will judge. Using only the online submission system, submit a...

Noemi Press

A prize of $2,000 and publication by Noemi Press is given annually for a book of poetry. The editors will judge. Using only the online submission system, submit a manuscript of...

Winning Writers

Tom howard/john h. reid fiction & essay contest.

Two prizes of $3,500 each, two gift certificates for two-year memberships to the literary database Duotrope, and publication on the Winning Writers website are given annually...

McGill University

Montreal international poetry prize.

A prize of $20,000 Canadian (approximately $14,807) and publication in the Montreal Poetry Prize anthology is given biennially for a poem. A.E. Stallings will judge, and...

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What Winning a Creative Writing Award Means to the 2022 Winners

July 11, 2022 by JoAnn Yao

The 2022 Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards winners have spoken! These five exceptional high school seniors are preparing for college in the fall, but took a few moments to share with us what winning this scholarship award means to them, and how they envision their hopes and voices in the future.  

I am extremely thankful for this award. I am especially honored to have received the Maya Angelou Award for Spoken Word. Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise was the poem that piqued my interest for performance poetry. I read and performed that piece in the fifth grade. It feels like a full circle moment to be honored by that piece as I end my high school career.

Diversity in publishing allows me to see a future for myself in the writing industry. As a gay Latina, authors from diverse backgrounds provide hope that other kids like me will grow up feeling less alone. The first book I ever read with an openly gay character opened my eyes and made me feel safer to know there was someone out there like me. My writing is a way to turn my isolation and pain into something that can help people. It is a great privilege to pull people in with my stories and open their minds. Writing can transform. By reading a personal piece, the reader is transported to my experience, whether they agree or not. Writing helps me take up space, make my mark on the world and advocate for myself. As someone interested in history, I appreciate that writing helps to document the experience of a gay teenager in America in 2022. It is my way of saying I am here and I matter.

Representation in publishing is like a promise from the future. Last summer, I found a book in the library: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience . Not only was this the first book I’d ever seen that focused on multiracial characters, but also it was the first time I’d seen so many multiracial authors. … Reading stories about people like me, written by people like me, written  for  people like me, was incredibly touching and inspiring. I could see myself in these authors — one day, I, too, might write pieces of short fiction on the multiracial experience.

Winning this award means the world to me. It has encouraged me greatly as a writer, and will make an important contribution to my future education (especially with regards to my college tuition). I’m extremely excited for the professional development week and the meeting with an editor, since I’m hoping to someday publish my own book, inspired by my grandma’s past experiences and struggles facing poverty, famine, and single parenthood.

Congratulations to all of the winners! Read more about the PRH Creative Writing Awards here .

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Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards 2023 for High School Seniors in the U.S. (up to $10,000)

Deadline: February 1, 2023

Applications are open for the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards 2023. Through this programme, Penguin Random House will award college scholarships of up to $10,000 each to five public U.S. high school seniors, nationwide.

Creative Writing Awards winners have gone on to become professional and award-winning authors. Since 1993, this programme has awarded more than $2.8 million dollars to public high school students for original poetry, memoir/personal essay, fiction/drama, and spoken-word compositions. This signature programme continues to empower and celebrate hundreds of young writers each year.

Penguin Random House is passionate about encouraging the next generation of readers and authors and promoting diverse voices and stories. For more than 25 years, Penguin Random House has supported this mission through the Creative Writing Awards, which in 2019 entered into an innovative new partnership with national advocacy nonprofit We Need Diverse Books.

Awards will be distributed as follows:

• $10,000 Maya Angelou Award for Spoken Word
• $10,000 Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry
• $10,000 Fiction/Drama
• $10,000 Michelle Obama Award for Memoir

Eligibility

Applicants to the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards Programme in partnership with We Need Diverse Books must:

• Be current high school seniors at a public high school in the United States graduating Spring of 2023;
• Be 21 years of age and under;
• Plan to enroll in an accredited two-year or four-year college, university, or approved vocational-technical school Fall 2023;
• Submit one original literary composition in English in one of the following genres of poetry, spoken word, fiction/drama or personal essay/memoir.

Entry Requirements

• All submissions must be typed, double-spaced with a minimum 12 point font size and no longer than 10 pages.
• All submissions with multiple pages must be numbered with a page number and total number of pages (Ex. 1/3, 2/3, 3/3).
• A four-page minimum is recommended for the fiction/drama genre.
• Spoken word entries must upload a typed entry along with an emailed audio format file.
• Only one entry per student may be submitted and considered.

Application

Click here to apply

For more information, visit Penguin Random House .

Jude Ogar is an educator and youth development practitioner with years of experience working in the education and youth development space. He is passionate about the development of youth in Africa.

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U.S. Creative Writing Awards Scholarship

Offered by Penguin Random House

Multiple awards worth up to

Grade level.

High School Senior

Expected deadline: This scholarship might not currently be accepting applications. Most scholarship programs only accept applications a few months ahead of their annual deadline. We’ve estimated this deadline based on last year’s deadline in order to help you plan out your scholarship applications.

January 2025

Scholarship Overview

Are you a college-bound high school senior with a love for the written or spoken word? If so, consider applying for the U.S. Creative Writing Awards Scholarship! The scholarship is open to college-bound high school seniors who create and submit an original piece of written fiction, drama, poetry, a memoir/personal essay, or a spoken word piece. Penguin Random House, a multinational polishing company, funds the program. They focus on encouraging the next generation of authors and promoting diverse stories. Thus, since 1993, this program has empowered and celebrated young writers each year with more than $2.8 million awarded in scholarships. Each year, five recipients (one winner per category) earn up to $10,000 to go towards their college expenses. If you are passionate about writing and are looking to pay for tuition, we encourage you to apply!

Eligibility information

This scholarship is open to students meeting the below eligibility criteria.

U.S. Citizens, Canadian Citizens, Permanent Residents, DACA, Other

No GPA requirement

Applicants should have an interest in Creative Writing.

Apply to these scholarships due soon

$10,000 “No Essay” Scholarship

$2,000 Sallie Mae Scholarship

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Craft or Commodity? The ‘Paradox’ of High School Creative Writing Competitions

One story of his — which went on to win a national award for flash fiction — begins as a dispassionate description of household events, but turns by the end into a heart-wrenching account of a child dealing with the aftermath of his parents’ divorce. In writing it, Heiser-Cerrato says he was inspired by the struggles of friends who had experienced divorce.

He also wrote it to enter into national creative writing competitions.

In other disciplines, high schoolers compete in elite programs that can serve as pipelines to top colleges. Students interested in STEM fields often strive to qualify for the International Science and Engineering Fair, while those hoping to go into law and politics can apply for the U.S. Senate Youth Program or compete in the national championships for speech and debate.

For students like Heiser-Cerrato, a number of creative writing contests now serve as a similar path to elite college admissions.

Heiser-Cerrato, who won multiple national awards for his prose and poetry, submitted creative writing portfolios to Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, and he’s sure his creative writing is what propelled him to Harvard.

“It was my main hook,” he says.

Competitions like YoungArts and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards have skyrocketed in selectivity and prestige over the past few decades, becoming a quantifiable way for colleges to identify rising literary stars. The winners of top competitions disproportionately go on to attend elite universities.

However, selecting the nation’s top storytellers is more complicated than selecting its top scientists. Competitions can’t score poems in the same objective way they score students in a Math Olympiad. Instead, who wins these competitions often comes down to taste. Several former high school creative writers say that specific styles and topic areas disproportionately win national writing competitions. Top competitions, they say, incentivize writers to dredge up traumatic experiences or commodify their cultural backgrounds.

By propelling winners to elite colleges and empowering them to pursue writing, these competitions can change the course of students’ lives. But the pressure to win can also stunt young writers’ growth and complicate their relationship with their craft and themselves.

Creative writing contests aim to promote self expression and foster a new generation of artists. But does turning creative writing into a competition for admissions erode its artistic purpose?

‘The Most Important Experiences of My Life’

H eiser-Cerrato went to a “sports high school” where it was difficult for him to receive the mentorship he needed to improve his writing or find a creative community. With so few fellow writers at his high school, he had no way to judge his talent beyond the confines of his English classes.

Creative writing competitions were founded for students like Heiser-Cerrato. Even a century ago, Maurice Robinson — the founder of Scholastic — was surprised at the gap that existed in recognizing students interested in the arts. In 1923, he hosted the first national Scholastic Art and Writing Competition.

By the 2000s, Scholastic no longer had a monopoly on creative writing competitions. YoungArts was founded in 1981, and the Foyle Young Poets Competition held its inaugural competition in 1998. After the Adroit Journal and Bennington College launched their annual creative writing competitions in the 2010s, competing in multiple creative writing competitions became common practice for aspiring poets and novelists.

When students started finding out about competitions through the internet, competitions like Scholastic doubled in size. The Covid-19 pandemic drove submissions to competitions like Foyle Young Poets up even more. Last year, the Scholastic awards received more than 300,000 entries, up from the 200,000 some entries received in 2005.

Collectively, these contests now receive more than 315,000 creative writing entries a year in categories like poetry, prose, and even spoken word. Students submit individual works of writing, or in some cases portfolios, to be judged by selection panels often consisting of professors and past winners. They are assessed on criteria like “originality, technical skill, and personal voice or vision.”

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards boasts an impressive list of alumni who have gone on to win the highest literary prizes in their fields. Past winners include lauded writers Stephen King, Sylvia Plath, Joyce Carol Oates, and Amanda S. Gorman ’20.

Hoping to perhaps join this illustrious group, Heiser-Cerrato began applying to competitions his sophomore year. Spurred on by his high school English teacher — who incorporated contest submissions into assignments — Heiser-Cerrato felt the concrete nature of competition deadlines helped hold him accountable.

“When you’re trying to do something creative and you have no feedback loop or deadline, you can get very off track and not develop,” he says. “I never would have done that if there wasn’t a contest to submit to, because then there was no opportunity to get feedback.”

While Heiser-Cerrato went on to win some of Scholastic’s top honors — a National Silver Medal and Silver Medal with Distinction for his senior portfolio — even some who fare less well appreciate the feedback competitions provide.

“I think a lot of people are very cautious to give negative feedback to younger writers,” says Colby A. Meeks ’25, a former poetry editor of the Harvard Advocate. “I think getting rejections from certain contests and losing certain competitions did help me grow as a writer insofar as tempering an ego that I think young writers can very easily get from English teachers.”

Heiser-Cerrato views his experience with the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program — a program that pairs high schoolers with established writers — as “pretty instrumental to my growth.” After applying during his senior year, Heiser-Cerrato met bi-weekly with his mentor, discussing works of other authors and workshopping two stories of his own.

Similarly, when Darius Atefat-Peckham ’23, then a student at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, won a National Silver Medal in the Scholastic competition, he became eligible to apply to the National Students Poet Program. From a pool of finalists submitting more than 23,000 works, Atefat-Peckham was selected as one of five National Student Poets.

“It led me to probably the most important experiences of my life. As a National Student Poet, I got to travel the Midwest and teach workshops to high schoolers and middle schoolers,” he says. “That pretty much set me on my trajectory for wanting to be a teacher someday, wanting to apply myself in the ways that I would need in order to get to a prestigious institution.”

‘If You’re Going to Apply to Harvard…’

W hen Daniel T. Liu ’27 opened his Harvard application portal, he knew exactly why he’d gotten in.

“My application to college was almost solely based on writing,” Liu says.

In high school, along with serving on the editorial staff of multiple literary magazines and attending creative writing summer camps, Liu won dozens of contests — including becoming a YoungArts winner and a 2022 Foyle Young Poet of the Year.

“I actually read my admissions file, and they did mention camps that they know, summer camps like Iowa and Kenyon, which are big teen writing summer programs,” says Liu. “They pointed that out.”

According to The Crimson’s analysis of publicly available data and interviews with multiple students, there is a clear link between high school creative writing contest success and enrollment at highly selective colleges.

From 2019 to 2022, among students with publicly available educational history who won Scholastic’s Gold Medal Portfolio — the competition’s highest award — just over 50 percent enrolled in Ivy League universities or Stanford. Fifteen percent more received writing scholarships or enrolled at creative writing focused colleges.

From 2015 to 2020, 55 percent of the students who won first, second, or third place in the Bennington Young Writers Awards for fiction or poetry enrolled in Ivy League universities or Stanford.

As Atefat-Peckham reflects back on his college application, he knows his creative writing successes were essential in complementing his standardized test scores. While he was proud of his ACT score, he did not believe it would have been enough to distinguish him from other qualified applicants.

Since 2018, three recipients of YoungArts’ top-paying scholarship — the $50,000 Lin Arison Excellence in Writing Award — have matriculated to Harvard. Other winners attended Brown, Swarthmore, and Wesleyan. Recent recipients include Stella Lei ’26, Rhodes Scholar-Elect Isabella B. Cho ’24, and Liu.

Creative writing competitions’ prominence in the college admissions process comes during the most competitive college application environment ever. Harvard’s Class of 2025 received a record-high number 57,435 applicants, leading to the lowest admissions rate in College history.

Eleanor V. Wikstrom ’24, a YoungArts winner and Rhodes Scholar-elect, described YoungArts as “super cool” in allowing her to meet other artists. She also recognized the importance of her participation for college applications.

“I can’t lie: If you think that you’re going to apply to Harvard, it’s very helpful to have some kind of national accolade,” she says.

The ‘Paradox’ of Competitive Art

I n 2021, an anonymously written document accusing student poet Rona Wang of plagiarism made waves in the competitive creative writing community. Wang — who had won awards from MIT and the University of Chicago, was affiliated with Simon & Schuster, and had published a book of short stories — was accused of copying ten works written by other student poets.

According to Liu, this behavior isn’t unprecedented. Several years ago, Liu explains, an “infamous” scandal erupted in the high school creative writing world when a student plagiarized Isabella Cho’s poetry and entered it into competitions.

Liu says more students are beginning to apply to writing competitions out of a desire to have awards on their resume, rather than because of a genuine interest in creative writing.

While creative writing contests can provide valuable opportunities for feedback and mentorship, several students look back on their time in the competitive creative writing circuit with ambivalence. The pressure to write in service of a contest — writing to win, not just to create — can pressure writers to commodify their identities and cash in on their painful experiences, turning a creative outlet into a path to admissions or quest for outside validation.

Liu says he regrets that creative writing competitions are becoming a pipeline to elite college admissions. He’s worried competitions like Scholastic and YoungArts are becoming too similar to programs like the International Science and Engineering Fair.

“Math, science, all these competitions, they all have some aspect of prestige to them,” says Liu. “What makes it so difficult in that regard is that writing isn’t math. It requires a level of personal dedication to that craft.”

“It kind of sucks because a lot of artistic practice should come out of personal will,” says Liu. “To compete in art is paradoxical, right?”

Sara Saylor, who won a gold portfolio prize for her writing, told the New York Times in 2005 that “the awards came to mean too much to me after a while.”

“Whenever Scholastic admissions time rolled around, we began to get very competitive and more concerned about winning the contest than we should have,” she says.

Indeed, students at elite creative high schools like the Interlochen Center for the Arts are pushed by teachers to enter competitions. Hannah W. Duane ’25, who attended the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts as part of the creative writing department, was required to submit to three creative writing competitions every six weeks.

(These competitions are dominated by schools like Duane’s. In 2019, 23 Interlochen students received national Scholastic awards for their creative writing — a distinction typically awarded to less than 1 percent of entries.)

Though Liu wasn’t required to submit to contests, he felt a different kind of obligation. Liu says writing competitions pushed him to write almost exclusively about his heritage, keeping him from exploring other narratives.

“From the start, I applied with a lot of cultural pieces, like pieces about my family history,” says Liu. “Those were the ones that won. And so it built me into a cycle where I was only writing about these areas — heritage.”

Liu’s experience wasn’t uncommon. When looking at other winning pieces, he noticed a similar trend.

“The competitions — Scholastic, YoungArts, those two big ones — definitely prioritize writing about your heritage,” says Liu. “Part of the reason behind that is for a lot of the students, that’s a very unique aspect of them.”

“In a hyper-competitive environment, what you can write better than anyone else is what’s gonna make you stand out,” he adds.

In an emailed statement, YoungArts Vice President Lauren Slone wrote that YoungArts winners in writing “must demonstrate a sense of inventiveness, show attention to the complexities and technical aspects of language, and have a clear, original, and distinct point of view.”

Chris Wisniewski ’01, Executive Director of the nonprofit that oversees Scholastic, wrote in an email that the competition has been “welcoming to works across many styles, subjects, and points of view” and does not give “implicit or explicit guidance” to jurors or competitors about the content or style of winning pieces. He added that “on the national level, each piece of writing undergoes at least three separate readings from jurors to diversify the views on its adherence to the program’s original and sole criteria.”

Ryan H. Doan-Nguyen ’25, who received a Scholastic Gold Key and won the New York Times’s Found Poem Contest, notes another way young writers try to distinguish themselves.

“Students feel compelled to embellish or to write about really painful things,” says Doan-Nguyen, a Crimson News Editor. “It does tend to be really heavy hitting topics that make the page.”

According to him and multiple others, the creative writing circuit pushes students to expose deeply personal, sometimes traumatic experiences for academic points. (Students make similar claims about the college admissions process .)

Doan-Nguyen was hesitant to publicly open up about vulnerable experiences, so he shied away from writing about traumatic memories of his own. But he fears this reluctance held him back.

“Maybe that’s why I did not win more contests,” he says. “I was always too afraid to be so vulnerable and raw.”

Duane recalls the competitions being dominated by sobering personal narratives: often stories about authors’ experiences with racism, abuse, or sexual assault. However, her school worked to insulate its students from the pressure to sensationalize.

“The constant refrain we would hear is, ‘Writing is not your therapy. Get that elsewhere,’” she says.

Liu says writing contests not only changed his content — they also pushed him and other competitors to write in the specific style of past winners. He says many successful pieces were reminiscent of the poet and novelist Ocean Vuong.

Writers would cut their lines off at odd places “to give the illusion of mystery when there’s no real thought behind it besides, ‘Hey, it should look like this because it looks pretty like this,’” says Liu. He also recalls writers, especially young poets, using “a lot of language of violence.” Liu worries this overreliance on stylistic imitation can stunt young writers’ growth.

He questions whether the existence of creative writing competitions is helping young writers at all.

“If writing is supposed to be a practice of self-reflection, you’re not doing those things when you plagiarize. You’re not doing those things when you submit just a draft of someone else’s style,” says Liu. “It doesn’t align with what it should be as an artistic practice.”

‘I Will Always Be Writing’

S ince coming to Harvard, Heiser-Cerrato has begun writing for a very different purpose. He joined the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine.

With the structure and pressure of creative writing competitions behind them, he and other past winners are taking their writing in new directions.

“My high school writing was very sentimental and very focused on trying to be profound,” Heiser-Cerrato says. “But here, I’ve been more interested in the entertainment side of things.”

When writing for competitions, Heiser-Cerrato says it was difficult for him to define his goals. But for the Lampoon, he says he just wants to make others laugh. There, Heiser-Cerrato has finally found the sense of community he lacked in high school.

Meeks joined the Harvard Advocate, where he critiques poetry instead of writing it. In high school, Meeks appreciated competitions as an avenue through which to receive feedback on his writing. Now, he works to give those who submit work to the Advocate similar guidance.

“Often, submitting to a literary magazine feels like you’re sending something into a void,” Meeks says. “And I really wanted as much as possible, as much as it was manageable timewise, to make sure that people were getting some feedback.”

Like Meeks, Wikstrom and Doan-Nguyen are also members of campus publications. Wikstrom is the former editorial chair of The Crimson, and Doan-Nguyen is a Crimson News and Magazine Editor.

Wikstrom, who was the Vice Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland in high school for her spoken word poetry, says she loved spoken word poetry in high school because of its capacity to spark action. At Harvard, she saw The Crimson’s Editorial Board as another way to speak out about important issues.

“It’s a really interesting middle ground for creative writing, because you do have the commitment to factual accuracy,” she says. “But you also have more leeway than perhaps news to be injecting your personal voice. And also that urgency of, ‘I feel very strongly about this. And other people should feel strongly about this, too.’”

Unlike Heiser-Cerrato, Atefat-Peckham wasn’t drawn to any existing organization on campus. Though he attended Interlochen and succeeded in highly selective contests while in high school, Atefat-Peckham disagreed with the cutthroat, commodifying incentive structure and believed campus literary organizations like the Advocate and Lampoon were too selective.

When Atefat-Peckham returned to campus after the pandemic, he helped form the Harvard Creative Writing Collective, a non-competitive home for creative writing on campus.

Liu is a member of the Creative Writing Collective and the Advocate. But most of his writing at Harvard has been independent. Instead of writing for competitions, Liu says he’s transitioned to writing for himself.

And though Doan-Nguyen is not sure what he wants to do after college, he — along with Liu, Meeks, Heiser-Cerrato, Wikstrom, and Duane — is sure writing will play a role in it.

“It’s a big part of my life and always has been, and I think it’s made me see so much about the work that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise if I didn’t put my pen to paper,” says Doan-Nguyen.

“I know that no matter what I end up doing, whether that’s going to law school or journalism or just doing nonprofit work, I will always be writing. Writing and writing and writing.”

Correction: February 13, 2024

A previous version of this article included a misleading quote attributed to Ryan Doan-Nguyen.

— Magazine writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at [email protected] .

— Associate Magazine Editor Adelaide E. Parker can be reached at [email protected] .

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the 17 best writing contests for high school students.

Other High School

If you're a writer—fiction, non-fiction, or fanfiction—you can put those skills to work for you. There are tons of writing contests for high school students, which can award everything from medals to cash prizes to scholarships if you win .

Not only will a little extra money, whether cash or scholarships, help you when it comes time to pay for college, but the prestige of a respected reward is also a great thing to include on your college application.

Read on to learn more about what writing contests for high school students there are, how to apply, and what you could win !

Writing Contests With Multiple Categories

Some high school contests accept entries in a variety of formats, including the standard fiction and non-fiction, but also things like screenwriting or visual art. Check out these contests with multiple categories:

Scholastic Art and Writing Awards

• Award Amount: $1,000 to $12,500 scholarships
• Deadline: Varies between December and January, depending on your region
• Fee: $10 for single entry, $30 for portfolio

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards celebrate art by students in grades seven through twelve (age 13 or older) on a regional and national scale. These awards have a huge number of categories and styles, including cash prizes or scholarships for some distinguished award winners . Categories include science-fiction and fantasy writing, humor, critical essays, and dramatic scripts, among others.

Deadlines vary by region (but are mostly in December and January), so use Scholastic's Affiliate Partner search to find out when projects are due for your area.

Scholastic partners with other organizations to provide prizes to winners, so what you can win depends on what you enter and what competition level you reach. Gold medal portfolio winners can earn a $12,500 scholarship, and silver medal winners with distinction can earn a $2,000 scholarship , as well as many other options in different categories.

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards are open to private, public, or home-schooled students attending school in the US, Canada, or American schools in other countries. Students must be in grades seven through twelve to participate. Eligibility varies between regions, so consult Scholastic's Affiliate Partner search tool to figure out what applies to you .

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards have a $10 entry fee for individual submissions and $30 for portfolio submissions, which may be waived for students in need . These fees may vary depending on location, so be sure to check your local guidelines .

Ocean Awareness Contest

• Award Amount: Scholarships up to $1,500
• Deadline: June 13, 2023 (submissions open in September)

The Ocean Awareness Contest asks students to consider the future of a coastal or marine species that is under threat from climate change. Submissions are accepted in a variety of art forms, but all must consider the way that climate change impacts ocean life .

Submissions for all categories, including art, creative writing, film, interactive and multimedia, music and dance, and poetry and spoken word are due in June, although the exact date varies slightly each year.

Winners may receive prizes of up to a $1,500 scholarship , depending on which division they fall into and what prize they win.

The contest is open to all international and US students between the ages of 11 and 18.

River of Words

• Award: Publication in the River of Words anthology
• Deadline: January 31, 2023

The River of Words contest asks students to consider watersheds—an area that drains into the same body of water—and how they connect with their local community. Students can explore this concept in art or poetry, with winners being published in the annual River of Words anthology .

Entries in all categories must be submitted by January 31, 2023. 

The River of Words contest is primarily for recognition and publication, as the website doesn't list any prize money . The contest includes specific awards for certain forms, such as poetry, some of which may have additional prizes .

The contest is open to International and US students from kindergarten to grade 12 (ages 5 through 19). Students who have graduated from high school but are not yet in college are also eligible.

Adroit Prizes

• Award Amount: $200 cash award
• Deadline: Typically April of each year

Sponsored by the Adroit Journal, the Adroit Prizes reward high school students and undergraduate students for producing exemplary fiction and poetry. Students may submit up to six poems or three works of prose (totaling 3,500 words) for consideration. Submissions typically open in spring .

Winners receive $200 and (along with runners-up) have their works published in the Adroit Journal . Finalists and runners-up receive a copy of their judge's latest published work.

The contest is open to secondary and undergraduate students, including international students and those who have graduated early . The Adroit Prizes has a non-refundable fee of $15, which can be waived.

YoungArts Competition

• Award Amount: Up to $10,000 cash awards
• Deadline: October 15, 2022; application for 2024 opens June 2023

Open to students in a variety of disciplines, including visual arts, writing, and music, the YoungArts competition asks students to submit a portfolio of work. Additional requirements may apply depending on what artistic discipline you're in .

Winners can receive up to $10,000 in cash as well as professional development help, mentorship, and other educational rewards.

Applicants must be 15- to 18-year-old US citizens or permanent residents (including green card holders) or in grades 10 through 12 at the time of submission . There is a $35 submission fee, which can be waived.

Fiction Writing Contests for High School Students

Many contests with multiple categories accept fiction submissions, so also check out the above contests if you're looking for places to submit original prose.

EngineerGirl Writing Contest

• Award Amount: $100 - $500 cash prize
• Deadline: February 1, 2023

This year's EngineerGirl Writing Contest asks students (though the name of the organization is "EngineerGirl," students of any gender may participate) to submit a piece of writing that shows how female and/or non-white engineers have contributed to or can enhance engineering’s great achievements. Word counts vary depending on grade level.

At every grade level, first-place winners will receive $500, second-place winners will receive $250, and third-place winners will receive $100 . Winning entries and honorable mentions will also be published on the EngineerGirl website.

Students of any gender from third to 12th grade may submit to this contest. Home-schooled and international students are also eligible.

Nonfiction Contests for High School Students

Like fiction, non-fiction is often also accepted in contests with multiple categories. However, there are quite a few contests accepting only non-fiction essays as well.

The American Foreign Services Association Essay Contest

• Award Amount: $1,250 to $2,500
• Deadline: April 3, 2023

The American Foreign Services Association sponsors a high school essay contest tasking students with selecting a country or region in which the United States Foreign Service has been involved at any point since 1924 and describe, in 1,500 words or less, how the Foreign Service was successful or unsuccessful in advancing American foreign policy goals in this country/region and propose ways in which it might continue to improve those goals in the coming years .

One winner will receive $2,500 as well as a Washington D.C. trip and a scholarship to attend Semester at Sea . One runner-up receives $1,250 and a scholarship to attend the International Diplomacy Program of the National Student Leadership Conference.

Entries must be from US students in grade nine through 12, including students in the District of Columbia, US territories, or US citizens attending school abroad, including home-schooled students.

John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Contest

• Award Amount: $100 - $10,000
• Deadline: January 13, 2023

The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage contest tasks students with writing an essay between 700 and 1,000 words on an act of political courage by a US elected official serving during or after 1917 , inspired by John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage . Each essay should cover the act itself as well as any obstacles or risks the subject faced in achieving their act of courage. Essays must not cover figures previously covered in the contest, and should also not cover John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, or Edward M. Kennedy.

One first-place winner will receive $10,000, one second-place winner will receive $3,000, five finalists will receive $1,000 each, and eight semi-finalists will win $100 each.

The contest is open to students in grades nine through 12 who are residents of the United States attending public, private, parochial, or home schools . Students under the age of 20 in correspondence high school programs or GED programs, as well as students in US territories, Washington D.C., and students studying abroad, are also eligible.

SPJ/JEA High School Essay Contest

• Award Amount: $300 - $1,000 scholarships
• Deadline: February 19, 2023 (submissions open in November)

The SPJ/JEA high school essay contest , organized by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Journalism Education Association, asks students to  analyze the importance of independent media to our lives (as of now, the official essay topic for spring 2023 is TBD) . Essays should be from 300 to 500 words.

A $1,000 scholarship is given to a first-place winner, $500 to second-place, and $300 to third-place.

The contest is open to public, private, and home-schooled students of the United States in grades 9-12 .

Playwriting Contests for High School Students

For those who love the stage, playwriting contests are a great option. An original play can earn you great rewards thanks to any of these contests!

VSA Playwright Discovery Program Competition

• Award: Participation in professional development activities at the Kennedy Center
• Deadline: January 4, 2023 (Application opens in October)

The VSA Playwright Discovery Program Competition asks students with disabilities to submit a ten-minute script exploring their personal experiences, including the disability experience . Scripts may be realistic, fictional, or abstract, and may include plays, screenplays, or musical theater.

All entries are due in January. Scripts may be collaborative or written by individuals, but must include at least one person with a disability as part of the group .

One winner or group of winners will be selected as participants in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Winners will have access to professional assistance in developing their script as well as workshops and networking opportunities.

This contest is open to US and international students in ages 14 to 18 . Groups of up to five members may collaborate on an essay, but at least one of those students must have a disability.

Worldwide Plays Festival Competition

• Award: Professional production in New York
• Deadline: March (official 2023 deadline TBD)

In the Worldwide Plays Festival Competition , students from around the world can submit an eight-minute script for a play set in a part of a neighborhood —specifically, at a convenience store, outside a character's front door, or at a place where people convene. Each play must have roles for three actors, should not have a narrator who isn't also a character, and should not contain set changes.

Entries are due in February. Winners will have their play produced by professionals at an off-Broadway New York theater . Scholarships are also available for winners.

Any student, including US and international, in first through 12th grade may submit work for consideration.

• Award Amount: $50 - $200 cash prize
• Deadline: 2023 deadline TBD (application opens January 2023)

Students may submit a one-act, non-musical play of at least ten pages to YouthPLAYS for consideration . Plays should be appropriate for high school audiences and contain at least two characters, with one or more of those characters being youths in age-appropriate roles. Large casts with multiple female roles are encouraged.

One winner will receive $250, have their play published by YouthPLAYS, and receive a copy of Great Dialog , a program for writing dialog. One runner up will receive $100 and a copy of Great Dialog.

Students must be under the age of 19, and plays must be the work of a single author.

The Lewis Center Ten-Minute Play Contest

• Deadline: Spring of each year

Students in grade 11 may submit a ten-minute play for consideration for the Lewis Center Ten-Minute Play Contest . Plays should be 10 pages long, equivalent to 10 minutes.

One first-prize winner will receive $500, one second-prize winner will receive $250, and one third-prize will receive $100.

All entries must be from students in the 11th grade .

Poetry Writing Contests for High School Students

For those who prefer a little free verse or the constraints of a haiku, there are plenty of poetry-specific contests, too.

Creative Communications Poetry Contest

• Award Amount: $25
• Deadline: December

Students in ninth grade or below may submit any poem of 21 lines or less (not counting spaces between stanzas) for consideration in the Creative Communications Poetry Contest .

Students may win $25, a free book, and school supplies for their teacher .

Public, private, or home-schooled US students (including those in detention centers) in kindergarten through ninth grade may enter.

Leonard L. Milberg '53 High School Poetry Prize

• Award Amount: $500-$1500
• Deadline: November 

Students in 11th grade may submit up to three poems for consideration in the Leonard L. Milberg '53 High School Poetry Prize . Submissions are due in November .

One first-prize winner will receive $1500, one second-prize winner will receive $750, and a third-prize winner will receive $500. Poems may be published on arts.princeton.edu. All entrants must be in the 11th grade.

Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest

• Award Amount: $500 - $5,000 renewable scholarship, $350 cash prize
• Deadline: October 31, 2022

Women poets who are sophomores or juniors in high school may submit two poems for consideration for the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest .

One first-place winner will receive a $350 cash prize, publication in and ten copies of Cargoes , Hollins' student magazine, as well as a renewable scholarship of up to $5,000 for Hollins and free tuition and housing for the Hollinsummer creative writing program. One second-place winner will receive publication in and two copies of Cargoes, a renewable scholarship to Hollins of up to $1,000, and a $500 scholarship to attend Hollinsummer.

Applicants must be female students in their sophomore or junior year of high school .

What's Next?

If you're looking for more money opportunities for college , there are plenty of scholarships out there— including some pretty weird ones .

For those who've been buffing up their test scores , there are tons of scholarships , some in the thousands of dollars.

If you're tired of writing essays and applying for scholarships, consider some of these colleges that offer complete financial aid packages .

Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

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23 Writing Competitions for High School Students

What’s covered:, why should you enter a writing competition, writing competitions for high school students, how do writing competitions affect my admissions chances.

Do you dream of writing the next great American novel? Are you passionate about poetry? Do you aspire to become a screenwriter? No matter what genre of writing you’re interested in—whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or something else entirely—there’s a writing competition focused on it.

Writing competitions provide great motivation to put pen to paper (or finger to key). Moreover, they’re an excellent step toward getting published, and can ultimately start you on the path to becoming a professional writer.

One of the best ways to improve your writing is simply to write—and competitions provide an excellent impetus to do so. Writing competitions also serve as an introduction to what life is like for many writers; participants entering writing competitions will receive a prompt or must think of an original idea, compose a piece of work, and submit it for review.

Another benefit of entering a writing competition for high schoolers is that many offer cash awards and scholarships, which can be used to help with the costs of college.

Additionally, many writing competitions are run by colleges and universities, so submitting them is a great way to introduce faculty to yourself and your work. If you win an award—especially a prestigious award—it can significantly improve your odds of college acceptance.

1. The Adroit Prizes for Poetry and Prose

Type: Poetry and Prose

Submission Fee: $15

Prize: $200

Deadline: May 1, 2023

Eligibility:

• All secondary and undergraduate students

Guidelines:

• Each student may send up to five total submissions across the genres of poetry and prose
• Each poetry submission may include up to six poems (maximum of ten pages single-spaced). Each prose submission may include up to three works of fiction or creative nonfiction (combined word limit of 3,500 words; excerpts are acceptable).

Adroit Prizes are awarded to emerging high school and college writers in two categories: poetry and prose. Winning pieces are considered for publication in the Adroit Journal and winners receive an award of $200. The 2023 judges are Natalie Diaz and Ocean Vuong.

2. Ten-Minute Play Contest

Type: Plays

Submission Fee: N/A

Deadline: Passed, but the contest will reopen in 2024

Eligibility: Students in the eleventh grade in the U.S. (or international equivalent of the eleventh grade)

Guidelines: Applicants may submit only one play (10 pages maximum)

The Ten-Minute Play Contest is put on by Princeton University’s Lewis Center of the Arts. Applicants are allowed to submit one play that is no longer than 10 pages. Their submissions are judged by members of Princeton University’s Theater Program faculty.

3. Ayn Rand Anthem and The Fountainhead Essay Contests

Type: Essays

• Anthem: $2,000
• The Fountainhead : $5,000
• Anthem: Grades 8-12
• The Fountainhead : Grades 11-12
• Anthem: Essays must be written in English only and between 600 and 1,200 words in length, double-spaced
• The Fountainhead: Essays must be written in English only and between 800 and 1,600 words in length, double-spaced

In this essay competition, students pick one of three prompts about a topic related to Ayn Rand’s books and write an essay that goes through three stages of grading. Students are graded on their clarity, organization, understanding, and ability to stay “on topic.”

4. Leonard L. Milberg ’53 High School Poetry Prize

Type: Poetry

Prize: $500-$1,500

Eligibility: Students must be in the 11th grade in the U.S. or abroad

Guidelines: Applicants may submit up to 3 poems

The Leonard L. Milberg ’53 High School Poetry Prize is another contest run by Princeton University’s Lewis Center of the Arts. Winners are chosen by judges who are both poets and members of Princeton University’s creative writing faculty. Three monetary awards are available.

5. World Historian Student Essay Competition

Prize: $500

Eligibility: Students enrolled in grades K–12 in public, private, and parochial schools, and those in home-study programs

Guidelines: Essays should be approximately 1,000 words

Winners of this competition receive a $500 prize along with a free yearlong membership to the World History Association . To apply, you must submit an approximately 1,000-word essay responding to the following prompt:

• Submit an essay that addresses the following topic and discusses how it relates to you personally and to World History: Your view of a family story related to a historical event or your personal family cultural background, or an issue of personal relevance or specific regional history/knowledge.

6. Jane Austen Society of North America Essay Contest

Prize: $250-$1,000

Deadline: June 1, 2023

Eligibility: Open to high school, undergraduate, and graduate students

• Must be submitted by the student through the official Essay Contest Submission website
• Entries may include a statement about the student’s mentor; however, a mentor statement is not required
• The essay must be 6-8 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page
• The essay must use MLA documentation, including a Works Cited page and parenthetical citations in the body of the text. Use endnotes only for substantive notes. Source material that is directly quoted, paraphrased, or summarized must be cited. Quotations from the Jane Austen work under discussion should be cited as well.

The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) Essay Contest is an annual writing competition aimed at fostering an appreciation for its namesake’s work. The contest is broken down into three divisions—high school, college/university, and graduate school.

First-place winners are awarded a $1,000 prize along with free registration and lodging for two nights at JASNA’s Annual General Meeting—smaller monetary awards are also given to second- and third-place essayists.

This year’s essay topic:

• In Pride and Prejudice and Jane Austen’s other novels, we see proposals and marriages that are motivated by love, as well as those that are better described as arranged marriages or marriages of convenience. Many cultures today also expect arranged marriages (not the same as forced). In your essay, compare and discuss the different types of marriages or courtships found in the novels, whether those relationships are new or longstanding.

7. Bennington College Young Writers Awards

Type: Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction

Deadline: November 1, 2023

Eligibility: Students in grades 9-12

• Poetry: A group of three poems
• Fiction: A short story (1,500 words or fewer) or one-act play (run no more than 30 minutes of playing time)
• Nonfiction: A personal or academic essay (1,500 words or fewer)

Bennington College has a strong history of developing writers—it’s produced twelve Pulitzer Prize winners, three U.S. poet laureates, and countless New York Times bestsellers—and the Bennington College Young Writers Awards celebrate this legacy.

In addition to offering cash awards to winners and finalists in all three categories, winners and finalists who apply and are accepted to Bennington College are also eligible for substantial scholarships.

8. Rachel Carson Intergenerational Sense of Wonder/Sense of the Wild Contest

Type: Poetry and Essays

Deadline: November 16, 2023

• You are required to have a team of 2 or more people
• The team must be intergenerational

Guidelines: Maximum length of 500 words (approximately 2 pages)

This unique writing competition requires that entries must be submitted by a team of two people from different generations—for example, a high school student and a teacher. Contestants can compete in a number of categories and themes, each with unique submission requirements.

9. NSHSS Creative Writing Scholarship

Type: Fiction and Poetry

Prize: $2,000

Deadline: October 2, 2023

Eligibility: Rising high school students graduating in 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027, and recently graduated 2023 seniors

• Poetry: Students may submit their original poetry in any style, from formal verse to free verse to experimental. The poem should be formatted as you wish it to appear in the publication.
• Fiction: Students may submit a piece of short fiction, which must be no more than 5,000 words and should not be single-spaced. The entry may be any genre of the student’s choice, including graphic novel or story.
• Must submit educator recommendation, academic resume, and current transcript with application

Winning works for this competition are chosen based on their creativity, technique, expression, and originality. Three winners are chosen in each category and each winner receives a $2,000 prize.

10. John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Contest

Prize: $100-$10,000

Eligibility: The contest is open to United States high school students in grades 9-12, U.S. students under the age of twenty enrolled in a high school correspondence/GED program,  and U.S. citizens attending schools overseas.

• Essays can be no more than 1,000 words but must be a minimum of 700 words. Citations and bibliography are not included in the word count.
• Essays must have a minimum of five sources.

The prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Contest is one of the most recognizable and prestigious writing competitions for high schoolers in the nation. Essays for the contest are required to describe an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or after 1917. The first-place winner of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Contest takes home a $10,000 award and second place receives a $3,000 prize.

11. YoungArts National Writing Competition

Deadline: Opens June 2023

Eligibility: 15- to 18-year-old visual, literary, or performing artist based in the United States

Guidelines: To be released

YoungArts supports talented young artists between the ages of 15 and 18 (or grades 10-12) in 10 disciplines, including writing. Applicants can submit entries in six genres—creative nonfiction, novel, play or script, poetry, short story, and spoken word.

12. SPJ/JEA High School Essay Contest

Submission Fee: $5

Prize: $300-$1,000

Eligibility: All students enrolled in grades 9-12 in U.S. public, private and home schools within the United States

• The essay should be 300-500 words
• Entries may be typed or handwritten but must be double-spaced

This high school writing contest is presented by the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the Journalism Education Association (JEA) to increase awareness of the importance of independent media.

Last year’s prompt was:

• While consumers are drawn toward tweets and sound bites, how can journalists tell more of the story without losing readers’ interest?

13. VSA Playwright Discovery Program Competitions

Eligibility: High school students with disabilities

• 10-minute script
• Entries may be the work of an individual student or a collaboration between two students that includes at least one student with a disability

This writing competition, presented by the Kennedy Center, is open to students ages 15-18 (or enrolled in high school) with disabilities. Writers may submit a “ten-minute” script in any genre, including plays, musicals, multimedia, video, film, TV, and podcasts.

Entries can be the work of an individual or the product of collaboration—provided that at least one of the collaborators has a disability. Multiple winners are chosen and given the chance to work with industry professionals, attend Kennedy Center professional development activities, and participate in networking opportunities.

14. Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest

Prize: $350

Eligibility: Women who are sophomores or juniors in high school or preparatory school

Guidelines: No more than two poems by any one student may be submitted

For almost six decades, the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest has provided recognition, scholarships, and awards to the best female high school sophomore and junior poets. Submissions are reviewed by faculty members of Hollins University’s creative writing program and students enrolled in its M.F.A. in creative writing.

The first-place winner receives a $350 cash prize, a renewable $5,000 scholarship to Hollins University if they choose to enroll there, as well as free tuition and housing at the university’s Hollinsummer creative writing program. Their winning work is also published in Cargoes , the university’s student literary magazine.

15. Scholastic Art and Writing Awards

Type: Various

Submission Fee: $10 for individual entry, $30 for portfolio (can use Fee Waiver Form)

Prize: Varies

Deadline: Opens in September

Eligibility: Teens in grades 7–12 (ages 13 and up)

Guidelines: Varies by category

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is the nation’s longest-running, most prestigious recognition program for creative teens. They offer 28 submission categories, including writing, critical essay, dramatic scripts, flash fiction, journalism, humor, novel writing, personal essay and memoir, poetry, science fiction and fantasy, and short story.

Works are judged by famous jurors who look for works that show originality, skill, and the emergence of a personal voice or vision. Students can earn a variety of scholarships through success in these competitions.

Works that celebrate individual differences or personal grief, loss, and bereavement are eligible for $1,000 scholarships. High school seniors submitting winning portfolios of six works are eligible for up to $12,500 in scholarships.

16. Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Contest

Type: Creative Writing and Poetry

Prize: $100-$1,500

Deadline: June 13, 2023

• Students ages 11-18 from around the world
• Students can participate as an individual or as a club, class, or group of any size
• All students must provide the contact information for an Adult Sponsor (teacher, parent, mentor, etc.)
• Creative Writing: no more than 5 pages (approximately 1,250 words)
• Poetry: no more than 2 pages
• A written reflection is required to accompany your submission, regardless of category. It is like the introduction to a book or an artist’s statement in a museum.

The 12th annual Ocean Awareness Contest is a platform for young people to learn about environmental issues through art-making and creative communication, explore their relationship to a changing world, and become advocates for positive change. Students can participate in six different categories, including poetry and spoken word, and creative writing.

This year’s prompt centers around climate issues:

• Research and choose an inspirational scientist, activist, artist, educator, or other hero who is working to solve climate change issues. Create a piece of art, writing, or media that highlights their efforts, organizations, and/or positive impacts. We are familiar with the amazing work of environmental giants like Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough. We challenge you to introduce the Bow Seat community to a Climate Hero whose work we may not know about yet – but should.

17. John Locke Global Essay Competition

Submission Fee: N/A (unless late entry)

Prize: $2,000-$10,000 toward attending any John Locke Institute program

Deadline: June 30, 2023 (must register by May 31, 2023)

Eligibility: Candidates must be no older than 18 years old on June 30, 2023 (Candidates for the Junior Prize must be no older than 14 on the same date)

Guidelines: Each essay must address only one of the questions in your chosen subject category, and must not exceed 2,000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, footnotes, bibliography, or authorship declaration)

Students competing in this competition have the opportunity to write an essay in one of seven categories—philosophy, politics, economics, history, psychology, theology, and law. Each category has three prompts, from which students choose and respond to one.

Essays are judged on knowledge and understanding of the relevant material, the competent use of evidence, quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style, and persuasive force.

If you miss the deadline, you can submit a late entry up until July 10. Late entries will be charged a $20 late fee.

18. AFSA National High School Essay Contest

Prize: $2,500

• Students whose parents are not in the Foreign Service are eligible to participate.
• Students must be in grades 9-12 in any of the 50 states, Washington, D.C, the U.S. territories, or—if they are U.S. citizens/lawful permanent residents —attending high school overseas.

Guidelines: Your essay should be at least 1,000 words but should not exceed 1,500 words (word count does not apply to the list of sources)

The AFSA Essay Contest focuses on knowledge of foreign policy and the American Foreign Service. Last year’s prompt was:

• In your essay, you will select a country or region in which the United States Foreign Service has been involved at any point since 1924 and describe, in 1,500 words or less, how the Foreign Service was successful or unsuccessful in advancing American foreign policy goals – including promoting peace – in this country/region and propose ways in which it might continue to improve those goals in the coming years.

The first-place winner receives $2,500, a paid trip to the nation’s capital with their parents from anywhere in the U.S., and an all-expenses-paid educational voyage courtesy of Semester at Sea. The runner-up wins $1,250 and full tuition to attend a summer session of the National Student Leadership Conference’s International Diplomacy program.

19. EngineerGirl Writing Contest

Prize: $100-$500

• The contest is open to individual students in the following three competition categories—Elementary School Students (grades 3-5), Middle School Students (grades 6-8), or High School Students (grades 9-12).
• You can also qualify with corresponding homeschool or international grade levels.
• High school student essays must be no more than 750 words
• You must also include a reference list of 3-10 resources

In this competition, students choose one of four prompts related to the 20 Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century and explore the technologies that have been developed in the last century and technologies that are being developed today. Students are judged based on their presentation and examples of engineering (~35%), their celebration of diversity (~50%), and their quality of writing (~15%).

20. The Blank Theatre Young Playwright’s Festival

Prize: Play is produced

Eligibility: Playwrights must be 19 years old or younger as of March 15, 2023; co-authored plays are welcome, provided all authors are 19 or younger

• Original plays or musicals of any length or genre and on any subject
• Up to three plays per playwright or team

While winners of this theater competition do not receive a cash prize, they have the unique opportunity to be mentored by leaders in the field, then will have their play directed and performed by professional artists during the following summer. The 12 best submissions are produced and professionally performed.

21. Saint Mary’s College of California River of Words Contest

Type: Poetry and Arts

• The contest is open to K-12 students, ages 5-19
• Students must be enrolled in school to be eligible
• Participants may submit up to 5 entries for poetry and 5 entries for art (total of up to 10 entries)
• Poems should not exceed 32 lines in length (written) or 3 minutes (signed)
• Collaborative poems and artwork are accepted, but only one student (chosen as the group representative) will be eligible for any prizes awarded

The River of Words contest aims to promote environmental literacy through the exchange of arts and culture. River of Words has been inspiring educators and students through this competition for over 25 years.

The goal of River of Words is to connect youth with their watersheds—the environments they live in—through engagement with art and poetry related to the idea of “place.” They look for art and poetry that shows the connection between students and the worlds around them.

22. Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest

Prize: $10,000

Deadline: November 6, 2023

Eligibility: Open to all 12th grade, college, and graduate students worldwide

Guidelines: Essays must be between 800 and 1,600 words in length

In this essay competition, high school seniors pick one of three prompts about a topic related to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and write an essay that goes through three stages of grading. Students are graded on their clarity, organization, understanding, and ability to stay “on topic.”

23. Writopia Lab’s Worldwide Plays Festival

Prize: Play produced

Eligibility: Playwrights ages 6 to 18

• 8 minutes maximum
• Any genre or style
• Plays should have no more than three characters
• There can be no narrator of the play who is not emotionally invested in the story
• Students must incorporate at least one of the following props or costumes —blue plates, a yellow blouse, a Valentine’s heart with the word “Love,” a flower crown, a plush hotdog, a Mardi Gras bead with jester heads, a pack of clothespins, Russian nesting dolls, a set of miniature cymbals, a lavender blouse, a lei, or a roll of aluminum foil

Since 2010, Writopia Lab has been producing, designing, and directing one-act plays submitted by young playwrights. These winning plays are then performed by New York City theater professionals. The contest looks for playwrights who embody fearlessness and imagination. Writopia Lab says, “Write deeply! Write fiercely! Write politically and personally! And don’t be afraid to write with a sense of play – they are called plays, after all.”

While we can’t know exactly how activities outside of the classroom will affect your college admissions odds, the 4 Tiers of Extracurricular Activities provide a helpful framework for understanding how colleges view your extracurriculars.

Extracurricular activities in Tiers 1 and 2 are reserved for the most exclusive and acclaimed awards, and can significantly improve your odds of college admission. By contrast, Tiers 3 and 4 are reserved for more common extracurriculars, and have less of an impact on your chances of college admission.

For example, if you place in a nationally renowned writing competition—a Tier 2 activity—this will positively affect your admissions chances. On the other hand, if you receive an honorable mention in your high school’s poetry contest—a Tier 4 activity—your admissions chances will not be significantly affected.

That said, if you are applying to an English Literature or Creative Writing program with a well-developed essay and recommendations that emphasize your commitment to language, participation in Tier 3 and 4 writing competitions could help admissions officers conceptualize your passion for your future career.

Curious how the writing competition you participated in will affect your college admission chances? CollegeVine can help! Our free chancing calculator uses a variety of factors—including grades, test scores, and extracurriculars—to estimate your odds of getting into hundreds of colleges and universities, while also providing insight into how to improve your profile.

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DUL Creative Writing Awards

Are you an undergraduate who enjoys creative writing?  You could win an award for your talents!

The Rudolph William Rosati Creative Writing Award

The Rosati Creative Writing Prize is awarded each spring in recognition of an outstanding work of creative writing.  All Duke first year or sophomore students are eligible to submit work for consideration.  Projects may be any genre and take any form (audio/video, digital media, etc.), but must include a substantial creative writing component .

Deadline:  June 15 th , 2024

Prize:  $1500

For more details: https://library.duke.edu/research/awards/rosati

The William Styron Creative Writing Award

  The Styron Creative Writing Prize is awarded each spring in recognition of an outstanding work of creative writing. All Duke juniors and seniors (graduating spring 2023) are eligible to submit work for consideration. Projects may be any genre and take any form (audio/video, digital media, etc.), but must include a substantial creative writing component.

For more details: https://library.duke.edu/research/awards/styron

Eligibility for both awards:

• You must be a Duke undergraduate student
• You may submit multiple, different projects in a given year but each project should be submitted individually with an accompanying application cover sheet
• Submitted projects must have been written during the current academic year
• Projects are judged based on quality and originality of writing
• At this time submissions must be written in English
• No minimum or maximum length required

Contact Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Librarian for Literature, at [email protected] , if you have questions.

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CREEES Professional Resources Forum

Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin

Grad Program: MA in Creative Writing in Russian (Moscow)

Application opens February 2019

For fiction/non-fiction writers in Russian.

MA “Creative Writing”  is:

• Practical and theoretical/historical courses, such as  Creative Writing Workshop ,  Storytelling in Different Media ,  Literary Editing , Poetics of Novel and Screenwriting ;
• Unique professors and teachers, among them famous Russian writers, screenwriters and critics –  Marina Stepnova ,  Lyudmila Ulitskaya ,  Lev Danilkin ,  Sergey Gandlevsky  and  Maya Kucherskaya  as well as prominent philologists, authors of academic and non-fiction books  Oleg Lekmanov ,  Ekaterina Lyamina  and  Alexey Vdovin ;
• Participation in open readings, discussions and  literary expeditions ,  publications in students’ projects ;
• International exchange  – lectures and workshops of the leading specialists in Creative Writing, students’ exchange in the best world universities;
•  Help and support in the process of  employment  in various publishing houses, editorials, Mass Media, high schools and universities and PR;
• Creation and participation in  cultural projects ;
• Flexible timetable  enabling students to work while studying.

Our graduates already work in the best publishing houses, universities and schools in Moscow. Their writing is published in the authoritative literary magazines. Their projects (such as prize  “_Litblog”  for the best literary blogger and first Creative Writing Internet resource in Russian  “Mnogobukv” and collections of prose) have gained much attention.

Language of instruction: Russian

You can apply to non-paid place as a foreign student in February. Looking forward to seeing you at Higher School of Economics!

More information about the programme:  https://www.hse.ru/en/ma/litmaster

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Congratulations 2024 DC Metro Scholastic Writing Awards recipients!

View the full list of works recognized in the 2024 DC Metro Writing Region of the Scholastic Writing Awards below!

A panel of professional novelists, editors, teachers, poets, librarians, journalists, and other literary professionals selected these works from 2,351 works submitted this year.

• 482 Honorable Mentions awarded to promising works
• 258 Silver Keys awarded to distinguished works
• 110 Gold Keys awarded to the most accomplished works
• 4 American Voice Nominees selected as the strongest regional works

Gold Keys are automatically forwarded for consideration at the national level of the Scholastic Writing Awards.

Join a Warm and Invigorating  Community of Teen Writers!

• Creative Writing workshops throughout the year
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• Advanced Writing Seminar summer overnight program in NYC
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• College Essay Writing workshops and private sessions
• Middle School Advanced Writing Exploratory program

DC Awards Ceremony

To recognize their outstanding work, this year's Gold Key, Silver Key, and Honorable Mention recipients are invited, along with their guests, teachers, and our esteemed jurors, to the 2024 Awards Ceremony for the DC Metro Writing Region of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards!

• Date: Sunday, April 21st, 2024
• Time: 2 PM to 4 PM ET
• Where: UDC Theater of the Arts 4200 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008
• Click here to RSVP!

American Voices Nominees

• Dylan Furbay of Landon School for Man, Monster, Man-Monster: Masculinity (Critical Essay)
• Lily Scheckner for My Backseat Baby: or, My Last Name (Poetry)
• Chelsea Zhu of Richard Montgomery High School, for Song of Survival (Poetry)
• Aileen Zhao of Mclean High School, for Robot Girl (Science Fiction & Fantasy) & Everyone You’ve Ever Kissed Up To Now (Poetry)

2024 DC Metro Scholastic Awards

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AWF gratefully acknowledges the 2024 High School Literary Arts Awards Judges:

Chair Of The High School Literary Arts Awards Judges: Dr. Susie Paul , a longtime resident of Montgomery, taught American literature and writing at Auburn University Montgomery for over 20 years. Now retired, she is a member of the boards of the Alabama Writers’ Forum and Nora’s Playhouse South. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review , Kalliope , Negative Capability , Earth’s Daughters , The Village Rambler , Alimentum , and other journals. Her poetry collection The Whited Air: Mary Paul in Winter was published in 2021 by Finishing Line Press. Dr. Paul screens the poetry category and believes in the power and promise of young writers.

Literary Magazine : James M. Hilgartner has published in a number of literary journals and has twice been awarded the Fellowship in Literature from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Since 2015 he has served as Fiction Editor of THAT Literary Review (now Thirteen Bridges Review www.thirteenbridgesreview.com ). He retired as Professor of English at Huntingdon College in 2023.

Creative Nonfiction: Richard K. Evans is the Executive Director of the Alabama Writers’ Forum and the author of MOVE: An American Religion (Oxford University Press, 2020). He holds a PhD in History from Temple University.

Fiction : Kent Quaney is the author of the award-winning novel, One Breath from Drowning (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). His short fiction has appeared in Literally Stories, Rum Punch Press, Chelsea Station, riverSedge and Polari, among other journals. He studied creative writing at the University of Sydney and the University of Southern Mississippi and is currently Assistant Professor and Creative Writing Coordinator at Auburn University at Montgomery and Editor of Thirteen Bridges Review www.thirteenbridgesreview.com .

Poetry : Sue Brannon Walker (M.Ed. MA, Ph.D, Tulane University) is Professor Emerita at the University of South Alabama where she taught for 35 years. She is a former Poet Laureate of Alabama and the author of 20 books. In March 2024 was inducted into the University of Alabama College of Education Hall of Fame. She has published hundreds of poems and articles. She currently teaches a creative writing class at the Mobile Botanical Gardens in Mobile and is the editor and publisher of Negative Capability Press.

Poetry: Kathleen (Kate) Duthu teaches AWF’s Writing Our Stories program to boys and girls at the juvenile detention center in Mobile County. She is a former criminal prosecutor and family law attorney and has a M.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing from the University of South Alabama. She is also a former editor at Negative Capability Press. Her poetry has won recent awards from the Alabama State Poetry Society and Alabama Writers’ Cooperative and has been published in The Oracle and Emerald Coast Review .

Senior Portfolio Scholarship : Donna Estill is Dean of Humanities & Social Sciences at Calhoun Community College. Estill has taught writing and literature to several generations of students in Arkansas, Kansas, and Alabama. She served as the Director and Assistant Director of the Alabama Center for Literary Arts in Monroeville, organized the Alabama Writers Symposium, and served as Humanities Advisor for the Symposium. She serves on the board of the Alabama Writers’ Forum.

SENIOR SCHOLARSHIP WINNERS

Daryl Thomas , student of Ken Spear, Booker T. Washington Magnet High School, winner of the Ruth & Jay Ott Senior Portfolio Scholarship

Kyra Richardson , student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts, winner of the Mozelle Purvis Shirley Senior Portfolio Scholarship

Madison Hoar , student of Iris Rinke-Hammer, Alabama School of Fine Arts, winner of the Joseph David Trimble II Senior Portfolio Scholarship

Mya Richardson, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts, winner of the Wayne Greenhaw Memorial Senior Portfolio Scholarship

Diego Romero-Cardona, student of April Sport, Jefferson County International Baccalaureate, winner of the Marvin Lee Paul and Helen Scott Paul Senior Portfolio Scholarship

LITERARY MAGAZINE COMPETITION WINNERS

Winner: exceptional literary content.

Cadence (Alabama School of Fine Arts)

Editors: Izzy Cox and Will Bitner, students of Iris Rinke-Hammer

Judge’s Special Recognition: Literary Content

Silhouette (Sp arkman High School)

Editors: Annaliese Burton and Sullivan Treadwell, students of Renee Quaife

Judge’s Special Recognition: Certificate of Literary Merit

The Muse (The Montgomery Academy)

Editor: Mere Morrison, student of Virginia Beale

Winner: Exceptional Graphic Design and Layout

Silhouette (Sparkman High School)

Judge’s Special Recognition: Graphic Design and Layout

Ingenium (McGill-Toolen Catholic High School)

Editor: Andy Anderson, student of Camille Johnston

Literary Magazine Certificates of Merit

Counterpane Literary Arts Magazine (Jefferson County International B accalaureate)

Editors: Cole Wright and Saniya Singh, students of April Sport

Graphophobia (Booker T. Washington Magnet School)

Editor: Daryl Thomas Jr., student of Ken Spear

The Sheet (Auburn High School)

Editor: Avery Scifres, student of Carley Muschara

CREATIVE NONFICTION LONG ESSAY WINNERS

The Judith Hillman Paterson Award for Excellence in Essay Writing: Lauren Underberg, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

First Place: Jackson Cooke, student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

Second Place: Lily Tao, student of Davis Thompson, Auburn High School

Third Place: David Jarvis , student of Kathleen Travis, Pelham High School

Creative Nonfiction Long Essay Judge’s Special Recognition

Marielle Vientos, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Nola Crumpton, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

CREATIVE NONFICTION SHORT ESSAY WINNERS

Creative nonfiction short essay.

First Place : Brenna Vickery, student of Kathleen Travis, Pelham High School

Second Place : Madison Thompson, student of Ken Spear, Booker T. Washington Magnet High School

Third Place : Avi Goldberg, student of Mazerick Betko, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Creative Nonfiction Short Essay Judge’s Special Recognition

Bella Grant, student of Amy Marchino, Homewood High School

Kenley Wheeler, student of Kathleen Travis, Pelham High School

Celeste Shurtz, student of Brandy Panagos, Bob Jones High School

FICTION WINNERS

First Place: Nola Crumpton, student of TJ Bietelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Second Place: Adrianne Lin, student of Scott Richburg, The Montgomery Academy

Third Place: Camille Beatty , student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

Fiction Judge’s Special Recognition

Olivia Chang, student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

Abigail Dickinson, student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

Courtney Towery, student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

Sam Mixon, student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

Lily Wilson, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Ezra Clingan, student of Mazerick Betko, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Betelihem Slocum, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Harris Murphree, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Samantha Copeland, student of Michelle Sisson, Lee High School

David Jarvis, student of Kathleen Travis, Pelham High School

Sammie Poarch, student of April Sport, Jefferson County International Baccalaureate

Fiction Certificates of Merit

Rachel Vickery, student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

Bella Herring, student of Dawn Sumerford, Briarwood Christian School

Isabella Rutledge, student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

Timothy Johnson, student of April Sport, Jefferson County International Baccalaureate

Ollie Caillier, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Daryl Thomas, student of Ken Spear, Booker T. Washington Magnet High School

Cypress Bryce, student of Brandy Panagos, Bob Jones High School

Shea Hayes, student of Brandy Panagos, Bob Jones High School

Belle Autio, student of Eleanor Baker, St. Pauls Episcopal School

POETRY WINNERS

First Place: Lily Wilson, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Second Place: Scarlett Whitaker, student of Amy Marchino, Homewood High School

Third Place: Ollie Caillier, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Poetry Judge’s Special Recognition

Ma’eva Fortson, student of Amy Marchino, Homewood High School

Kailan Stoves, student of Kimberly Green, Ramsay High School

Avi Goldberg, student of Mazerick Betko, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Gwilym Lloyd, student of Michelle Hopf, Auburn High School

Ash Pierce, student of TJ Beitelman, Alabama School of Fine Arts

Samantha Turner, student of April Sport, Jefferson County International Baccalaureate

Darianne Ewing, student of Michelle Sisson, Lee High School

Allison Anderson, student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

Luke Long, student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

T.W., student of Marlin Barton, Lurleen B. Wallace School

Poetry Certificates of Merit

Eden Davidson, student of Jon Carter, Restoration Academy

Joan Mathew, student of Ken Spear, Booker T. Washington Magnet High School

Christina Woods, student of Amy Marchino, Homewood High School

Becca Bynum, student of April Sport, Jefferson County International Baccalaureate

Faith Bonner, student of April Sport, Jefferson County International Baccalaureate

Anita Duncan, student of Claudette Tennant, Opelika High School

Doyeon Kim, student of Adam Byrd, Auburn High School

Kobe Menifee, student of April Sport, Jefferson County International Baccalaureate

Ensley Dunn, student of Michelle Sisson, Lee High school

Sidney Spear, student of Scott Richburg, The Montgomery Academy

Katie Headrick, student of Hannah Pressley, Briarwood Christian School

Violet Marty, student of Iris Rinke-Hammer, Alabama School of Fine Arts

B.W., student of Marlin Barton, Lurleen B. Wallace School

N.R., student of Marlin Barton, Lurleen B. Wallace School

Lily Tao, student of Michelle Hopf, Auburn High School

Alabama Writers Forum Bailey Building Suite 455 400 S. Union St. Montgomery, AL 36103-4777

334-265-7728 [email protected]

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Dawn Powell Prize and Kate Carter Awards 2024

Are you passionate about crafting compelling stories or expressing your thoughts through prose the dawn powell and kate carter awards offer the perfect chance for you to shine. by submitting your work, you can win prestigious recognition and connect with fellow writers. take the leap and submit your writing by april 8, 2024, it could be the first step towards a bright future in the literary world..

March 28, 2024 4:00 PM

Lake Erie College presents the Dawn Powell and Kate Carter awards 2024!

This year, Lake Erie College presents the Dawn Powell and Kate Carter awards! The Dawn Powell Prize for Creative Writing in Fiction and Poetry and the Kate Carter Awards - one for Excellence in First Year Writing and another for Excellence in Writing in the Core. Celebrate with us on April 24th!

Guidelines:

Submissions due: April 8, at midnight .

Must be recent original works of the author

Submissions should be emailed as a PDF or Word document to [email protected]

Include your full name and email when submitting (not on the work itself )

All submissions can go to [email protected].

Winners will be notified before the ceremony on, april 24th at 4:00 p.m. at the lincoln library., prizes will be awarded…, dawn powell prize in creative writing, about dawn powell.

The award’s namesake, author Dawn Powell, attended Lake Erie College from 1914-1918 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. During her time at LEC, Powell edited and wrote for the College’s literary publication and was active in theater. By the time of her death in 1965, she had written 16 novels, nine plays and numerous short stories.

Kate Carter Awards for Excellence in first year writing and excellence in writing in the core

Named for Professor Kate Carter, who was a creative writer, a poet, an artist and a much loved and long-serving adjunct professor in the Lake Erie College Department of English, these awards honor Professor Carter’s legacy of academic rigor, student engagement, thoughtful mentoring and commitment to excellent writing.

About Kate Carter

Kate Carter was an award-winning poet and recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry. She received her MA in Creative Writing from Antioch University McGregor and, prior to her arrival at Lake Erie, taught in the Psychology department at Antioch University New England and the English and Women’s Studies departments at New Mexico State University. She is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Covenant and Lodestar: Night Sky.

Office of the Vice President for Research

Ovpr announces recipients of 2024 discovery and innovation awards.

The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) is honoring 11 faculty and staff for their exceptional contributions to research, scholarship, and creative activity as part of the 2024 Discovery and Innovation Awards .

“ The winners represent the best and the brightest of our University of Iowa faculty and staff, who are making an impact across a range of disciplines,”  said Marty Scholtz, vice president for research. “Their research and scholarship enhance undergraduate and graduate education on campus, and their efforts to expand the frontiers of discovery betters our community, state, and world.”

The OVPR solicited nominations from across campus for the awards, which include: Scholar of the Year, Early Career Scholar of the Year, Leadership in Research, and awards that recognize achievement in communicating scholarship with public audiences, community engagement, arts and humanities, mentorship, research administration and safety. A campuswide event on April 30 will celebrate the winners.

Faculty Awards

Jun Wang , James E. Ashton Professor and interim departmental executive officer in the College of Engineering’s

 Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, is the 2024 Scholar of the Year . The award celebrates nationally recognized recent achievement in outstanding research, scholarship, and/or creative activities. 

Wang’s research centers on the development of novel remote sensing techniques to characterize aerosols and fires from space. He serves as the University of Iowa’s lead investigator on NASA’s TEMPO, Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring Pollution, which Time magazine named one of its best inventions of 2023. 

“Professor Wang's scholarly endeavors over the past two years stand out as a paradigm of excellence, serving as an exemplary model for both emerging and seasoned faculty members to aspire toward,” said Karim Abdel-Malek, professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Iowa Technology Institute.

James Byrne , assistant professor of radiation oncology in the Carver College of Medicine ( CCOM ), is the 2024 Early Career Scholar of the Year . The award honors assistant professors who are currently involved in research, scholarship, and/or creative activity and show promise of making a significant contribution to their field. 

As a physician scientist, Byrne continues to care for patients while developing novel biomedical therapies for cancer, finding inspiration in everything from latte foam to tardigrades. In his first two years as faculty at the UI, he has earned more that $2.5M in external research funding, including a K08 award from the NIH.

“Dr. Byrne’s scientific creativity stems from both an active and curious mind as well as his ability to bridge diverse fields from engineering to biology to medicine,” said Michael Henry, professor and interim director of the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center. “These interdisciplinary boundaries are where some of the most interesting and important work is happening today.”

Donna Santillan , research professor and director of the Division of Reproductive Science Research in the CCOM Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, received the Leadership in Research Award , which recognizes research and scholarly accomplishments throughout a career. 

While Santillan’s research has spanned across the field of reproductive science, she has a particular interest in the deadly diseases of pregnancy, including preeclampsia and its intergenerational effects. She designed and directs the Women’s Health Tissue Repository. Santillan’s work has been cited more than 2,700 times, and she has mentored 114 early career scientists and students, a testament to her expansive impact.

“Dr. Santillan has consistently demonstrated an unwavering commitment to fostering the professional and personal development of trainees in research, including myself,” said Banu Gumusoglu, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology. “Her mentorship extends beyond the confines of traditional academic settings, touching the lives of many aspiring trainees from high school through residency, clinical fellowship, and faculty levels.”

Stephen Warren , professor of history and American studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), received the Distinguished Achievement in Publicly Engaged Research Award . The award recognizes an individual faculty member who has put addressing public needs and direct engagement with the public, in the service of improving quality of life through research, at the forefront of his or her academic activities.

A prolific scholar of Native American culture, Warren’s research has centered on the Shawnee people of Oklahoma for the past two decades. He has published four books and co-authored the most recent one , Replanting Cultures: Community-Engaged Scholarship in Indian Country, with Chief Benjamin Barnes of the Shawnee Tribe. 

“Over the last two decades, Professor Warren has established himself as a leading community-engaged scholar, and his achievements in research and publishing demonstrate that community engagement and strong scholarship are not mutually exclusive,” said Nick Benson, director of the Office of Community Engagement. “Professor Warren’s work serves as an inspiration for researchers at Iowa and nationally who seek not only to make a difference in academia, but also in our communities.”

Kaveh Akbar , associate professor of English in CLAS, received the Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Humanities Research Award . This award honors distinguished achievement in humanities scholarship and work in the creative, visual and performing arts. 

Akbar joined Iowa in 2022 to serve as the director of the English and creative writing major. In January, his new novel, Martyr!, was published to critical acclaim. Akbar previously published two prize-winning poetry collections and has served as poetry editor for The Nation  since 2021. 

“Akbar’s leadership in the profession and on campus continues: his transformative work in our department not only enriches the academic experiences of 700+ English and creative writing majors, but also enhances the profile of UI as ‘The Writing University,’” said Blaine Greteman, professor and departmental executive officer of the Department of English.

Cara Hamann , associate professor of epidemiology, received the Faculty Communicating ideas Award . This award recognizes excellence in communication about research and scholarship in the sciences and humanities and the study of creative, visual, and performing arts to a general audience directly or via print and electronic media.

Hamann has frequently shared her work on transportation issues, including teen driving, bike and scooter safety, and pedestrian safety, through peer-reviewed journals and extensive media outreach. Her recent op-ed, “The most deadly traffic policy you’ve never heard of leaves you vulnerable, too,” drew widespread attention to a legal loophole in crosswalk laws and appeared in more than 50 news outlets nationwide, including USA Today .

“Dr. Hamann’s work is not only academically rigorous but also accessible and impactful to a

wide audience,” said Diane Rohlman, associate dean for research in the College of Public Health. “Her ability to communicate with clarity, creativity, and passion coupled with her extensive media outreach, exemplifies how she utilizes multiple approaches to address transportation challenges impacting society.”

Bob McMurray , F. Wendell Miller Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Caroline Clay , assistant professor of acting in the Department of Theatre Arts, were recipients of the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) Distinguished Mentor Awards . The awards honors mentors’ dedication to making their students research experiences successful.

“I can’t imagine my research journey without Bob’s welcoming kindness, thriving lab community, and confident mentorship, and I am so deeply grateful for his impact on me,” said Hannah Franke, a psychology and linguistics major mentored by McMurray.

“I know I am far from the only student whose life has been impacted by Caroline Clay,” said Isabella Hohenadel, a second-year theatre arts major. “She deserves to be recognized of all of the wonderful work she does and how much she cares about us as students. I cannot think of anyone more deserving of recognition than her.”

Staff Awards

Angie Robertson , department administrator for CCOM’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology, received the Distinguished Research Administrator Award . The award recognizes staff members who performed exceptional service in support of research at the UI by exploring funding opportunities, assisting in grant proposal preparation, submission, post-award administration, and operational support. 

In addition to overseeing every aspect of daily operations for the department, Robertson manages nearly 100 research grants for the department and three longstanding NIH T32 training grants. 

“Angie plays a leading role in our department office, inspiring us to achieve all aspects of our missions ,” said Li Wu, professor and department chair. “She is innovative, collaborative, accountable, and respectful  in her daily work. She exceeds any expectations and sets a great example for staff members in the department.”

Min Zhu , research specialist in the Iowa Institute for Oral Health Research (IIOHR) within the College of Dentistry, received the Distinguished Research Professional Award . The award recognizes staff members who performed exceptional service in support of research at the UI by conducting experiments, collecting, and analyzing results and performing operational duties associated with a laboratory or research program. 

Zhu has worked as a lab bench scientist in the College of Dentistry since 2006, executing experimental work for grants and other research, working closely with IIOHR faculty members, overseeing lab maintenance and environmental health and safety efforts. 

“Beyond her research skills, Dr. Zhu has been an exceptional mentor and educator for my students and other junior researchers,” said Liu Hong, professor of prosthodontics. “Her kindness and willingness to share her knowledge have made her a beloved figure among them.”

Curtis Iberg , manager of sterilization services in the College of Dentistry, received the Innovation in Safety Award, which celebrates exceptional and ground-breaking innovations that advance safety at the UI. Iberg led a major renovation of the College of Dentistry’s instrument processing and sterilization area, with the aim of encouraging better workflow and support for future growth. 

“His innovations in workspace are a valuable asset to the greater University and demonstrates that the most important people to be involved in a space renovation are those that use the area because they can see how the facility can better function and how it can be designed for future needs,” said Kecia Leary, associate dean of clinics.

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Creative Writing Awards 2023 Winner: “Sandstone” by Michelle D.*

T he 20th annual creative writing awards (cwa) were held at the new haven lawn club on april 20, a celebration of the liberal arts deeply embedded in the science and clinical practice of the yale school of nursing (ysn) community. after a keynote speech by tanzanian businessman, author, and philanthropist michael shirima , each of the three student winners read their piece aloud..

*To protect her family member’s privacy, YSN will identify this winner with her first name and last initial throughout this piece and in related articles.

They call it the “long goodbye,”

I will always be proud to be your daughter.    

Read More CWA 2023 Winners  

Read the award-winning entries of the other 2023 honorees:  the poem “ Just a Little Hope,” by Anita Onuoha ’25 MSN  and the short story “EDD:12/25” by Kailu Shannon-Frolich ’25 MSN . 

For a complete list of previous CWA winners, please visit Past Creative Writing Awards .

Graduate School recognizes excellence among students, faculty at Honors Banquet

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The second annual Honors Banquet commemorated excellence in academics, leadership and innovation among Graduate School students and faculty. The banquet on March 18 honored and reflected on the remarkable achievements in research and creative expression from the more than 50 graduate programs and departments represented in the Graduate School.

“The students and faculty are the heartbeat of our academic community. Their unwavering commitment to excellence and their pursuit of knowledge and innovation advance our mission,” said C. André Christie Mizell, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School. “The Honors Banquet not only honors the achievements of these individuals, but reaffirms the Graduate School’s dedication to empowering leaders, mentors and innovators.”

Several awards were presented, including the Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award, the Outstanding Doctoral Student Award, the Excellence in Leadership Award, the Excellence in Innovation Award and the Distinguished Partner Award.

Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award

The Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring award was established in 2022; an annual award honoring outstanding mentorship is a way of affirming our mission of helping students reach their full potential as scholars and human beings. Each of our three mentoring award recipients will receive an engraved plaque and $1,500.

• Ethan Lippmann : Lippmann is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and holds secondary appointments in Biomedical Engineering, Interdisciplinary Materials Science, Neurology, and Chemical and Physical Biology. Further, Lippmann has an appointment as training faculty in the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. He also serves as the director of undergraduate studies in Chemical Engineering.He is committed to empowering his students to explore, fail, and then try again while being unconditionally supported. One of his colleagues says, “Dr. Lippman is an absolutely terrific mentor who can successfully manage and mentor a large research group while making every student feel as an integral part of the team.” His mentees say the mentorship they had under Professor Lippman is unparalleled.
• Jeffrey Johnston : Johnston has been with Vanderbilt since 2006, when he started as a professor of chemistry. Since then, he has taken on several positions including co-director of NSF REU in Chemical Biology, director of graduate recruiting in Chemistry, and a Stevenson Professor of Chemistry. Johnston makes a point to mentor students beyond research through offering high-level coursework, preparing students to exceed graduate program benchmarks and providing intensive lab training. One of his previous mentees commented, “He pursued only the highest-quality education for his students. On top of demonstrating masterful knowledge through [the] courses he taught, Jeff consistently maintained high academic standards by ensuring his students were actively engaged and learning in a variety of ways.”Professor Johnston currently oversees six graduate students and has one single stipulation: that they are passionate about the research.
• Isabel Gauthier : Gauthier is the David K. Wilson Chair of Psychology, professor of radiology and radiological sciences and professor of psychology. She has been at Vanderbilt since 1999 and has left a lasting impact on countless students. Gauthier places immense value on mentoring graduate students, acknowledging that no two students are the same and adjusting her mentoring style to fit the individual student. She makes it known that despite winning dozens of awards, mentoring students has been the most rewarding feature of her career.One of her first graduate student mentees comments that she “has been an exemplary role model for her graduate students; as a strong woman in science one could argue that she is also an impressive role model to female graduate students across the field. Her bold and unwavering dedication to her science‑including her role helming one of the field’s most prestigious journals‑is highly visible, impactful and inspirational.” Colleagues say they have learned how to be a better mentor to students through watching Professor Gauthier.

Outstanding Doctoral Student Award

This award recognizes students who demonstrate exceptional scholarly accomplishments. The awardees were nominated by faculty and selected from across the various colleges and schools for their overall academic record and the outstanding quality of their research, scholarship and/or creative expression. The recipients were honored with engraved plaques and $500.

• Brayan Serratos Garcia, Spanish and Portuguese : Brayan’s in-progress dissertation, entitled “Navigating the Cross and Crossing the Sea: Collaborative Knowledge Production, Visual Literacies, and Racial Formations in Spanish Asia and America,” includes the “analysis of maps, missionary and scientific literature, letters and illustrated manuscripts, many of which have never been published or even read.”His work on “how colonialism generated different iterations of hybrid identities and cultural productions, across time, space, and representational, differences” will help contribute to “our understanding of how colonialism and coloniality worked in the early modern period.” Impressively, Brayan has earned the distinction of advanced proficiency in Chinese, a major advantage in work concerning global Iberian humanities. His current languages of scholarship include Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, Chinese and English, and he began working on his skills in Japanese last summer.
• Mellissa Meisels , Political Science : Mellissa is a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science, expected to graduate this May. In her dissertation, Mellissa endeavors to understand the relationship between candidates’ presentation of self, the electoral environment, the actions of political donors and the consequences in terms of legislative behavior. Her work in exploring the dynamics of congressional primary competition will help contribute to closing gaps in our understanding of primary elections.Impressively, Mellissa will be starting as a tenure-track assistant professor at Yale University in fall 2025 after taking a one-year postdoc position at Yale. In addition to these accomplishments, Mellissa’s scholarly work is being recognized by the larger political science community. To date, she has one publication and four completed working papers, each of which has been presented at least once at external conferences.
• Yu Wang, Computer Science : Yu is a doctoral student in the computer science program, expected to graduate this May. Yu’s main research area concerns “data quality-aware graph machine learning methods aim[ed] at improving the performance of graph neural network models to address data quality issues on graph-structured data.” Through this research, they are hoping to better understand “underlying data issues, and, in turn, inform the design of graph machine learning models that can mitigate these issues.”As his professors aptly pointed out, Yu has been very productive during his time as a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University, maintaining a commitment to continually enriching the local and academic community. Yu is widely published in top-tier conferences’ proceedings and journals, currently being a part of 13 first-author papers and six co-author papers. His academic and professional accomplishments are widely celebrated with a multitude of accolades.

Excellence in Leadership Award

Presented by Irene Wallrich, associate director of the Russell G. Hamilton Graduate Leadership Institute, the Excellence in Leadership Award recognizes a graduate student who made a major impact on their community through service, inspiring others to do the same. The student receives a $500 prize and an engraved plaque.

• Kayla And erson: Kayla is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Community Research and Action program who has demonstrated exceptional leadership and service both on campus and within the broader community. Through her research, she has engaged with community groups and local youth, amplifying their voices to decision-makers within our local community. Her current research investigates cancer incidence and local environmental issues and infrastructure in Grundy County, Tennessee. She has also been involved in action research on local housing issues in Nashville. For this project, she led a team of graduate students who analyzed the effects of short-term rentals on housing affordability and neighborhood quality at the request of local affordable housing advocates. As a result of this work, she was asked to testify before the state legislature, which was considering a bill that would remove municipalities’ authority to regulate short-term rentals. Her evidence-based, community-informed testimony played a role in preventing this bill from passing. Kayla also worked with her fellow graduate students to help them prepare to present their research to the affordable housing committee of Nashville’s Metro Council, which ultimately helped to secure funding for a local pilot of right-to-counsel for defendants in eviction cases. It is inspiring how Kayla has empowered and amplified the voices of others for the benefit of our community.

Excellence in Innovation Award

This award is co-sponsored by the Wond’ry and the Graduate School and was presented by David Owens, Evans Family Executive Director at the Wond’ry. The award acknowledges one outstanding doctoral candidate’s excellence across scholarship, creativity and translation of their research into applied impact. The recipient is honored with an engraved plaque and $500.

• Xinchun Ran: Xinchun’s achievements include the creation of EnzyKR, a deep learning model published in the journal Chemical Science, which leverages machine learning to accurately predict enzyme stereoselectivity‑a groundbreaking advancement in the field of chemistry. His innovative contributions extend beyond his academic work. He has leveraged his research to develop the venture EnzyML, a platform that holds tremendous promise in reducing labor costs and accelerating drug synthesis in chiral drug development‑a critical area for future growth in the pharmaceutical industry. This innovation has important implications in accelerating drug synthesis, contributing to the timely availability of new and more effective drugs in the market. Xinchun’s work not only has the potential to revolutionize drug development processes but also to have widespread impact across biotech sectors, from therapeutics to climate tech. His entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to translating research into tangible solutions exemplify the essence of this award.

Distinguished Partner Award

The Graduate School collaborates with many campus partners and honors one office with a Distinguished Partner Award. The award recognizes a remarkable team whose dedication, support and collaboration have significantly advanced the strategic vision and goals of the Graduate School.

• Office of the University Registrar: The Office of the University Registrar is the cornerstone of our academic ecosystem at Vanderbilt. With meticulous attention to detail, they oversee the intricacies of our academic records, course scheduling and policy enforcement. Yet, it is not only the fulfillment of these functions that sets them apart; it is their commitment to going above and beyond to support our students, faculty and staff that truly distinguishes them.

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Student Speaker 2024

Student speaker selected for commencement ceremony.

In the spirit of inclusivity and of broadening the voices to be represented at this important celebration, all graduating seniors were invited to apply to be chosen by the Ithaca College Commencement Committee to represent the Class of 2024 as the student speaker. Selected to deliver those remarks was Mikayla Tolliver, who will be receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in writing, with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in sociology. In addition to her work in the classroom, Tolliver has been involved in several campus organizations during her four years at IC. She was a member of the sixth cohort of BOLD scholars, co-chaired the Admission Host Committee, and served as president of Buzzsaw Magazine. As a first-year student, she wrote the Ask a Freshman column for The Ithacan. In 2023 Tolliver was selected as a School of Humanities and Sciences Summer Scholar, during which she worked on writing her first novel and conducted research on diversity and representation within the young adult fantasy genre. After graduation, Tolliver plans to pursue work with a creative writing nonprofit and then attend graduate school to further her education and continue strengthening her writing.

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Soviet history: archival resources at Harvard university library and archives

• Judaica archival materials
• Archives of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet State
• Revolution and Civil War
• Trotsky Papers
• Comintern Archive
• The Stalin Era
• Smolensk Archive
• Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System
• Soviet Information Bureau Photograph Collection
• Communist Party - Miscellaneous Records 1941-1990
• Andrei Sakharov Archives
• Cold War Project Archival Materials
• José María Castañé Collection
• Soviet/Post-Soviet Ephemera Collections
• Ukrainian Archival Materials
• Western archives
• Open access

Soviet Judaica Archival Materials

Poster images of refuseniks from the Soviet Union [fragment], Israel Sun, Ltd., Israel, 1986. Judaica Division, Widener Library JPCDISUN24400

[Poalei Zion archive] :[on microfiche]

The Poalei Zion documents, now in the Russian Centre of Conservation and Study of Records for Modern History in Moscow (formerly the Central Party Archive), were acquired from the Archive of Revolution and Foreign Policy, the Kiev Provincial Historical archive, and from the KGB archive in Lubianka (in the 1920s, the NKVD [forerunner of the KGB] had confiscated the documents of Poalei Zion for use as evidence against members of the organization who had been arrested).  The archive includes documents, papers, correspondence, political literature, newspapers, journals, periodicals, serials, sheets of signatures, lottery tickets, postage stamps, receipt books, pamphlets, leaflets, posters, and publications relating to the activities of various Jewish political parties and organizations, and also concerning Jewish emigration to Palestine. Includes the correspondence of prominent leaders of the World Zionist movement (such as Ben Gurion, Ben Zvi, and B. Borokhov), as well as works of creative writing (e.g, poetry by David Hofstein with illustrations by Marc Chagall). Most of the material is in Yiddish, with the rest mostly in Russian and Hebrew, but there are also some texts in German, French, Arabic, Ukranian, and Polish.

<5,039 > microfiches + guides. 758 files in 3 inventories, organized into the following series: I. The Jewish Social-Democratic Labour Party ESDRP (Poalei Zion): inventory 1, files 1-129; II. Correspondence of the Central Committee of the ESDRP with regional organizations: inventory 1, files 130-419; III. Sections of the Central Committee of the ESDRP: inventory 1, files 420-535; IV. Documents on the history of the ESDRP, Periodicals and serials published by the ESDRP: inventory 1, files 536-625; V. The Jewish Communist Party of Poalei Zion (EKP Poalei Zion), the United Jewish Socialist Labour Party, the Jewish Socialist (from 1923, Communist) Union of Working Youth: inventory 2, files 1-30; inventory 3, files 1-103 Arrangement: chronological within geographic region for each record type (letters, documents, etc.)

Finding aids: Printed guide in Russian and English and electronic guide on CD-ROM in Russian and English.

Bund archive in RGASPI, Moscow

Reproduces a collection of documents in various languages (Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, German, French, Ukrainian, Polish) from the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow. Topics covered include: History of the Jews in Eastern Europe; Antisemitism in tsarist Russia pogroms; Yiddish culture in Russia; Russian revolutionary parties; Jewish labour movement; Jewish political movement; International socialist movement; Socialist International; Free Trade Unions (ICFTU); Socialist parties in Germany, Great Britain, France, and other European countries; Biographies and correspondence of prominent leaders of socialist movements.

2,162 microfiches

United States. Holocaust Memorial Museum [various microfilms]

A collection of copies of archival documents held by former Special (Osobyi) archive in Moscow, in the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA), microfilmed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Contains documents and files confiscated in the territories occupied by the Red Army in the years immediately following the end of World War II.  

Online guide

John and Carol Garrard collection of Vasiliĭ Semenovich Grossman papers, 1902-2013, (bulk) 1923-1994

Vasiliĭ Semenovich Grossman (1905-1964) was a Soviet writer and journalist. At the outbreak of World War Two he became a war correspondent writing eyewitness accounts of a number of major battles, of the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp at Treblinka, of the conditions of life at the fronts and on the liberated territories. John Gordon Garrard is a professor emeritus of Russian Studies at the University of Arizona; together with his wife Carol E. Garrard he wrote a biography of Vasiliĭ Grossman. The collection primarily contains photocopies of documents from various Russian, German and American archives related to the life and writings of Vasilii Semenovich Grossman and to the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union and the anti-fascist movement: compositions, correspondence, military and civil records, and maps. The collection also includes compositions by others, correspondence of John and Carol Garrard with friends and relatives of Vasilii Grossman and with repositories and archives, photographs, drawings, maps, and souvenirs.

2.5 linear feet (6 boxes, including 1 pf box and 2 pf folders) Arranged into five series:  I. Compositions;  II. Correspondence;  III. Research files for the "Bones of Berdichev : the life and fate of Vasilii Grossman";  IV. Other material;  V. Additions to collection.

Electronic finding aid

Jewish theater under Stalinism :Moscow State Jewish Theater (GOSET) and Moscow State Jewish Theater School (MGETU)

Documents covering the period 1916-1950 from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) in Moscow about the Moscow State Jewish Theater and the affiliated Moscow State Jewish Theater School (MGETU). The collection includes the archive of GOSET (RGALI, Fond 2307) and the archive of the Theatrical School of the State Jewish Theater (MGETU) (RGALI, Fond 2308). This collection of archival documents from the RGALI contains material that describes the history of the Soviet culture and Theater, Jewish Theater, Jewish avant-garde art and the Kremlin's policy toward Jewish society and culture from 1919 until the early 1950s. The collection contains correspondence with ministries, state organizations, authors, administration, plays, notes ( with comments of censors) and the personal archives of Alexei Granovskii, Solomon Mikhoels, and other actors and writers. Other materials that can be found in this collection are press reports from Soviet and foreign periodicals about the theater and its tours in Europe, posters, drawings, theater programs and documents about other Jewish theaters. The documents of GOSET were transferred to RGALI in two stages: In 1958 RGALI received the documents from the Central archive of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR and in 1959 from the A.A. Bakhrushin State central theater museum. The museum received the documents from the liquidation commission in 1950. After the closing liquidation of the theater its archive was moved for preservation to the Aleksei Bakhrushin State Theatrical Museum where it was stored (without being catalogued). On the night of January 6-7, 1953 a major fire occurred in the small room where the archives of these discredited theaters were housed. A result of this was not only that the documents suffered considerably, but also that many of them were destroyed. The documentary materials that survived were transferred by order of the Committee for the Arts of the Council of Ministers of the USSR to the collection of the Main Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in 1959 to the Central Archive of Literature and Art (TsGALI), now know as the Russian Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI): Fond 2307, which contains 541 items in storage (dating from 1919-1949).

86 reels; fond 2307 : 650 files ; fond 2308 : 206 files. Includes index.

Evreĭskie pogromy na Ukraine, 1918-1921 g.g : Dokumenty Kievskoĭ komissii pomoshchi postradavshim ot pogromov = Jewish pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-1921 : documents of Kiev District Commission for relief to victims of pogroms

The collection, filmed at the State Archive of Kiev Oblast, includes over 30,000 pages of correspondence, witness accounts, reports describing commissioners' and committee activities, records of individual investigations, refugee and victim lists and statistics, communications with Western relief organizations and documents pertaining to Jewish emigration out of Ukraine.

Accompanied by guide entitled: Jewish pogroms in Ukraine, 1918-1921 : documents of Kiev District Commission for relief to victims of pogroms. 

Judaica microfilm reel guides : collection 1

Collection of indexes from microfilm collections produced by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, K.G. Saur, and IDC.Includes Bund Archive and Poalei Zion Archive.

The Judaica Digital Image Collection

The Harvard Judaica Collection includes an extensive collection of over 5.5. million digital images documenting Jewish life in Israel and other countries including Russia/Soviet Union.  The images are chiefly digital photographs but there are also digital images of ephemera  and posters related to Jews in Russia/Soviet Union as well as Russian Jews in Israel.

Access by keyword(s): via HOLLIS Images  and   HOLLIS .  Limit your search to: Depository--  Widener Library Judaica Division.

For more information about the Judaica collections at Harvard please contac t the Judaica division of Harvard Library.

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