Guidelines for Submission
All currently matriculated QC undergrads, including students who will finish their degree requirements in the Fall 2024 semester, are invited to submit their work for prizes awarded by the Department of English in Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Nonfiction—including Creative Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, and specific nonfiction prizes, listed below; in work produced in the Writing Minor; and in work in any genre, including multimodal work, done in English 109, 110, and 130 (Composition). Students may submit work in any or all categories; work done as a class assignment is eligible. The Composition Prizes are limited to students whose work for English 109, 110, or 130 was done in either Fall 2024 or Spring 2025.
All prizes carry monetary awards in the range of $100 to $500, but the amounts vary from year to year.
Page limits: for Nonfiction and Fiction, 20 pages; for Poetry, 10 pages; for Drama, two one-act plays or one full-length play.
Format: All entries must be formatted according to MLA guidelines for English papers; students unsure of these guidelines may consult the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) at the following address: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/.
If you are submitting a multimodal entry from a writing course, please consult your professor and/ or the Writing Prizes Chair ([email protected]) with any questions you may have about formatting.
Submissions are due by email ([email protected]) by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, March 21, 2025.
To ensure fairness in judging, all entries must be submitted under a pseudonym; all work will be read anonymously. Please follow this procedure when submitting work:
Students may submit work in any or all categories. In the body of your email submission, please indicate your name and your class standing. In the subject line of your email, please indicate the prize for which you are submitting. So, if you are submitting poetry, fiction, drama, creative nonfiction, or general nonfiction, please indicate so in the subject line of your email: “fiction prize submission” or “poetry prize submission,” and so on. Submissions are limited to ONE submission in each of these categories. If you are submitting work in a specific nonfiction field (see the list below), please indicate so in the subject line of your email (“nonfiction prize submission, Black American Studies” or “nonfiction prize submission, “Gender and Sexuality,”etc.). You may submit in up to THREE specific nonfiction fields.
Your emailed submission should include two attachments: (1) a cover sheet, on which you link a pseudonym to your real name, and (2) the work you are submitting. Be sure that your name is replaced by your pseudonym on the work that you are submitting everywhere within that document.
The cover sheet should include the following information:
Pseudonym, Real Name and Student ID#
Genre of your submission, Specific nonfiction category (if necessary)
Address, Phone Number, Email Address
All your attachments (both cover sheet and your submitted work) should be either Word documents (.doc or .docx) or pdfs. Google docs will not be accepted. Save your cover sheet document using the following naming format: Pseudonym.doc(x) or Pseudonym.pdf. Save your submitted work document using the following naming format: Pseudonym dot Genre of Submission (Example: Pseudonym.Fiction.doc). So, if your pseudonym is RoyKent, your two documents should be name RoyKent.doc(x) (your cover sheet) and RoyKent.Fiction.doc(x) (your submitted work).
Make each submission via a separate email. Therefore, if you are submitting in three categories, you will send three separate emails.
Here is a list of fields in which specific nonfiction prizes are awarded:
- Composition Prizes in English 109, 110, 130
- Composition Prize: First Year Research Essay
- Essays on subjects related to:
- Black American Studies
- Poetry
- Autobiographical work on encounters with American life
- American literature pre-1865
- Late 19th-Century (post-1865) or 20th-Century American literature
- Medieval or Early Modern Literature
- Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Children’s Liteature
- Graphic Narratives
- 20th-Century British or Irish Literature
- Gender and Sexuality
- Asian American Studies
- Latinx Studies
In addition, there will be a prize for work produced in the Writing Minor. To be considered for this prize, include “Writing Minor” in the subject line of your email, after you have indicated the genre of your submission.
Faculty may also nominate noteworthy work for specific prizes!
Prize-winners will be contacted in early May, 2025. The Writing Prizes Ceremony will take place during Free Hour on Wednesday, May 7.
Please contact Steven Kruger at [email protected] with any questions.
Faculty colleagues, please note: The Prizes Committee is also accepting nominations for the following awards:
The Sue Shanker Award, given annually to “an older student who has returned to college after a hiatus, or recently begun their college career, and has demonstrated academic excellence.”
The Silverstein Prizes, to be awarded to current sophomores and juniors in the following areas: (1) Excellence in Creative Writing, (2) All-around excellence in English Studies, and (3) Excellence in Nonfiction or Documentary or Biographical writing.
A new scholarship, the Marianne Doennecke-Mangels ’61 Scholarship/Award, for current juniors, to be awarded based on merit and need: $2500 to each of two students.
Please email nominations to [email protected].
