Rules and Submission Guidelines

You must be registered to attend The Muse Writers Conference to enter any of the contests. Contest entry is part of the registration process. Registrants may submit one contest entry in each category: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry.

Prizes (in each category):

• First Place Winners receive $200
• Second Place Winners receive $100
• Third Place Winners receive $75
• Honorable Mention Winners receive $50 tuition break at The 2027 Muse Writers Conference
• Prize Buttons awarded

Submission Guidelines

The word count for each category is:

• Fiction: Up to 2,500 words. Short story or part of a novel
• Nonfiction: Up to 2,500 words. Article, essay, or creative nonfiction
• Poetry: One complete poem, not to exceed 50 lines

If submitting a portion of a longer piece of fiction or nonfiction, the submission must start at the beginning of the piece (no mid-story submissions).

All submissions must be unpublished in print, in e-zines, on blogs, and on personal websites and must NOT have placed (first, second, or third) in ANY previous writing contest outside of The Muse Writers Conference Contest.

All submissions must be properly formatted:

• Typed 12-point black, Times New Roman or Courier font
• Double-spaced, indented paragraphs, with 1-inch margins
• Page numbers and the title of the work should be included in the upper-right corner of the header. Example: TITLE/1
• Poetry does not necessarily need to be double-spaced nor indented
• Work must be submitted as a .doc or .docx file. PDF files will not be accepted

Submissions must include two files:

Once you register, you will be emailed a link separately within 1-3 days with which you can submit your work when you are ready. We will NOT accept physically mailed or emailed entries. The two files needed for submission are:

1. Title page with identifying information- author’s name, physical address, email address, category, title of the work, and word count.
2. The entry submission with the title, page numbers, and genre listed in the header and the title centered halfway down the first page, directly above paragraph one. Do NOT include your name in the header.

Entries with identifying information anywhere other than on the title page will be disqualified.

All entries must be received by Wednesday, July 15, 2026, by 5 p.m. EST

Failure to follow ANY of the rules will result in disqualification of the submission.

Authors may submit ONLY one work in each category.

Judges have been requested to offer confidential written comments on each entry; the length and type of comments are at the discretion of each judge.

All decisions by the judges are final, and all winners will be announced on Sunday, August 30, before the keynote address.

A copy of any judge’s comments will be emailed to the author after the conference.

The Muse Writers Center is not responsible for lost submissions.

 

Judges

Fiction: Cassandra Clarke

Cassandra Rose Clarke's novels have been finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award, and YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. Her poetry has placed second in the Rhysling Awards, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and appeared in Strange Horizons, Star*Line, and elsewhere. Her latest novel is Forget This Ever Happened, out now from Holiday House.

Cassandra graduated in 2006 from The University of St. Thomas with a B.A. in English, and two years later she completed her master’s degree in creative writing at The University of Texas at Austin. In 2010 she attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle, where she was a recipient of the Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund.

Cassandra is represented by Stacia Decker of the Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency.

Nonfiction: Joe Jackson

Joe Jackson is the author of seven works of nonfiction and a novel. His last work--Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary -- was released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2016 and chronicles the life of Oglala Lakota holy man Black Elk, best known for his 1932 Black Elk Speaks. The biography received the following honors: Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography; Winner of the Society of American Historians' Francis Parkman Award; Best Biography of 2016, True West magazine; Winner of the Western Writers of America 2017 Spur Award, Best Western Biography; Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography; and One of the Best Books of 2016, The Boston Globe.

Jackson holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas and was an investigative reporter for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk for twelve years, covering criminal justice and the state's Death Row. His journalism has resulted in the acquittal of a man wrongly convicted of murder, the federal investigation of a jail in which sixteen prisoners died of medical neglect, and the recantations of two men whose testimony sent men to Death Row. He has been the writer-in-residence at the James Thurber House and the Mina Hohenberg Darden Endowed Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA creative writing program at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. His newest book, Splendid Liberators, will be released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in October 2025.

Author Website: joejacksonbooks.com

Poetry: Kindra McDonald

Kindra McDonald is the author of the collections Teaching a Wild Thing, Fossils, and In the Meat Years and the chapbooks Elements and Briars and Concealed Weapons. She was the recipient of the 2020 Haunted Waters Press Poetry Award and has been nominated for Bettering American Poetry and a Pushcart Prize. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. A conservationist and poet-artist working in mixed-media and found poetry, she is the Executive Director of the Elizabeth River Trail Foundation, and passionate speaker and teacher on the intersection of art and the environment. You can find her in the woods or at kindramcdonald.com