2025 festival

At Blue Mountain Christian University, April 3-5, 2025

the competition

Eligibility, rules, and how to enter the undergraduate writing competition (deadline: December 6, 2024)

membership benefits

Join us for the 2025 Southern Literary Festival

FEstival Schedule

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2023 SLF Undergraduate Competition Winners

POETRY

First Place
“Crystallization”
Ashley Tunnell
University of North Georgia


Second Place
“Phobos, The Bastard Daughter”
Adele Cardwell
University of Mississippi
Third Place
“An Ode to the Girl That I Never Once Was”
Ethan Tatom
Christian Brothers University

Judge

Sheryl St. Germain

Fiction

First Place
“Hair”
Ashley Barrientos
Middle Tennessee State University


Second Place
“Before the Sea Foam is Gone”
Chelsea Panameno
Christian Brothers University
Third Place
“Ships That Pass in the Night”
Ethan Holtzclaw
University of North Georgia
Judge
Erica Wright

Playwriting

First Place
The Last Moment
Michael Moon
University of Mississippi


Second Place
Guess I Won’t Miss You
Alaina Wilder
Blue Mountain College
Third Place
They Gave Her A Bear
K Corley Taylor
University of Mississippi
Judge
Brent Griffin

Creative Nonfiction

First Place
“Fragments”
Jude Keef
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga


Second Place
“Funeral for a Tongue”
Ashley Barrientos
Middle Tennessee State University
Third Place
“How Sundays Became Sabbath”
Savannah Brouwer
Lipscomb University
Judge
Sara Wigal

Formal Essay

First Place
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin Then and Now: A New Historicist Reading”
Samantha Luchtefeld
Lipscomb University


Second Place
“Women with Time: Female Perceptions of Place in 'Eveline' and 'Mayday'”
Annathea Elliott
Hendrix College
Third Place
“A Personal Mirror: Cinder’s Individual Development through Cyborg Technology in Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles
Alaina Wilder
Blue Mountain College
Judge
Leslie LaChance

Literary Magazine

First Place
The Dilettanti
Mississippi University for Women


Student Editor
Ali Glasgow


Second Place
Aonian
Hendrix College


Student Editor
Annemarie Bennett

Third Place
Sequoya Review
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga 



Student Editor
Lucas Thompson