By Jinny Kim and Grace Eppinger~
Are you a Penn State student who has a passion for any genre of creative writing? Did you know that you can earn money with your writing? If you have never submitted your work to a writing contest, you may want to consider submitting your work to Penn State’s annual creative writing contests.
Every year, our Penn State English Department selects winners in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from among undergraduate student submissions. You can submit as long as you are a Penn State undergrad who will be enrolled in the spring semester.
Even if you are a Commonwealth Campus student who might not have heard about the writing awards, you can still submit, as the contests are open to all campuses. Naomi Chao, who attended Penn State Erie at the time of submission , won the 2018 Katey Lehman Award in Poetry.
Here’s some more motivation for submitting: although the amounts of the cash prizes are not specified, you will get money that can help with your tuition.
If you want to submit, you are going to have to make some choices based on your coursework and class standing. If you have recently taken introductory poetry, fiction, and nonfiction courses, you might want to submit to the categories specified for English 50 and the 200-level writing classes (English 212, 213, 214, and 215). In some categories, such as the Lehman Award in Fiction, you must have completed at least 28 credits.
You can find more information about the different categories of the contest here and see the winners of past years on the Creative Writing at Penn State blog.
In fact, a few of the winners from the past year are names that have made their way onto the Klio contributor list. These outstanding artists were rewarded with cash prizes for their creativity and excellent writing.
For the Edward J. Nichols Memorial Award in Writing, Will Carpenter earned the first place prize in both fiction and nonfiction for his works “Citronella Candles: Life After a Wake” and “The Cost of Scar Tissue,” respectively. Will was also recently featured on our Klio website as part of our artist spotlights, and you can read about his award-winning work online here.
Another familiar name was Danielle Fruehan, who placed in both the Mihelcic Poetry Award with her poem “In Yesterday” and the AAP/Steinberg Prize, which is given only to students in the BA/MA program for creative writing. She also placed in the categories for the Lehman Poetry Prize and the Cranage Poetry Prize in 2017’s contest. Dani was another feature on our Kalliope page, so please check out the article and her beautiful poetry.
Finally, Andrea Brown, a contributor to Klio’s 2017 edition, placed second for the Mihelcic Poetry Prize this past year. Her poem “My God, She Is” and her creative nonfiction piece “The Invaders” were both featured in Klio 2017.
If you’re ready to share your creativity, win cash prizes, and put your work out into the world, then consider submitting to Penn State’s creative writing contest! You never know—your name might end up among these writers of Klio past who have been honored for their craft.