Writing Competition Judges
Our monthly competitions are judged by renowned and respected writers from across the globe.
Magou Samb was born in Senegal, in Ngor, a fishermen’s village at the western tip of Dakar, at the western tip of Africa. For over ten years, he performed on stage with his band “The Dakar Transit." Spotted by Network record company (Oumou Sangare, Desert Blues) he flew to Germany to record his first album "Africa Yewul" (Africa, wake up), released by Harmonia Mundi. Magou’s latest album, “Dom Adama," is out now.
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Stephen Krupin has served as a top speechwriter to the President of the United States, Secretary of State, and Senate Majority Leader, and has written for and coached dozens of speakers in politics, business, philanthropy, advocacy, and academia.
He served in the White House as a senior speechwriter to President Obama, as director of speechwrit...
SPEECH WRITING COMPETITION 2018
Opinion
Born and raised in the Midwest, Jen had to choose between staring at corn or reading books. Corn husks just didn't have the appeal of the Baby-Sitters Club, and so a bookworm was born. Reading later turned into writing and in 2011, Jen published her first novel with Camel Press. After releasing four books in the mystery genre, Jen finally gave i...
FANTASY WRITING COMPETITION 2015
Fiction
Felicity Cooney is a modern Australian designer, with a focus on print and color. She is a graduate of the Parsons BFA fashion program, where she specialized in menswear with classic tailoring and modern sleek shapes. She has a focus in knitwear, developing both hand and machine knit. After working in New York, Felicity moved back to Australia t...
FASHION JOURNALISM COMPETITION 2015
Creative Nonfiction
Cath Crowley is an award-winning author of young adult fiction. Her novels include The Gracie Faltrain trilogy, Chasing Charlie Duskin, Graffiti Moon, Words in Deep Blueand Take Three Girls. Graffiti Moon won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, the Ethel Turner Award for Young People’s Literature, and was named an honor ...
NOVEL WRITING COMPETITION 2017
Fiction
Stacey is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction. Her first, critically acclaimed novel, Dive, published in 1995 (Penguin) was reissued in 2015 (Open Road Media). Donovan has edited or ghostwritten dozens of published books for her clients, many of which have received critical acclaim: Three became New York Times Best Sellers (Myster...
PERSONAL NARRATIVE COMPETITION 2015
Creative Nonfiction
Jonathan's writing on the environment, climate change, science and development has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, Quartz, and The Boston Globe. He is the author of Fire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity and Survival on the Roof of the World, a nonfiction narrative about black carbon pol...
ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING COMPETITION 2015
Science & the Environment
Heather is a kids' lit author of fantasy adventure novels. She's also a working mom, a runner, and a compulsive reader. She went to Smith College in Massachusetts, where she studied Greek, Latin and French, and she also obtained her MFA in writing from the University of Arizona. She has worked for a number of technology magazines, websites, and...
NOVEL WRITING COMPETITION 2015
Fiction
Robert is the author of Tracking the Wild Coomba, a forthcoming biography about the late extreme skier Doug Coombs due out this August. Cocuzzo is also the editor of N Magazine and a contributor at Boston Common Magazine, Departures, Town & Country, and Esquire. Prior to his career in writing, Cocuzzo studied at the College of the Holy Cross...
PROFILE FEATURE WRITING COMPETITION 2016
Creative Nonfiction
Jaclyn grew up in Sydney, Australia, lived in the US, Canada, and England, and now lives in Sydney again. She is the best-selling, prize-winning author of novels for children, young adults and slightly-older adults, including the Ashbury-Brookfield series and the Colours of Madeleine trilogy. Her most recent books are The Extremely Inconvenient...
LETTER WRITING COMPETITION 2016
Creative Nonfiction
Hofmann’s first book of poems, Second Empire, won the Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books. He is the poetry book reviews editor of the Kenyon Review. He is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from The New Yorker, Poetry, The New Republic, and The New York Times Style Magazine among ...
BOOK REVIEW WRITING COMPETITION 2016
Creative Nonfiction
Donovan is an award-winning educator, spoken word poet, and public speaker. In 2016, his Harvard Graduate School of Education convocation address “Lift Off” went viral, reaching over thirteen million views and prompting Hillary Clinton to praise: “It’s young graduates like [Livingston] who make it clear that America’s best days are still ahead.”...
SPEECH WRITING COMPETITION 2016
Creative Nonfiction
Fiona is the author of Six Impossible Things, Wildlife, and Cloudwish. Six Impossible Things was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year, Older Readers in 2011. Wildlife won the CBCA Award in 2014 and was shortlisted for numerous other awards. Cloudwish won the CBCA Award in 2016, and the 2016 Indie Book ...
NOVEL WRITING COMPETITION 2016
Fiction
Lauren is a writer and educator based in California. Her writing has appeared in Orion, The New York Times, Mother Jones, Guernica, The Guardian, VQR, Harper's, and The New Republic. She is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program. Her book, The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life...
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT COMPETITION 2017
Journalism
Rebecca is the author of the YA novels The Mystery of Hollow Places and Like Water. A graduate of the MFA Writing, Literature and Publishing program at Emerson Collegeand the Creative Writing Program at the College of Santa Fe, Rebecca's fiction has been published in journals like Glimmer Train, Paper Darts, and Smokelong Quarterly. She works ...
MYSTERY WRITING COMPETITION 2017
Fiction
Bükem is a Turkish-Canadian writer. Her work has appeared in No Tokens, PANK, Minola Review, and Carousel, among others. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Cosmonauts Avenue. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in No Tokens, FLOOD, and Carousel, among others. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
FLASH FICTION COMPETITION 2017
Fiction
Martha Kelner is an award-winning British sports journalist. She is currently the Sports Correspondent for Sky News. After graduating from the University of Sheffield, Kelner joined the Daily Mail in 2011 on their graduate training scheme. In March 2017, Kelner was appointed Chief Sports Reporter at The Guardian. In late 2018, Kelner left The Gu...
SPORTS JOURNALISM COMPETITION 2017
Journalism
Nicholas is a reporter for InsideClimate News. Before joining ICN, he ran the Center for Public Integrity's State Integrity Investigation, which won a New York Press Club Award for Political Coverage. He also covered fracking as a reporting fellow at ProPublica and was a 2011 Middlebury Fellow in Environmental Journalism. His work has appeared i...
ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING COMPETITION SEPTEMBER 2018
Science & the Environment
Isobelle is an Australian writer who began her work on the Obernewtyn Chronicles at the age of fourteen. She continued to work on the series while completing a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in literature and philosophy. She has received numerous honors for her writing, including multiple Aurealis Awards and Children's Book Council of Australia Awa...
SCIENCE FICTION COMPETITION 2018
Fiction
Joshua is a geographer and writer. He is the author of Island People: The Caribbean and the World (Knopf, 2016) and the co-editor, with Rebecca Solnit, of Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas (California, 2016). He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and his work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Beli...
TRAVEL WRITING COMPETITION 2018
Journalism
Wesley is a filmmaker from 13 Little Pictures. His films have premiered in festivals such as the Busan International Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. On the literary front, Wesley is a published author of the books, I Want To Go Home and Bedok Reservoir. Wesley has also written television scripts for Mediacorp and sta...
PERSONAL NARRATIVE COMPETITION 2018
Creative Nonfiction
Rasheena Fountain is a native of Chicago’s West Side communities known as Austin and K-Town. Today, Fountain is a freelance writer whose work focuses mainly on issues related to inner-city violence, race relations, environmental justice and sustainability, music, and human rights. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Rhetoric from the University of ...
ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING COMPETITION SEPTEMBER 2018
Science & the Environment
Annabel is a lifestyle columnist at The Week. She is also the author of two novels for young adults, A Girl Named Digit (2012) and Double Digit (2014). She’s a co-author of Click! The Girls Guide to Knowing What You Want and Making it Happen (2007). She lives in Rye, New York, with her husband and three sons. Visit her at www.annabelmonaghan.com
NOVEL WRITING COMPETITION 2018
Fiction
Constance Singam is an author and civil society activist Holding a Master’s degree in Literature, the former president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE Singapore) has also co-founded civil society groups, been a columnist in several national publications, and contributed to and co-edited several books. Her works include...
MY DECEMBER WRITING COMPETITION 2018
Creative Nonfiction
Tracey joined the Earth Day Network as the Director of Education in January 2018. Most recently she was adjunct faculty at the University of Florida and has held positions from Florida to North Carolina managing and facilitating Environmental Education programs ranging from sea turtle walks to birding adventures, and local green book clubs to st...
EARTH DAY WRITING COMPETITION 2019
Science & the Environment
Alexandra Sheppard is an author based in North London. Her debut YA novel Oh My Gods was published by Scholastic UK in January 2019. When she isn't writing teen fiction, Sheppard is a freelance social media strategist with experience on dozens of award-winning campaigns.
FANTASY WRITING COMPETITION 2019
Fiction
Tara Lynn Masih's anthologies include The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction and The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays. Her fiction publications include Where the Dog Star Never Glows: Stories and multiple chapbooks from the Feral Press that are archived in such universities as Yale and NYU. She founded the Inter...
FLASH FICTION COMPETITION 2019
Fiction
Marina is Thrive Global's Editorial Director. Previously she was senior deputy editor at Women's Health, where she edited award-winning wellness features and oversaw the campaigns and partnerships around them. Before that, she was deputy editor of features and brand extensions at Cosmopolitan, where she modernized the magazine's love and relatio...
HUMAN CONNECTIONS ESSAY COMPETITION 2019
Creative Nonfiction
Joey Bartolomeo is a New York City-based freelance writer and editor with a focus on Gen Z. She regularly writes for Choices, a classroom magazine published by Scholastic. Previously, she was the Executive Editor of Seventeen, which was nominated for three National Magazine Awards during her tenure. She has more than 20 years of experience as a ...
PERSONAL ESSAY COMPETITION: MAKING CHANGE 2018
Creative Nonfiction
Emily Gale has been involved in the children’s book industry for over twenty years. In the UK she worked as an editor for Penguin and Egmont, and later as a freelance manuscript consultant and pre-school book writer. In Australia she has worked with literary agent Sheila Drummond, finding new children’s and YA authors; she has reviewed for Books...
NOVEL WRITING COMPETITION 2019
Fiction
Jamie Margolin is a teen climate activist, as well as a founder and co-executive director of Zero Hour, a climate action organization based in Washington. She has written for Huffington Post, CNN, and Teen Ink, and her first book, Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It, is forthcoming in June 2020 with a foreword by Greta Thunberg. Jamie w...
ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNALISM COMPETITION 2020
Journalism
Brother Richard is a poet and priest-friar of the Irish branch of the Capuchin Franciscan Order. For over twenty years, he has worked to bring the insights of the Christian contemplative tradition to greater public awareness, particularly with reference to modern mindfulness theory.
He served as director of youth ministry for the Irish Capuchi...
LETTER WRITING COMPETITION 2020
Creative Nonfiction
Janelle Milanes is originally from Miami, FL and received her BA in English Literature from Davidson College. A lifelong YA addict, she moved to New York for her first job as a children’s literature associate at Simon and Schuster.
For the past five years, Janelle has worked as a teacher and librarian throughout the New York City area. Her firs...
FLASH FICTION COMPETITION 2020
Fiction
From 2009 to 2017, Sarah Hurwitz served as a White House speechwriter, first as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama and then as head speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama. Prior to serving in the Obama Administration, Sarah was chief speechwriter for Hillary Clinton on her 2008 presidential campaign. Sarah is a graduate of Harv...
SPEECHWRITING COMPETITION 2020
Creative Nonfiction
Michael Franklin (He/Him/His) is the co-founder of Speechwriters of Color, as well as a Senior Legal Communications Major at Howard University by way of Kansas City, KS. He serves as the 60th Howard University Student Association Executive Vice President. Michael has a dense and diverse resume, working with Fenway Strategies as a Speech-writing ...
SPEECHWRITING COMPETITION 2020
Journalism
Randa Abdel-Fattah is a prominent Australian author, academic, human rights advocate, former lawyer and mother of four children. She has been nominated for Sweden's 2019 Astrid Lindgren Award, the world's biggest children's and young adult literature award (she was also nominated in 2018). The award-winning author of eleven novels, published and...
NOVEL WRITING COMPETITION 2020
Fiction
Rachel Friedman is the author of The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure (Bantam, 2011). It was chosen as a Target Breakout Book and selected by Goodreads’ readers as one of the best travel books of 2011.
Rachel’s second book, And Then We Grew Up: On Creativity, Potential, a...
CREATIVE NONFICTION COMPETITION 2020
Creative Nonfiction
Amie Kaufman is a New York Times, USA Today and internationally bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy. Her multi-award winning work has been translated into nearly thirty languages, and has been described as “a game-changer” (Shelf Awareness), “stylistically mesmerising” (Publishers Weekly) and “out-of-this-world awesome” (Kirkus). S...
SCIENCE FICTION COMPETITION 2021
Fiction
John Vitti has spent more than 30 years in newspapers, including the last 20+ in the Boston Globe sports department, where he helps produce all aspects of the print and web content. He has also spent the last 14 years teaching/advising/volunteering in the Watertown, Massachusetts Public Schools. In March 2020, he founded Headliners in Education,...
SPORTS WRITING COMPETITION 2021
Journalism
Janelle Milanes is originally from Miami, FL and received her BA in English Literature from Davidson College. A lifelong YA addict, she moved to New York for her first job as a children’s literature associate at Simon and Schuster.
For the past five years, Janelle has worked as a teacher and librarian throughout the New York City area. Her fir...
FLASH FICTION COMPETITION 2021
Fiction
Mat Kesting is a film curator, exhibition and event specialist and has worked in the sector for over 20 years. Currently, he is CEO/ Creative Director of Adelaide Film Festival, an organisation he has held a long love for, having held key roles in the programming team since 2008 prior to becoming the CEO in 2019. The most recent edition of AFF w...
FILM/TV SERIES REVIEW COMPETITION 2021
Journalism
Laura Wood is a best-selling, multi-award winning author of middle grade and young adult fiction. Her first book, Poppy Pym and the Pharaoh’s Curse, won the Montegrappa Scholastic Prize for New Children’s Writing in 2015. She lives in Warwickshire, UK, with her husband and their dog, Bea.
NOVEL WRITING COMPETITION 2021
Fiction
Beverly Beckham began her writing career in 1979. Her articles and essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world. Beckham wrote columns and editorials for the Boston Herald for 20 years and currently writes a Sunday column for the Boston Globe.
Beckham is the author of A Gift of Time, a collection of personal essays; Back Th...
CREATIVE NONFICTION COMPETITION 2021
Creative Nonfiction