CONTEST OPENS JANUARY 15, 2022!
Entry fee: $10 Academy members / $15 non-members
Entry deadline: March 15, 2022
Contest judge: Amy Quan Barry
First-place winners in the Wisconsin People & Ideas Fiction Contest will receive a one-week artist residency at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point. Winners will receive $500 (first place), $250 (second place), and $100 (third place) and read their work at the 2022 Wisconsin Book Festival. First- through third-place winning stories will also be published in print and online issues of Wisconsin People & Ideas magazine. First-place winners in the Wisconsin People & Ideas Fiction Contest will receive a one-week artist residency at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point. Winners will also receive $500 (first place), $250 (second place), and $100 (third place) and read their work at the 2022 Wisconsin Book Festival. First- through third-place winning stories will also be published in print and online issues of Wisconsin People & Ideas magazine.
Eligibility
Authors must be age 18 or older and reside in or attend school in Wisconsin. All submissions must be original and previously unpublished. You may submit more than one entry; each entry must include its own cover letter and entry fee.
Current Wisconsin Academy staff, board, and Foundation board members are not eligible. If you have questions about eligibility, please contact editor Christopher Chambers.
Submission Guidelines
- Cover page with: story title, word count, author's name, address, phone number, email address
- Typed, double-spaced manuscript
- 12-point serif typeface (Times New Roman, Garamond, etc.)
- 1” margins
- Numbered pages
- Header on each page with title of story
- 6,000 word maximum
- Do not include your name on the manuscript pages.
Print or electronic submissions will be accepted.
Electronic Submissions
Electronic submissions must include cover letter and manuscript in a single PDF file.
Print Submissions*
Print submissions must be postmarked, delivered, or date stamped by 11:59 pm on March 15, 2022. Submissions postmarked or hand-delivered after the deadline will not be considered and the entry fee will be retained to cover handling.
Keep a copy of your manuscript! Print manuscripts will be recycled, not returned. If you want to save paper, please consider an online submission.
*Every contestant must be able to provide an electronic version of the story via e-mail if needed.
Entries may be mailed or hand-delivered to
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters
1922 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53726
Contest winners will be announced in July 2022.
All submissions are judged blindly and the selection of the winners is based solely on the criteria of the contest judge. The first-place winner will be published in the fall 2021 issue of Wisconsin People & Ideas; second- and third-place winners will be published in subsequent issues.
The judge for the 2022 fiction contest is Amy Quan Barry, the author of six books of fiction and poetry, including the recent novel We Ride Upon Sticks, which O: Oprah Magazine describes as, “Spellbinding, wickedly fun.” The New York Times described her previous work, She Weeps Each Time You’re Born, as “deeply affecting.” Her third novel, When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East, which follows a group of Buddhist monks as they search for a reincarnation in the vast Mongolian landscape, will be published in spring 2022 by Knopf-Pantheon. She is the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where, in addition to receiving the Vilas, Romnes, Kellett, and WARF research awards, she has also directed both the MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. https://english.wisc.edu/staff/barry-amy-quan/
