2025 Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award submission will open from October 15 – December 31, 2024
About the Award
The Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award celebrates an author whose work embodies the lyrically powerful and historically engaged nature of Dr. Alexander’s writing. We aim for this award to highlight different forms of knowledge production that emerge from the artistic, political, and cultural advocacy undertaken by women of color nationally, transnationally, and globally.
Eligibility:
The award is open to all genres, including: poetry, fiction, play scripts, and non-fiction. All submissions will be judged blind, please do not include any identifying information or contact information in your manuscript. We only accept previously unpublished work for publication. We only accept 1 submission for entry to the EACWA contest. Simultaneous submissions will not be considered.
POETRY
Manuscripts of 3-5 poems should be typed and formatted according to genre conventions. Please include all poems in one document.
FICTION AND NON-FICTION
Prose and non-fiction manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman font, and no longer than 7,500 words.
Works engaging with feminism, race, and transnationalism will be prioritized. Translated works and manuscripts in languages other than English are encouraged as well.
PLAY SCRIPTS
Play scripts should be typed, Times New Roman font, and no more than 5,000 words.
Guidelines for Applying:
SUBMIT YOUR MANUSCRIPT ON SCHOLARONE, CLICK HERE. Any hard copy manuscripts received will be recycled unread.
Please designate “Elizabeth Alexander Award Submission” as the article type for your manuscript (see below). All misidentified submissions will not be considered for the award. Manuscripts should be submitted as Microsoft Word or PDF files.
The submission period for the 2024 Awards will be open from October 15th-December 31st, 2023.
Award Review Process
Submissions will be reviewed anonymously by members of the Creative Writing Advisory Board and by readers with expertise in each genre. For more information about our Creative Writing Advisory Board, please click here.
Meet the Current & Past Winners
2024 Creative Writing Award Recipients: Maryam Ala Amjadi & Winniebell Xinyu Zong
2023 Creating Writing Award Recipients: Yalie Kamara & Cece Roth-Eagle
2022 Creating Writing Award Recipient: Barbara Jane Reyes
2021 Creating Writing Award Recipient: Gwendolyn Maya Wallace
2020 Creating Writing Award Recipients: : Adrienne Perry & Nancy Kang
About Elizabeth Alexander
Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate. She is also is president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder in the arts, culture, and humanities.
Dr. Alexander’s most recent book, The Trayvon Generation (2022), is a galvanizing meditation on the power of art and culture to illuminate America’s unresolved problem with race and the challenges facing young Black America. Among the fifteen books she has authored or co-authored, her poetry collection American Sublime was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2006, and her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2015. Other works include Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990–2010 (2010), Power and Possibility: Essays, Reviews, Interviews (2007), The Black Interior: Essays (2004), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), Body of Life (1996), and The Venus Hottentot (1990).
Over the course of an esteemed career in education, Dr. Alexander has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Columbia University, and Yale University, where she taught for fifteen years and chaired the African American Studies Department. She has been awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the George Kent Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes for Poetry. Notably, Dr. Alexander composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama.
Dr. Alexander is Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, serves on the Pulitzer Prize Board, and co-designed the Art for Justice Fund.
Please visit Dr. Alexander’s personal website for more information.