CCAD Creative Writing Awards Now Open for Submissions

The Tenth Annual CCAD Creative Writing Awards are now open for submissions!

 

CCAD students may submit work in up to three genres: 1) poetry, 2) prose (fiction/non-fiction), and 3) screenwriting. For each genre, there will be a winner ($300 + publication in a future print issue of Botticelli) and a runner up ($100 + possible publication in a future online issue of Botticelli). Award recipients will be invited to read their work at the Spring 2025 CHROMA edition of Red Wheelbarrow. The submissions will be judged anonymously and by outside (non-CCAD) judges. 

 

The deadline for contest submissions is Monday, February 24 by 11:59pm. Submissions received after that time will not be accepted. 

 

Guidelines

This contest is limited to current CCAD undergraduates, including students who completed their undergraduate coursework at the end of the Fall 2024 semester. Students may submit in more than one genre and do not have to be Creative Writing minors or have taken Creative Writing courses to submit. Please read the guidelines below about how to format and submit your work. Revisions to submissions will not be accepted after the due date has passed. Prepare your submission carefully.


Each submission should be saved as a single PDF. Save the PDF file name as your phone number: (e.g., 6140000000.pdf). Please submit a separate PDF file for each genre. You may not submit more than once for a single genre. In other words, you can submit a PDF for poetry and a PDF for screenwriting, but you may not submit two PDFs for poetry.

  • Your name should not appear in the PDF, unless it is included as part of a poem or essay. Do not include a title page or cover letter.

 

Poetry: Please submit up to 3 poems*, totaling no more than ten pages. Start each new poem at the top of a page.

 

Prose (Fiction/Non-fiction): Submit no more than two pieces* of fiction and/or non-fiction. Please indicate under the title if the piece is fiction or non-fiction. The total page count must be no more than 30 double-spaced pages.

 

Screenwriting: Submit a single act of a screenplay, or a short complete screenplay, no more than 35 pages long. It should be formatted according to screenwriting conventions. You may include a synopsis if this submission is excerpted from a larger screenplay. Include the title of your screenplay.

 

*Judges are tasked with choosing the best poem or prose piece and do not base their decisions on the entire submission packet. For example, the poetry winner will win for one poem, not the entire packet.

 

** Submit your work here. You can only access the form with a CCAD account. **

 

You will receive a confirmation email that your work has been received. Award results will be announced in late March. Winners will be invited to read from their work at the CHROMA edition of Red Wheelbarrow in May. Winning entries might not be published in Botticelli until Fall 2025. If a winner has graduated by then, copies of the issue will be mailed to the winner free of charge. If you have any questions, please email Robert Loss, Department Head of Writing, Literature and Philosophy.

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