Creative Writing Competition

Entry Deadline December 3, 2012

Agnes Scott College's 42^nd annual Writers' Festival will be held on the college's Decatur campus on Thursday and Friday, April 4 and 5, 2013. Finalist entries in the Festival contest will be judged by distinguished guest writers Gish Jen, Cristina Garcia, and Anjail Rashida Ahmad '92. All three will also give public readings during the Festival.

Contest categories are poetry, short fiction, personal essay, and one-act play. A prize of $500 will be awarded to the winning entry in each category. Contest finalists will be notified by email in January. Finalists will be published in the Festival magazine and will be invited to a workshop with the visiting writers during the event.

Contest rules appear below. For information about the event, or to receive an electronic copy of the rules, write Prof. Steve Guthrie at sguthrie@agnesscott.edu. Entries not following these rules will not be considered.

• The Writers’ Festival competition in poetry, short fiction, personal essay, and one-act play is open to anyone currently enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate program in a college or university in the state of Georgia. Works submitted must be previously unpublished except in campus newspapers or literary magazines. Finalist entries will appear in the Festival magazine; authors retain all rights to their materials and may publish them elsewhere after the competition.
• Each entrant may submit up to five poems, up to two stories, up to two essays, and one play. Entries must be submitted as Word-compatible email attachments to sguthrie@agnesscott.edu. Receipt will be confirmed by return email.
• Each story, essay, play, or set of poems must be in a separate file. The author’s name must not appear within the file.
• The covering email message must include the author’s name, school, email address, and phone number, followed by a list of titles of all works submitted, including the titles of individual poems.
• Entries must be typed in a standard 12-point black-type font (no script fonts), and entries in short fiction and the personal essay must be double-spaced. Entries may use global formatting (for example, first line indents) that can easily be changed to our template for publication.
• Stories must be no longer than 5000 words, personal essays no longer than 3000 words, poems no longer than 100 lines. Playscripts must be no longer than 30 pages and must be typed in the approved professional format. (See "Guidelines," available from Samuel French publishers.)
• The deadline for receipt of entries is December 3. Finalists will be notified by email and will be allowed to make minor changes in their work before publication.