The Bechtel Prize honors the best essay about teaching creative writing with publication and a prize of $1000. Finalists also receive cash prizes. Direct from the Teachers & Writers Collaborative site, here’s more information:
Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) seeks submissions for essays that explore creative writing and arts education, the theme of the imagination, and/or creative writing.
Submissions for the Bechtel Prize may include:
- Explorations of critical issues in creative writing and arts education.
- Literacy narratives, first-hand accounts about the process of writing or teaching writing.
- Memoirs about how and why the author became a writer or early experiences with literature and the imagination.
- Reflections on the writer’s life and how poets and writers stay connected to their imaginations.
- Portraits of key teachers and mentors in the author’s life.
Tayari Jones will choose the winner of the 2018 Bechtel Prize. Jones is the author of the novels Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, February 2018). Her writing has appeared in Tin House, The Believer, The New York Times, and Callaloo. A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, she has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was named a #1 Indie Next Pick by booksellers in 2011, and the National Endowment for the Arts added it to its Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is currently an associate professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University.
The essay selected to receive the Bechtel Prize will appear in Teachers & Writers Magazine and the author will receive a $1,000 honorarium. Honoraria totaling $500 are shared by the authors of entries selected as finalists for the prize, which may also be published in Teachers & Writers Magazine.
Selection criteria for the Bechtel Prize include the essay’s relevance and appropriateness for readers of Teachers & Writers Magazine, most of whom teach writing at the elementary, secondary, or postsecondary level. T&W welcomes submissions written in a poetic, lyric style; as well as personal narrative, reportage, and essays.
Prospective entrants for the Bechtel Prize are encouraged to visit the magazine to become familiar with the publication, and to read past winners of the award. The submission deadline for the 2018 Bechtel Prize is Friday, December 1, 2017.
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