2023 Undergraduate Creative Writing Contest

Prizes: * 1st - $100 * 2nd - $75 * 3rd - $50
(Plus Books & Honorable Mentions)

Guidelines:

· Contest is open only to currently enrolled undergraduate students.

· Eligible students are expected to attend the Festival. Recognition will occur Friday evening, April 7, 2023. (Please do not submit if you cannot attend the festival).

· Submissions must be confirmed by a sponsoring faculty member.

· Each institution is allowed a maximum of 5 (five entries); This includes ECU.

· Each institution is responsible for selecting its contestants

· Submissions are limited to one of three categories: 1) one piece of short fiction (up to 7500 words), or one piece of creative nonfiction (up to 7500 words), or up to three poems (150 lines total).

· Prizes will not be designated by genre, but will be awarded for best writing.

· All entries must be the original work of the student.

· All entries must be neatly typed; please double-space prose entries.

· Entries will not be returned, so keep your originals.

· No identifying marks should be on the manuscript itself, except for the title.

· Provide separate Cover page with contact information: 1) Student’s Name; 2) Student’s email address AND mailing address 3) Faculty Member’s Name & Email address 3) Institution 4) Classification 5) Phone number 6) Title of original work submitted

· Submit work by email to Dr. Jennifer Dorsey at jdorsey@ecok.edu. In the subject line of your email submission, type “Scissortail Undergraduate Contest.”

· Professor Dorsey will screen entries, then an outside judge will judge all entries that meet minimum guidelines.


DEADLINE: Email entries to jdorsey@ecok.edu must be received by Midnight February 19, 2023. There will be no exceptions. Recognition of writers will occur Friday April 7 as part of the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival held at East Central University (April 6 - 8, 2023). Please visit (and subscribe via email) www.ecuscissortail.blogspot.com to receive festival updates. Contact: Ken Hada, khada@ecok.edu (580) 559-5557 for information regarding the Festival


Judge: Dr. Andrew Geyer, whose tenth book is the composite anthology Magic, Mystery, Madness: electric ekphrastics (Angelina River Press 2022). A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the South Carolina Academy of Authors Literary Hall of Fame, Geyer currently serves as English Department Chair at the University of South Carolina Aiken and as fiction editor for Concho River Review.