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Writers’ Conferences & Centers is conducting its annual competition to provide scholarships for emerging writers who wish to attend a writers’ conference, center, retreat, festival, or residency. The scholarships will be applied to fees to attend any of the members of WC&C, an association of outstanding conferences, colonies, and festivals for writers.
View a complete directory of WC&C Members
The competition is open to all writers who would like to attend a WC&C member program. To enter the competition, please follow the guidelines below. Two scholarships of $500 will be awarded.
This Year's Judge:
Jennifer Atkinson is the author of two collections of poetry, The Dogwood Tree, which won the University of Alabama Poetry Prize, and The Drowned City and Other Poems, which won the Morse Poetry Prize. Her individual poems and her nonfiction have appeared in Poetry, Field, The Yale Review, The New England Review, Threepenny Review, Shenandoah, The Iowa Review, Image, and elsewhere. Both her poetry and her nonfiction have been honored with the Pushcart Prize. She received a B.A. in English from Wesleyan University, and an M.F.A. in poetry writing and an M.A. in creative nonfiction from the University of Iowa. She taught in Nepal and Japan, at the University of Iowa, and at Washington University before joining the faculty of George Mason University.
Guidelines for Submissions:
- Submissions in fiction and poetry will be considered. Separate submissions in each genre are permitted.
- Writers’ names must not appear on submissions. A separate cover sheet must accompany submissions and include the following: Name, Address, phone number, email address, title, and genre. Please bind submissions by staple, binder clip, or paper clip. If you wish to be notified that your manuscript was received please include an SASE postcard.
- All manuscripts must be single-sided and typed. Prose must be double-spaced. A maximum of one short story (or novel excerpt) up 25 pages or 10 pages of poetry will be considered. Each new poem must start a new page.
- You may enter in more than one genre, and you may also enter multiple manuscripts in one genre, provided each manuscript is accompanied by its own entry fee.
- Former or current students of the judge are ineligible. Previous recipients of WC&C Scholarships are also not eligible to submit.
Submissions must be postmarked between December 1st and March 30th of each year, addressed to:
WC&C Scholarship Competition
Association of Writers & Writing Programs
MS1E3, George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
A $10 reading fee, either a check or money order in US dollars made payable to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, must accompany all submissions. Winners will be notified by May 15th. All submissions should be accompanied by a SASE for notification of winners.
Two winners will receive $500 scholarships to attend a WC&C member program; funds are paid directly to the program selected. (Member conferences reserve the right to determine participants in their programs; winners select a first choice and two alternates.) Winners and finalists also receive a one-year individual membership in AWP.
2008 Scholarship Winners:
Poetry- Christina Lovin is the author of the chapbooks What We Burned for Warmth and Little Fires. An award-winning poet, her poetry is widely published and anthologized. Recently named Emerging Poet by Southern Women Writers' Conference, she holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College. Her work has been funded by grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and Kentucky Foundation for Women. Lovin teaches writing for Bluegrass Community & Technical College. Fiction- Jeffrey Voccola received his MFA from Emerson College, and his fiction has appeared in Cottonwood, Central PA Magazine, Whirligig, and Beacon Street Review. He also edited a recent translation of “Skipper Worse,” a 19th century novel by Norwegian writer Alexander Kielland, which was published in 2008 by Cross-Cultural Communications. Jeffrey lives in Pennsylvania where he teaches in the Professional Writing Program at Kutztown University. He used the 2008 WC&C Scholarship to attend the Prague Summer Program hosted by Western Michigan University.
2007 Scholarship Winners:
Poetry- Ching-In Chen attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop.
Fiction- Deirdra McAfee attended the Wesleyan Writers Conference.
2006 Scholarship Winners:
Poetry- Jocelyn Casey-Whiteman attended the Paris Writers' Workshop.
Fiction- Hosanna Patience attended the Tin House Writers' Conference.
2005 Scholarship Winners:
Poetry- Jillian Weise attended the Sewanee Writers Conference.
Fiction- Morgan McDermott.
2004 Scholarship Winners:
Poetry- J.W. Richardson attended the Santa Fe Writers’ Conference.
Fiction- Heidi Durrow attended the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop.