2025 Contest Official Rules
WV Writers 2025 Writing Competition Official Rules
SUBMISSIONS:
- All entries are electronic and will be paid via PayPal.
- No paper forms will be accepted. Paper checks mailed to us will be considered donations.
- The entry fee is $15 per entry, or $20 for Book Length Prose.
- Entry fees are not refundable.
- Here is the entry page.
DEADLINE:
- Entries are accepted from January 2 through March 31, 2025.
- Entries submitted between March 16 and March 31 incur a $5 late fee per manuscript.
ELIGIBILITY:
- The contest is open to any WV resident. Out-of-state residents must be or become members of WV Writers, Inc.
- WV Writers Board of Directors members are prohibited from entering.
- Entries must be the entrant's original work and must comply with the category descriptions, limitations, and procedures.
- Any work that has won a cash prize in any previous WVW competition is not eligible.
- Published works, or those accepted anywhere for publication before January 1, 2025, are not eligible. A work will be considered published if it has been printed in a publication with a distribution of 1000 or more, published on a webpage, or independently published via print-on-demand or e-book service. If less than 25% of the entry has been published it will be considered unpublished.
- There is no eligibility age limit.
CONTEST GUIDELINES:
- This contest is blindly judged. The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript.
- Indicate the category and word count in the upper right corner of the first page. Poetry should indicate line, not word count.
- All manuscripts should be titled, in a standard 12-point font, and double-spaced. Poetry may be single-spaced.
- Manuscripts may be entered in multiple categories provided the same title is used.
- Submit a separate manuscript and fee for each category entered.
- Submissions not following the guidelines may be disqualified with no refund of entry fees.
JUDGING:
- Judges will not critique manuscripts.
- Entrants may not contact judges before or during the contest. This will result in disqualification without a refund.
- Decisions of the judges are final.
WINNERS:
- Winners will be announced at the WVW Awards Banquet on June 7, 2025, at Cedar Lakes, Ripley, WV.
- Cash awards of $200, $100, and $50 will be given for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, respectively, for each category along with a ribbon and certificate. Honorable mentions will receive a ribbon and certificate.
- Winners not present at the banquet will receive their awards in the mail. (But please come to the banquet, it's a good time.)
- The list of winners will be posted on the website by June 9, 2025.
COMPETITION CATEGORY DESCRIPTIONS:
Short Poetry – 20 lines or less of poetry in any form
Long Poetry – 21 lines and up to 4 pages in length. Poetry in any form.
Short Story – up to 5,000 words. Fiction.
Nonfiction / Essay – up to 5,000 words. Article, essay, or memoir.
What Is Appalachia? – up to 5,000 words. Non-fiction, fiction, or poetry on a topic related to Appalachia.
For book categories – please note the entry fee is an additional $5.
Book Length Prose – Up to 7,500 words and a 1-page synopsis. Specify fiction, nonfiction, or memoir.
2025 New Mountain Voices Contest Official Rules
WV Writers 2025 New Mountain Voices Writing Competition Official Rules
SUBMISSIONS:
- Submissions are accepted from young folks in grades K through 12.
- There are no entry fees.
- Here is the entry page.
DEADLINE:
- Entries are accepted from January 2 through March 31, 2025.
ELIGIBILITY:
- The contest is open to any WV student in grades K through 12. This includes students in any schools: public, private, charter, parochial, homeschooled, or other.
- Entrants must be in grades K-5 for the Elementary Competition, grades 6-8 for the Middle School Competition, and grades 9-12 for the High School Competition.
- Entries must be the entrant's original work and must comply with the category descriptions, limitations, and procedures.
- Any work that has won a cash prize in any previous WVW competition is not eligible.
- Published works, or those accepted anywhere for publication before January 1, 2025, are not eligible. A work will be considered published if it has been printed in a publication with a distribution of 1000 or more, published on a webpage, or independently published via print-on-demand or e-book service. If less than 25% of the entry has been published it will be considered unpublished.
CONTEST GUIDELINES:
- This contest is blindly judged. The author’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript.
- Each entry is limited to 2,000 words. Indicate the word count in the upper right corner of the first page.
- All manuscripts should be titled in a standard 12-point font, and double-spaced. Poetry in the high school category may be single-spaced.
- Submissions not following the guidelines may be disqualified with no refund of entry fees.
JUDGING:
- Judges will not critique manuscripts.
- Entrants may not contact judges before or during the contest. This will result in disqualification without a refund.
- Decisions of the judges are final.
WINNERS:
- Winners of 1st, 2nd, 3rd places and Honorable Mention will be notified they have placed in the competition, but not told the placement until the WVW Awards Banquet on Saturday, June 7, 2025, at Cedar Lakes, Ripley, WV.
- The winning individuals and one guest will be guests of WV Writers at the awards banquet.
- All winners will be announced at the Awards Banquet.
- The list of winners will be posted on the website by June 9, 2025.
COMPETITION CATEGORY DESCRIPTIONS:
Entrants may write about any topic they choose, or they can choose any of the following prompts:
My Superpower … write about a quality you have that you consider special or super!
A Holiday You Will Always Remember … what made that holiday special to you?
Sharing is Caring … write about a time you shared something that made a positive difference in someone’s life.
AWARDS
- K-5 and 6-8 will be awarded 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place and an honorable mention.
- 9-12 Poetry and 9-12 Prose will also be awarded 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place and an honorable mention.
- 1st place - $100, 2nd place - $50, 3rd place - $25
- Each winner receives a certificate.
Long Poetry
Ben Weakley spent 14 years as a U.S. Army officer before medically retiring in 2019. A disabled Veteran, he is a poet, author, and advocate who serves as the Director of Development for Community Building Art Works, a non-profit dedicated to building bridges between Veterans and citizens through expressive arts. His first collection of poetry, HEAT + PRESSURE was published by Middle West Press in 2022. His work appears in Military Times, ONE ART, Sequestrum, Cutleaf Journal, and Wrath-Bearing Tree, among others. He lives in Kingsport, Tennessee with his wife, two teenage children, and a well-meaning, but poorly-behaved hound-dog named Camo. Find him at https://jbenweakley.com
Short Poetry
Sara Henning is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. She was awarded the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the 2019 Poetry Society of America's George Bogin Memorial Award. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.
Book Length Prose
Edward Karshner, Professor of English at Robert Morris University, teaches courses in writing, Appalachian Literature, and serves as the Creative Writing Certificate Coordinator. After earning a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Philosophy from Bowling Green State University, he explored cultural rhetoric as expressed in folklore. His primary interest was how landscape influences folk-narratives. In the early part of his career, he travelled extensively in China, Slovakia, Austria, and the Czech Republic before spending over a decade working with the Dinè (Navajo). A 2022 Research Fellow in Folklore at Berea College’s Special Collections and Archives, Karshner is the author of “These Stories Sustain Me” in the collection Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Replies to Hillbilly Elegy. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and in Still: The Journal.
Short Story
Penny Zang is an author and English professor in Greenville, South Carolina. She graduated from West Virginia University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Fiction) and her work has appeared in the Potomac Review, Louisville Review, and South 85, among others. She is the 2024 Elizabeth Boatwright Coker fiction fellow via the South Carolina Academy of Authors. Her debut novel, Doll Parts, will be published by Sourcebooks in 2025.
Nonfiction
Jody DiPerna is a writer and award-winning journalist. Her book, Writing Down the Mountains, is a love-song to Appalachian writers and literature and is forthcoming from the University Press of Kentucky. DiPerna is one of the founders of the Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and, for three years, was the senior editor for all stories published there. In her journalism career, she has covered the carceral state, criminal justice, sports and historical reviews for more than 20 years. No matter what project pulls her away, she always comes back to writing about books and literary life. She has interviewed Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners, as well as writers in Pittsburgh, the Rust Belt, and Northern Appalachia who will never be finalists for those heady prizes, but who have brought their unique stories to the landscape.
Special Topic: What is Appalachia?
Denton Loving is the author of the poetry collections Crimes Against Birds and Tamp, recipient of the inaugural Tennessee Book Award for Poetry. He is a co-founder and editor at EastOver Press and its literary journal Cutleaf. His fiction, poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including The Kenyon Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Ecotone. His third collection of poems, Feller, is forthcoming in 2025 from Mercer University Press.
New Mountain Voices, Grades K-5
Sarah Rose is a spoken word artist living on the sunny side of Pittsburgh. She is ranked among the top female poets in the city and has competed at the National Poetry Slam in Atlanta GA. Sarah Rose has been published in multiple poetry compilations, been a regional competitor of The Moth storytelling series on NPR, is a member of the Steel City Storytellers and on the board of the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective. Her greatest accomplishments include being the mother of 5 nearly grown adults, surviving a global pandemic, and a local expert on reverse vandalism.
New Mountain Voices: Grades 6-8
Meagan Lucas is the author of the Anthony nominated collection Here in the Dark, and the award-winning novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs. She has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, Derringer, and Canadian Crime Writer’s Award of Excellence multiple times, and won the 2017 Scythe Prize for Fiction. Her short stories “The Monster Beneath” and “You Know What They Say About Karma” were listed as Distinguished in the 2023 and 2024 Best American Mystery and Suspense. Her novel Songbirds and Stray Dogs was chosen to represent North Carolina in the Library of Congress 2022 Route 1 Reads program, and won Best Debut at the 2020 Indie Book Awards. Meagan teaches Creative Writing at Robert Morris University and in the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville. She is the Editor in Chief of Reckon Review. Born and raised on a small island in Northern Ontario, she now lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
New Mountain Voices: Grades 9-12 Poetry
Sylvia Woods is a retired high school English teacher. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies. Her full-length collection of poetry is What We Take With Us, 2021. Most recently her poems appeared in Appalachian Places. In her spare time Sylvia is a volunteer instructor at Oak Ridge Institute for Extended learning. She serves on the board of Tennessee Mountain Writers.
New Mountain Voices: Grades 9-12 Prose
Melissa Minsker works as a teaching librarian at the Technical College of the Lowcountry in Beaufort, SC. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from WVU and a Master of Library and Information Science from Pitt. She lives with her dog, Birdie, in the beautiful South Carolina lowcountry.