Procedure and Rules
1. Prizes in each category--fiction, poetry, personal essay, and critical essay--will be $100.00 for first place, $60.00 for second place, and $40.00 for third place.
2. The contest is open to any student regularly enrolled in high school or the equivalent. First place winners of one year's contest are not eligible for prizes the following year.
3. Each contestant may submit one entry in each category.
4. Each entry must be accompanied by a signed statement that it is the original work of the contestant and has not been previously published; the statement should also include the title of the entry, the author's full name, address, e-mail address, school name and address. If selected for a prize, winner's social security number will be needed.
5. Each entry should represent the writer's best work and should meet acceptable standards in grammar, mechanics, punctuation, and usage. Each entry should be neatly typed on one side only of good quality white paper; each page, after the first, should have the title of the entry in the upper left corner and the page number in the upper right corner. The entry itself should not include the author's name and must be clean, void of any extraneous markings.
6. Fiction entries should be between 1,000 and 4,000 words long. Indicate the approximate number of words on the first page of the entry, upper right corner.
7. Poetry entries may be in any verse form and may consist of one poem or a group of poems totaling 25 to 60 lines. Indicate the number of lines on the first page of each entry, upper right corner.
8. Personal essays may be from 700 to 2,500 words long. Indicate the approximate number on the first page of the entry, upper right corner.
9. Critical essays may be from 700 to 2,500 words long and include proper documentation if any is needed. Indicate the approximate number on the first page of the entry, upper right corner.
10. Entries will not be returned, critiqued, nor published.
11. All contestants, of course, should make and keep copies of their entries.
12. Final judges for the contest, including BYU writing faculty, published writers, and experienced literary editors, will evaluate entries solely on the basis of literary quality. If the judges feel that no entry has sufficient merit, they may choose not to award prizes.
13. Winners will be announced and prizes awarded in spring.
14. See cover sheet for submission deadline and address at the BYU English Department Website: http://humanities.byu.edu/english/composition/files/rewrite_cover.pdf.