The Winona Prize in Creative Writing
Get paid for your original work and become a published author before you graduate with the Winona Prize in Creative Writing.
Undergraduate students from all disciplines and majors are encouraged to apply. There are 3 prizes for $1500 awarded:
- Fiction
- Poetry
- Creative Nonfiction
Manuscripts are reviewed by the creative writing faculty. The final judges in each genre will be visiting writers from our John S. Lucas Great River Reading Series or other acclaimed authors published in the appropriate genre.
Winners will be announced by February and published in Satori during the spring semester.
How to Submit
Submissions are due to Minné 302 by Nov. 16.
To be eligible, you must be:
- an undergraduate student enrolled full-time at Winona State
- in good academic standing
- have completed a creative writing course at Winona State, such as Introduction to Creative Writing (ENG 222) or any upper-level creative writing course
All submissions must be the writer’s own work and unpublished in any form. Students may submit only one entry in each genre.
Each entry must include the following items:
- A cover sheet with the student’s name, WSU email, phone number, and the genre of submission.
- A one-paragraph biography written in the third person that includes the qualifying creative writing class and professor of the class.
- A printed copy of the manuscript itself (not in digital form).
- Evidence of being currently enrolled in, or having completed, a Creative Writing course at Winona State.
- Do not submit a full transcript or Degree Audit Report (DARS). Instead, include a screenshot of the entry.
- If the students submits to more than one genre, they must complete steps 1-4a for each submission.
Submissions that do not meet the guidelines will be discarded. All submissions are final.