Winter Contest 2025

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The theme for this contest is “Remembrance & Forgetfulness.” For more details on the contest prize, see below.​

 

We nest in a fast-moving world where the fragility of memory often challenges our senses. Haunting sorrows fade in an instant, while the footage we once treasured can disappear forever with a single click. What we choose to remember or forget are ends of equal weight; both shape who we are and how we see the world. The milestones we always revisit carry us forward, while those said to be never looked back on also quietly build our growth. 

 

If to say, remembrance and forgetfulness are matters of choice, you’re invited to explore the essence of each—or both. Share the moments that made you, those you want to hold onto the details. Use your authentic, darling, yet picturesque words to capture the punctum in the kaleidoscope of your memory: whether it’s a snapshot or a star moment, a shard of overwhelming joy or heartbreak. After all: memory is its own storyteller.

 

Sylvia Plath writes, “Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape.” As we lend our ears to the chime and mount the countdown of a fresh new year, let us gather up the beauty nestled alongside us through all the past. Lest we forget.​​

 

Interested in honing your poetry-writing skills for the contest? Then try taking our poetry workshop, Around the World of Poetry in 80 Days. This workshop will help you to brainstorm, draft, and revise poems of your own! Learn how to draw inspiration from your hometown with writer and theater guru Nicole Itkin or learn how to tap into childhood memories with writer and editor Lucia Moglia.

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Interested in becoming an editor for Polyphony Lit? Take our editorial training course and join the staff!

 

Winter Contest Guidelines

• Submissions will open on January 1st 2025 and will remain open until February 28th or until we reach our submission cap of 200 submissions.

• Please note that this is a separate submission category from Polyphony Lit Volume 20.​ Submissions to Polyphony Lit Volume 20 will receive feedback from the editors, but for the seasonal contests, only the winning submissions will receive feedback from the judge.

• If you have already submitted your work to the Volume 20 category, then please do not send the same submission to the seasonal contest category.

• If you submit to the seasonal contest category first and your work is declined, then you may submit it to the Volume 21 category after the contest is finished.

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Writer Qualifications​

• High school students from anywhere in the world are eligible to submit.

• We do not accept submissions from editors who currently serve on the staff of Polyphony Lit.

• Submit a maximum of three pieces.

• If submitting multiple pieces, please upload as separate submissions. Multiple pieces submitted in a single document will be withdrawn, and you will be asked to resubmit your pieces separately.

• We accept simultaneous submissions and work that has been published elsewhere. If submitting previously published work, please send a message in Submittable noting where and when your work has been published, and if it is eligible for republication. If it is accepted for publication elsewhere after submitting to Polyphony Lit, please notify us immediately but do not withdraw your submission if you are still interested in publication at Polyphony Lit. If we accept a previously published submission for publication, we will acknowledge the place of the original publication.

• Previously published pieces are not eligible for the Claudia Ann Seaman Awards.

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Length

• Poetry must be 80 lines or less.

• Fiction and creative nonfiction must be 1,800 words or less.

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Formatting

• Do not put your name on the piece, as all work is blind juried.

• Submissions longer than one page should have the page number inserted at the top (right or left side) of every page, as it would help our Judge specify the location for their commentary.

• We accept submission in .doc, .docx or .rtf formats.

• We prefer common conventions:

  • Color: Black & white

  • Font Size: 12 pt throughout, including titles

  • Font Type: Times or Times New Roman

  • Margins: 1-inch at the top and bottom, and 1.25 inch at the left and right. One space after periods. There should be no extra returns after paragraphs unless you have a meaningful reason for the extra space.

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Using Submittable

• Please upload submissions through Submittable. We do not accept email submissions or hard copies via mail.

• Upload only one piece per submission file; to submit more than one piece, make more than one submission file.

• Submissions for this contest are free.

• There is a submission cap of 200 submissions, so we may close submissions for the contest before the deadline if we receive 200 submissions. We recommend submitting early, to ensure that you do not miss the deadline.

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Prize

There will be one winner and two finalists. The winners/finalists will receive:

• Publication in Polyphony Lit Volume 20

• Eligibility for the Claudia Ann Seaman Awards

• Editorial feedback from the Contest Judge

• Social media posts announcing the winners

• A full scholarship for Polyphony Lit’s "How to be a Literary Editor" course. Upon completion of the course, students will be eligible to join the editorial staff of Polyphony Lit!

• Please note that only the three winners will receive feedback from the Judge.

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Additional Guidelines for Creative Nonfiction​

• At Polyphony Lit, we look for creative nonfiction pieces that are written in the style of short personal memoirs. We are looking for pieces that are informal, flexible in form, and most importantly, personal. Personal discovery is the keystone of a personal essay. Self-revelation, human experiences, humor, and flexibility of form are all aspects that we look for in pieces we publish as creative non-fiction.

• We do not look for op-ed pieces, critical analyses, research papers, or academic essays.

• We would advise reading some samples of our work, in order to understand the material that we publish. Here are some samples of creative nonfiction that we have published:

• Memories of the Boy I Didn't Know

• responses to love

• Holiday in a Burning City