Below you will find an abundance of essay and writing contest opportunities aimed at encouraging, motivating, and incentivizing young writers to pursue their passion and talents. Please let Mrs. Stanley know if you are entering a contest or applying for a scholarship and how she can help. She is here to encourage and support and would be happy to look over writing or help with brainstorming, proof-reading, or the submission process.
***NOTE: Submission deadlines/windows have not been updated on my website for 2020. Please go to each competition's individual website for updated information.
Bennington Young Writers Award
Description: To promote excellence in writing at the high school level by recognizing outstanding writing achievement by high school students in the categories of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
Eligibility: 10th-12th grade students
Submission Window: September 1 - November 1 each year
Amount: First-place winners in each category are awarded a prize of $500; second-place winners receive $250; third-place winners receive $125.
Carl Sandburg Student Poetry Contest
Description: The contest encourages young students to write poetry based on a theme which changes each year. Educators are invited to submit original poems written by their students. The theme for the 2019 contest is "Joy."
Eligibility: Poems are judged within grade categories, 3-5th, 6-8th and 9-12th. Poems must be submitted by a student's teacher.
Submission Deadline:
Engineer Girl Annual Essay Contest
Description: Prompt: Write a summary report for your city or county council that makes the case for an infrastructure improvement in your community and your chosen solution to the problem. Fully define the problem and describe your solution in detail, including how and why it should be implemented. Explain what has already been tried or is already known about this type of solution and what would be new or innovative in your community. Describe how you will test or anticipate failure for any new innovations to minimize risk. Submissions must be 1000 to 1500 words.
Eligibility: 9th–12th grade
Amount: $500
Geek Partnership Society Writing Contest
Description: The GPS Writing Contest accepts stories in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural, alternate history short fiction, poetry, and comics.
Eligibility: Age eligibility varies by division; generally ages 13+ may enter
Amount: $50 Amazon Gift Card
Submission Deadline:
"It's All Write" Teen Writing Contest
Description: The Ann Arbor District Library is excited to host its 27th annual “It’s All Write!” Teen Writing Contest in Spring 2019! Categories are short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. Writing is judged in three different age categories: Grades 6-8, Grades 9 & 10, and Grades 11 & 12. The top three writers in each age group receive fabulous prizes. This is an ever-growing, international contest.
Eligibility: Middle & high school students
Amount: Cash prizes up to $250
Submission Window:
Jane Austen Society of North America Essay Contest
Description: JASNA conducts an annual student essay contest to foster the study and appreciation of Jane Austen's work. This year's essay prompt is based off Austen's novel Northanger Abbey
Eligibility: All high school students
Amount: Scholarship prizes ranging from $250 - $1,000
Submission Deadline:
Kent County Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition
Description: The Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition was started in 1968 by poet James Allen at the urging of John Hunting, the founder of the Dyer-Ives Foundation, to encourage excellence in writing and to provide recognition for local work of high quality.
Eligibility: The annual contest is open to poets ages 5 through adult who reside in Kent County.
Amount: Winners selected in three age categories have their poems published in Voices, receive a cash award up to $125, and participate in a reading during the Festival of the Arts in June, held at the Main Library.
Submission Window: Usually end of February each year
Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest
Description: Sponsored by Hollins University, the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest provides scholarships, prizes, and recognition for the best poems submitted by high-school aged women. (2019 contest information yet to be released)
Eligibility: High school aged women
Amount: Cash prizes up to $350
Submission Window:
National WWII Museum's High School Essay Contest
Description: Last year's prompt: "Use events from American and WWII history as your starting point, but don’t stop in the past. Use specific examples from your own experiences and/or current events to support your ideas, beliefs and convictions on what you feel the role of art and artists should be today. This is NOT a research paper, and the best essays will NOT be summaries of the past 75 years of American history or popular culture. Your essay will be judged foremost for its originality, clarity of expression, and adherence to contest theme, as well as its historical accuracy, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Museum staff will read and evaluate all entries and select the winning essays." (Themes of the essay contest change each year. 2019's theme has not yet been released.)
Eligibility: The contest is open to all high school students in the United States, Unites States Territories, and U. S. military bases
Amount: $500 - $1,000
Submission Deadline: ~End of December 2019
National YoungArts Foundation Writing Contest
Description: YoungArts offers generous cash awards (with over $500,000 awarded each year) in the categories of nonfiction, novel, poetry, play or script, short story, and spoken word. Note: This contest has an entry fee of $35.
Eligibility: 15 to 18 year old students or in grades 10-12 across the US
Amount: YoungArts winners receive valuable support, including financial awards of up to $10,000, professional development and educational experiences working with renowned mentors, and performance and exhibition opportunities at some of the nation’s leading cultural institutions.
Submission Window: Applications accepted annually June through October
Ocean Awareness Art & Writing Contest
Description: To create a piece about a coastal/marine species, place, or system in 2019 that will be threatened, altered, or lost due to climate change. Submissions accepted in the form of visual art, poetry, prose, music, or film.
Eligibility: Students from around the world are invited to participate in the Ocean Awareness Contest. Enter the division based on your age at the time of entry. Junior Division: Age 11-14, Senior Division: Age 15-18
Amount: Up to $1,500 for first place; $1,000 for second place; $500 for third place; $250 for honorable mentions
Submission Deadline:
Signet Essay Contest
Description: This year's contest allows participants to respond to 1 of 5 essay prompts relating to the American classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
Eligibility: 11th and 12th graders
Amount: Up to a $1,000 scholarship to go towards higher education
Submission Deadline:
SPJ/JEA High School Essay Contest
Description: This essay contest, sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Journalism Education Association, invites students to consider the importance of independent media in a 300-500 word essay.
Eligibility: All students enrolled in grades 9-12 in U.S. public, private and home schools within the United States. Students must submit original work.
Amount: Scholarships up to $1,000
Submission Deadline:
Ten-Minute Play Contest
Description: In this competition, judged by the theater faculty of Princeton University, students submit short plays of 10 pages max in an effort to win recognition and cash prizes of up to $500.
Eligibility: 11th grade students only
Amount: First Prize – $500, Second Prize – $250, Third Prize – $100
Submission Deadline:
The Best-in-Grade Award
Description: The Best-in-Grade Award, underwritten by Bloomberg Philanthropies, provides 24 students (two artists and two writers per grade 7–12) with $500 scholarships.
Eligibility: Grades 7-12
Amount: $500
The New York Times Connection Contest: Link Something You’re Studying in School With the World Today
Description: This is the 2nd annual contest put on by The New York Times inviting students to connect something they're learning in school to events happening today by writing an essay of 450 word or less. In this contest, The New York Times invites students to address important questions by matching something they are studying in school to anything they like that was published in The New York Times in 2018 or 2019, and tell us why they made the connection.
Eligibility: Anyone ages 13-19 around the world
Submission Deadline:
The New York Times Student Editorial Contest
Description: For the sixth year in a row, The New York Times is inviting you to channel your enthusiasm into something a little more formal: short, evidence-based persuasive essays like the editorials The New York Times publishes every day. Your task: Write an editorial on an issue that matters to you.
Eligibility: Anyone ages 13-19 around the world
Submission Deadline:
We the Students Scholarship Essay Contest
Description: This year we are asking you to dig deep and make your scholarship essay personal. A citizen comes in many shapes and sizes. Some serve their community by voting and participating in political events. Others serve through entrepreneurship or philanthropy. We want to know what you think makes a good citizen in your community. We encourage you to bring emotion, creativity, specific examples (including current events), and well-researched facts into what you write. A good essay will demonstrate how citizenship is not an abstract idea, but is, in fact, action inspired by constitutional principles. We can’t wait to see what citizenship looks like in your community!
Eligibility: Students in the US aged 14-19
Amount: $500 - $5,000 scholarships
Submission Deadline:
Write Michigan Short Story Contest
Description: Short-story writing contest up to 3,000 words
Eligibility: Open to all Michigan residents
Amount: Up to $250 cash prize
Submission Window: September 1 - November 30
***NOTE: Submission deadlines/windows have not been updated on my website for 2020. Please go to each competition's individual website for updated information.
Bennington Young Writers Award
Description: To promote excellence in writing at the high school level by recognizing outstanding writing achievement by high school students in the categories of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
Eligibility: 10th-12th grade students
Submission Window: September 1 - November 1 each year
Amount: First-place winners in each category are awarded a prize of $500; second-place winners receive $250; third-place winners receive $125.
Carl Sandburg Student Poetry Contest
Description: The contest encourages young students to write poetry based on a theme which changes each year. Educators are invited to submit original poems written by their students. The theme for the 2019 contest is "Joy."
Eligibility: Poems are judged within grade categories, 3-5th, 6-8th and 9-12th. Poems must be submitted by a student's teacher.
Submission Deadline:
Engineer Girl Annual Essay Contest
Description: Prompt: Write a summary report for your city or county council that makes the case for an infrastructure improvement in your community and your chosen solution to the problem. Fully define the problem and describe your solution in detail, including how and why it should be implemented. Explain what has already been tried or is already known about this type of solution and what would be new or innovative in your community. Describe how you will test or anticipate failure for any new innovations to minimize risk. Submissions must be 1000 to 1500 words.
Eligibility: 9th–12th grade
Amount: $500
Geek Partnership Society Writing Contest
Description: The GPS Writing Contest accepts stories in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural, alternate history short fiction, poetry, and comics.
Eligibility: Age eligibility varies by division; generally ages 13+ may enter
Amount: $50 Amazon Gift Card
Submission Deadline:
"It's All Write" Teen Writing Contest
Description: The Ann Arbor District Library is excited to host its 27th annual “It’s All Write!” Teen Writing Contest in Spring 2019! Categories are short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. Writing is judged in three different age categories: Grades 6-8, Grades 9 & 10, and Grades 11 & 12. The top three writers in each age group receive fabulous prizes. This is an ever-growing, international contest.
Eligibility: Middle & high school students
Amount: Cash prizes up to $250
Submission Window:
Jane Austen Society of North America Essay Contest
Description: JASNA conducts an annual student essay contest to foster the study and appreciation of Jane Austen's work. This year's essay prompt is based off Austen's novel Northanger Abbey
Eligibility: All high school students
Amount: Scholarship prizes ranging from $250 - $1,000
Submission Deadline:
Kent County Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition
Description: The Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition was started in 1968 by poet James Allen at the urging of John Hunting, the founder of the Dyer-Ives Foundation, to encourage excellence in writing and to provide recognition for local work of high quality.
Eligibility: The annual contest is open to poets ages 5 through adult who reside in Kent County.
Amount: Winners selected in three age categories have their poems published in Voices, receive a cash award up to $125, and participate in a reading during the Festival of the Arts in June, held at the Main Library.
Submission Window: Usually end of February each year
Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest
Description: Sponsored by Hollins University, the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest provides scholarships, prizes, and recognition for the best poems submitted by high-school aged women. (2019 contest information yet to be released)
Eligibility: High school aged women
Amount: Cash prizes up to $350
Submission Window:
National WWII Museum's High School Essay Contest
Description: Last year's prompt: "Use events from American and WWII history as your starting point, but don’t stop in the past. Use specific examples from your own experiences and/or current events to support your ideas, beliefs and convictions on what you feel the role of art and artists should be today. This is NOT a research paper, and the best essays will NOT be summaries of the past 75 years of American history or popular culture. Your essay will be judged foremost for its originality, clarity of expression, and adherence to contest theme, as well as its historical accuracy, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Museum staff will read and evaluate all entries and select the winning essays." (Themes of the essay contest change each year. 2019's theme has not yet been released.)
Eligibility: The contest is open to all high school students in the United States, Unites States Territories, and U. S. military bases
Amount: $500 - $1,000
Submission Deadline: ~End of December 2019
National YoungArts Foundation Writing Contest
Description: YoungArts offers generous cash awards (with over $500,000 awarded each year) in the categories of nonfiction, novel, poetry, play or script, short story, and spoken word. Note: This contest has an entry fee of $35.
Eligibility: 15 to 18 year old students or in grades 10-12 across the US
Amount: YoungArts winners receive valuable support, including financial awards of up to $10,000, professional development and educational experiences working with renowned mentors, and performance and exhibition opportunities at some of the nation’s leading cultural institutions.
Submission Window: Applications accepted annually June through October
Ocean Awareness Art & Writing Contest
Description: To create a piece about a coastal/marine species, place, or system in 2019 that will be threatened, altered, or lost due to climate change. Submissions accepted in the form of visual art, poetry, prose, music, or film.
Eligibility: Students from around the world are invited to participate in the Ocean Awareness Contest. Enter the division based on your age at the time of entry. Junior Division: Age 11-14, Senior Division: Age 15-18
Amount: Up to $1,500 for first place; $1,000 for second place; $500 for third place; $250 for honorable mentions
Submission Deadline:
Signet Essay Contest
Description: This year's contest allows participants to respond to 1 of 5 essay prompts relating to the American classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
Eligibility: 11th and 12th graders
Amount: Up to a $1,000 scholarship to go towards higher education
Submission Deadline:
SPJ/JEA High School Essay Contest
Description: This essay contest, sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists and the Journalism Education Association, invites students to consider the importance of independent media in a 300-500 word essay.
Eligibility: All students enrolled in grades 9-12 in U.S. public, private and home schools within the United States. Students must submit original work.
Amount: Scholarships up to $1,000
Submission Deadline:
Ten-Minute Play Contest
Description: In this competition, judged by the theater faculty of Princeton University, students submit short plays of 10 pages max in an effort to win recognition and cash prizes of up to $500.
Eligibility: 11th grade students only
Amount: First Prize – $500, Second Prize – $250, Third Prize – $100
Submission Deadline:
The Best-in-Grade Award
Description: The Best-in-Grade Award, underwritten by Bloomberg Philanthropies, provides 24 students (two artists and two writers per grade 7–12) with $500 scholarships.
Eligibility: Grades 7-12
Amount: $500
The New York Times Connection Contest: Link Something You’re Studying in School With the World Today
Description: This is the 2nd annual contest put on by The New York Times inviting students to connect something they're learning in school to events happening today by writing an essay of 450 word or less. In this contest, The New York Times invites students to address important questions by matching something they are studying in school to anything they like that was published in The New York Times in 2018 or 2019, and tell us why they made the connection.
Eligibility: Anyone ages 13-19 around the world
Submission Deadline:
The New York Times Student Editorial Contest
Description: For the sixth year in a row, The New York Times is inviting you to channel your enthusiasm into something a little more formal: short, evidence-based persuasive essays like the editorials The New York Times publishes every day. Your task: Write an editorial on an issue that matters to you.
Eligibility: Anyone ages 13-19 around the world
Submission Deadline:
We the Students Scholarship Essay Contest
Description: This year we are asking you to dig deep and make your scholarship essay personal. A citizen comes in many shapes and sizes. Some serve their community by voting and participating in political events. Others serve through entrepreneurship or philanthropy. We want to know what you think makes a good citizen in your community. We encourage you to bring emotion, creativity, specific examples (including current events), and well-researched facts into what you write. A good essay will demonstrate how citizenship is not an abstract idea, but is, in fact, action inspired by constitutional principles. We can’t wait to see what citizenship looks like in your community!
Eligibility: Students in the US aged 14-19
Amount: $500 - $5,000 scholarships
Submission Deadline:
Write Michigan Short Story Contest
Description: Short-story writing contest up to 3,000 words
Eligibility: Open to all Michigan residents
Amount: Up to $250 cash prize
Submission Window: September 1 - November 30