Rising Writers Awards

The Rising Writers Awards celebrate the creative writing from high school students around the world, recognising the voices that dare to be honest, the stories that refuse to be ordinary, and the poems that make you read them twice.

About the Competition

Open to all high school students around the world, The Rising Writers Awards bring together an extraordinary breadth of student literary voices, each one evaluated with the same care, rigour, and seriousness of purpose that defines professional literary competition at the highest level.

What We're Looking For

Voice

Writing has a distinct and consistent narrative voice that is communicated from the opening line and sustained throughout the entire piece.

Craft

Writing demonstrates intentional and purposeful use of literary techniques appropriate to its form, including structure, pacing, imagery, syntax, and line or paragraph breaks.

Originality

Writing presents a subject, perspective, or approach that feels genuinely singular. The work avoids familiar tropes, predictable structures, and expected conclusions.

Emotional Honesty

Writing engages with its subject with sincerity and courage. The piece does not resolve complexity too quickly or reach for easy comfort
"The Odyssey Prize exists for the student who has written something they are proud of and who is ready to find out what a professional reader thinks of it."
Co-Founder of Propelia
ELIGIBILITY

How can I participate?

  • ✦ You are a current high school student anywhere in the world
  • ✦ Your submission is original, unpublished, and written entirely by you
  • ✦ Your work falls within one of our four accepted categories

A note on AI-generated writing: Submissions that are wholly or substantially generated by artificial intelligence are ineligible. We are looking for your writing, the work that only you, with your particular history and your particular way of seeing, could have produced.

Competition Categories

The Rising Writers Awards welcome entries across four literary categories. Each category is judged separately by a dedicated panel of professional literary evaluators.

Fiction

Short fiction that takes its characters, its structure, and its ending seriously. We welcome realist fiction, speculative fiction, literary fiction, and work that sits somewhere between classifications.

Word Count: 800-4,000 words

Poetry

Poetry in any form — free verse, formal, prose poetry, and spoken word on the page.

Up to 3 poems per entry · No minimum or maximum length per poem

Personal Essay

Personal essays that take a single experience, memory, or observation and follow it somewhere surprising and true.

Word Count: 600 — 3,000 words

Hybrid & Experimental

Work that blends genres, breaks conventions, and finds new shapes for old truths.

Word Count: Open

Important Dates

Submission Open: January 1, 2026

Submission Close: February 28, 2026

Shortlist Announcement: March 21, 2026

Winner Announcement: April 30, 2026