The SLF COMPETITION
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ENTRY RULES AND FORM
Each year, the Southern Literary Festival Association accepts creative writing entries from undergraduates at members schools in the following categories: POETRY, FICTION, SHORT PLAY, FORMAL ESSAY, CREATIVE NONFICTION, LITERARY PRINT AND EZINE.
To enter, please renew your MEMBERSHIP and follow the guidelines listed on the entry form. For more information please contact SLFA President Connor Fisher.
Winners will be published in the 2025 SLFA Anthology and present their work at the 2025 Southern Literary Festival, April 3-5, hosted by Blue Mountain Christian University.
DOWNLOAD ENTRY FORM HERE
RULES FOR SUBMISSION (Please note: submissions for 2025 are now OPEN!)
2025 Southern Literary Festival Competition
Entry Categories:
1. Poetry,
2. Short Story,
3. One-Act Play,
4. Formal Essay,
5. Creative Nonfiction,
6. Literary Magazine (Print), and
7. Literary E-zine.
Awards:
Certificates for First, Second, and Third place in each of the categories will be awarded at the 2025 Southern Literary Festival held at Blue Mountain Christian University,
April 3-5, 2025.
Rules for Submission:
Writers must be undergraduates and must be enrolled for credit during the 2024-2025 school year at a member institution of the Southern Literary Festival Association. Students should contact their Department of English to determine if they are eligible. Each institution may submit no more than two (2) entries in each of the five writing categories.
Works entered cannot have been published except in campus newspapers or magazines.
Essays, stories (including groups of stories), and plays may not exceed 5,000 words. Poetry may not exceed 100 lines for either one poem or a group of related poems.
The category for literary magazines is intended for magazines produced by undergraduate students and/or containing primarily undergraduate student writing. Any magazine with more than 50% of content supplied by non-undergraduates may be disqualified. Work by non-undergraduates should be identified as such by the submitting faculty member. A magazine submission must be the most recent issue, not more than one year old.
The category for literary e-zines is intended for literary magazines produced exclusively in and for an electronic format. E-zine submissions must also adhere to the rules of submission for literary magazines.
Entries must be double-spaced (poems should be single spaced) and (with the exception of print literary magazines) submitted in Word to Sybil Baker, sybil-baker@utc.edu. The email subject line must include the member institution’s name and the genre category of the submission (e.g. Hendrix College Poetry Submission). Entries must have titles and should NOT include the writer’s name anywhere in the text or title of the document. All entries should be edited and ready for publication in the Festival’s anthology. Groups of short poems or flash fiction submitted as a single entry must be submitted as a single document.
Each entry must be accompanied by a typed SLF submission form, submitted in a SEPARATE Word document as an email attachment to Sybil Baker, sybil-baker@utc.edu. Groups of short poems or flash fiction submitted as a single entry must be accompanied by a single submission form, which should list all titles in the group.
Entries must be submitted by
December 6, 2024.
