CRAFT 2024 Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest — Guest Judge Donald Quist (FREE for Writers from Historically Marginalized Groups)

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CRAFT 2024 Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest

November 13, 2024 – January 15, 2025

$3,400 Awarded

Guest Judge: Donald Quist

As we move from autumn into winter, we might find ourselves slowing down and becoming more contemplative. These cooler months are the perfect time to reflect more, and to write more. For the CRAFT 2024 Memoir Excerpt & Essay Contest, open until early next year, we’re eager to read your best longform creative nonfiction, from 1,001 to 6,000 words total. Both excerpts from book-length projects and stand-alone essays will be considered, and here’s what our guest judge, Donald Quist, would like to see:

I’m drawn to narratives with reasons for being, writing that examines larger exigencies through a personal lens. My favorite work has a clear aboutness: storytelling that responds to absences in the archive, that highlights overlooked disparities, that teaches me something and encourages me to do/be better. I have an aversion to didacticism though. Don’t sacrifice metaphor and the poetic image. The strongest pieces recognize that the personal is political and grounds the narrative in vulnerability, intimacy. I want a chance to get to know the author, their joys and obsessions, to tour their world for a little while. Take my hand, guide me through spaces that occupy your heart and mind, stopping from time to time to point to details you find worth noting.

Please carefully review the guidelines below, then send us your most polished work. Three winners will receive $1,000 each and publication. Our team will also select two “editors’ choices” to publish alongside the three grand-prize winners. All fifteen shortlisted creative nonfiction writers will receive a $1,000 scholarship to PocketMFA. Send us your best work!

GUIDELINES:

  • The contest is open November 13, 2024, to January 15, 2025.
  • CRAFT submissions are open to all writers, emerging and experienced.
  • Submit creative nonfiction ONLY! (Please, no academic work, flash prose, short fiction, or poetry.)
  • International submissions are allowed.
  • Please submit work primarily written in English, but some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
  • This contest is for creative nonfiction excerpts and essays between 1,001 and 6,000 words. Please do not submit flash prose.
  • We review literary creative nonfiction, but are open to a variety of genres and styles including memoir excerpts, lyric essays, personal essays, narrative nonfiction, speculative nonfiction, and experimental prose—our only requirement is that you show excellence in your craft.
  • For this contest, we will consider previously unpublished work only—we will not review reprints or partial reprints, including self-published work (even if only on social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
  • We allow simultaneous submissions—writers, please notify us and withdraw your entry if your work is accepted elsewhere.
  • The $20 reading fee per entry allows one longform creative nonfiction piece (either memoir excerpt or essay) from 1,001 to 6,000 words. We will not read flash nonfiction prose for this contest. Please do not submit flash prose.
  • We allow multiple submissions—each entry should be accompanied by a separate reading fee.
  • All entries will also be considered for publication in CRAFT.
  • Please double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12.
  • Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable).
  • Please include appropriate content warnings (if applicable), for the sake of our dedicated, diligent staff.
  • We do not require anonymous submissions, but the guest judge will review the shortlist anonymously.
  • Creative nonfiction writers from historically marginalized groups are invited to submit for free until we reach the fifty free submissions allotted for this contest. No additional fee waivers will be granted. Email us with relevant inquiries.
  • We do not discriminate on the basis of age, ancestry, disability, family status, gender identity or expression, national origin, race, religion, sex or sexual orientation, or for any other reason.
  • Additionally, we do not tolerate discrimination in the writing we consider for publication: work we find discriminatory on any of the bases stated here will be declined/disqualified without complete review.
  • AI-generated submissions will be automatically disqualified.
  • Unless you’ve already secured the necessary permissions, please do not include quoted song lyrics in your submitted work. Paraphrased lyrics are allowed, however, as are older lyrics that have already passed into the public domain. References to song titles are fine.
  • Any work that does not adhere to these guidelines will be automatically disqualified.
  • We are always happy to help if you have questions. Email us: contact@craftliterary.com.

AWARDS:

The writers of the three winning pieces will receive:

  • $1,000 each;
  • publication in CRAFT, each with an introduction by the guest judge;
  • publication of an author’s note (craft essay) to accompany the piece;
  • and a set of six titles of Graywolf’s The Art Of series.

The two writers chosen in the editors’ choice round will receive:

  • $200 each;
  • publication in CRAFT, each with an introduction by the editorial team;
  • and publication of an author’s note (craft essay) to accompany the piece.

All fifteen shortlisted writers will also receive a $1,000 scholarship to PocketMFA.

OUR GUEST JUDGE:

DONALD QUIST is author of two essay collections, Harbors, a Foreword INDIES Bronze winner and International Book Awards finalist, and To Those Bounded. He has a linked story collection, For Other Ghosts. His writing has appeared in AGNI, North American Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and was Notable in Best American Essays. He is the creator of the online nonfiction series PAST TEN. Donald has received fellowships from Sundress Academy for the Arts and Kimbilio for Black Fiction. He is Assistant Professor of Creative Nonfiction at University of Missouri. Find him on Instagram @donaldewquist.

FINE PRINT:

  • Friends, family, and associates of the guest judge are not eligible for consideration for the award.
  • Our collaboration with editorial professionals in the judging of our contests and the awarding of our prizes does not imply an endorsement or recognition from their agencies, houses, presses, universities, etc.
  • Read (and enjoy!) our 2023 contest winners for examples of work we’ve chosen to publish in the past.
  • As we only consider unpublished writing, and will publish the winning pieces in June 2025, any work under contract to publish prior to September 2025 should not be entered in this contest.

OUR CONTEST PARTNERS:

GRAYWOLF PRESS is a nonprofit literary publisher of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and work in translation.

Their Mission:

Graywolf Press publishes risk-taking, visionary writers who transform culture through literature. When writers are free to do their most ambitious work, their books serve as portals to new possibilities and enable deeper understanding between people. Readers are changed by Graywolf's books, which are fearlessly acquired, attentively edited, and energetically promoted.

PocketMFA is a twelve-week mentoring and workshopping program, designed to make more accessible the rigor, community, and guidance of a graduate-level writing program. Based on the low-residency MFA model, PocketMFA places up to ten writers with a creative nonfiction mentor of their choice, to work through our three distinct and entirely virtual phases of Direct Instruction, Mentorship & Workshopping, and Writing Life Residency. All fifteen shortlisted creative nonfiction writers will receive a $1,000 scholarship to PocketMFA.

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