College Writing Contest

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College Writing Contest

Each spring, the College Writing Committee presents six awards for outstanding undergraduate and graduate student writing.

First place winners receive a cash prize of $100 and have their writing published in a booklet and presented on Scholars' Day.

We encourage submissions by writers in all majors and at all levels of study. Entries may be submitted by professors or by students themselves. The work must have originated in a course taken at Cortland during the calendar year of the contest. For example, papers written for classes taken between January 2008 and December 2008 are eligible for the 2008 contest. The contest deadline is the last day of fall classes. Address questions, comments, and requests for additional information to Professor Mary Lynch Kennedy.

Categories Accepted

Academic writing (papers based on sources or other data)
Fiction (short stories)
Poetry
Scripts
Creative nonfiction
Multimodal compositions (Judges place emphasis on writing content. Pages should contain a minimum of 500 words of written text.)

Guidelines for Submission

Submit entries electronically as Microsoft Word or plain text attachments to an email message.

In the SUBJECT box of your email, type in the appropriate category name: academic writing, fiction, poetry, script, creative nonfiction, multimodal composition. If you do not direct your email to the correct category by typing the category name into the SUBJECT box of your email, your entry will be invalid.

Submit entries to separate categories in separate emails.

Entries must be typed in 12 point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with a 1 inch margin on all sides.

The upper right-hand corner of the paper should contain the student's Cortland ID number and the category of the work (academic writing; fiction, poetry, scripts, creative nonfiction; multimodal composition). The student's name should not appear on the attached piece of writing.

The email MESSAGE box should include the following information: student's name, Cortland ID number, local address and email address, phone number, major, year of study, and course and professor for whom the paper was written.

Electronically submitted entries can be made throughout the year of the contest, but they must be sent by the last day of fall semester classes. Submit to Priscilla Harvey in the English Department.