The English Department sponsors and administers two annual undergraduate literary competitions in Short Fiction and Poetry.  Depending on available funding, there will be 2-3 prizes in Fiction and 2-3 in Poetry this year.  Past prizes have ranged from $100 to $1000.  As soon as there are specific funding numbers available, they will be announced at:  http://creativewriting.english.illinois.edu/undergraduate/awards/

Contest rules are as follows:

Short Fiction:  no contestant may submit more than one unpublished story (7500 words, maximum length)

Poetry:  no contestant may submit more than 200 lines, as a single unpublished poem or a group of unpublished poems

Only University of Illinois undergraduate students are eligible to compete.  To be considered for a prize, submissions must adhere to the following rules.  All submissions must be sent to the following email address: sdavenpo@illinois.edu.  Depending on your entry (poetry or fiction), the subject line of your email message must read as follows: UNDERGRAD POETRY or UNDERGRAD FICTION (not both).  If you enter in both categories (poetry and fiction), you will need to send separate emails.    Your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, net id, status (undergrad), and UIN number must appear in the body of the email.  Your fiction OR poetry entry is to be contained in one attachment (doc, docx, or rtf only), the name of which must be as follows: contest category followed by your last name, such as FICTIONJONES or POETRYJONES.  Your name should not appear in the attachment itself. 

Thanks to Kristine McCoskey and Steve Davenport of the Department of English for this information item.

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