High School Creative Writing Contest
Submissions open TBA 2025. Open to all students in the United States currently enrolled in high school.
Poetry
Submit up to 3 of your best pieces to be considered.
Prose (Fiction & Creative Nonfiction)
Flash fiction, short story, memoir, autobiography, creative essay, or script. May submit multiple pieces with a total word count of less than 5,000 words.
All submitted work must be wholly original and may not infringe upon the copyright or other intellectual property or other legal or moral rights of any other person or entity.
Entries cannot have been previously published or have received an award from another contest.
2025 Deadline: TBA
2024 Winners:
"Darlene" by Lavanya Mani: First Place Prose
"CVG" by Grace Zhou: Second Place Prose
"Apt 206A" by Kayla McDaniel: Honorable Mention Prose
"Memories Held Captive" by Christa Chane: Honorable Mention Prose
"Starlight Stitches" by Leonardo Chun: First Place Poetry
"I Ask My Mother What She Remembers As She Prepares Food" by Hannah Ahn Second Place Poetry
"hao chi" by Grace Huang: Honorable Mention Poetry
"Pitter Patter" by Chelsea Zhu: Honorable Mention Poetry
A BFA is a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. At CBU, we offer a BFA in creative writing. Students may also choose to get a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in English with a minor or concentration in creative writing at CBU. The creative writing program hosts this contest for high school students.
First prize in each category: $100
Second prize in each category: $50
Winning pieces and those receiving an honorable mention may be published online or in print form by the BFA@CBU program.
Judges' decisions are final. No refunds for submissions will be granted. (If you experience a technical issue, etc., let us know.)
Submissions are accepted through Submittable.
You will need to create a free Submittable account to enter the contest.
Full submissions details (including format requirements) are on the contest submission form.
There is a $3 fee per submission; multiple pieces may be included in one submission.
Poetry should be single spaced; fiction and nonfiction should be double-spaced. All entries should be in Times New Roman, 12 point font.
Proofread your entire submission before uploading.
No identifying personal information should be on the submission file—only the title and the work itself should be included in the Word/RTF document. Do not place your name nor any awards, publications, etc. anywhere on your submission.
Submissions can contain entries for multiple categories, but please submit each category as an individual file. For example, if you would like to submit 3 poems and 2 short stories:
- Save all your poems in one Word/RTF file with no personal information in the file.
- Save all your stories in one Word/RTF file with no personal information in the file.
- Then submit the 2 files together.
- Prep all your files before submitting so you can submit them all at once and pay the submission fee only one time.