We invite current junior and senior high school students who are attending the Creative Writing Festival to submit one prose piece. Winners in each category (11th-grade prose and 12th-grade prose) will receive a $1,500 scholarship to Montreat College. All entries are due by March 31, 2027. 

 ELIGIBILITY 

• 11th-grade or 12th-grade high school student
• Maximum of one poem and one prose piece per writer
• Attendance at the Creative Writing Festival

 CRITERIA 

• Entries should be submitted as Microsoft Word or Google Docs files and formatted in Times New Roman, 12 pt font, with single-spaced text.
• The Creative Writing Festival is offered by Montreat College with its Vision, Mission, Statement of Faith, and Community Life Covenant: https://www.montreat.edu/about/mission/. We do not expect entries to address the College's values, and we welcome submissions from writers who see the world from all vantage points; however, entries will be evaluated with the College's values in mind.
• Submissions generated in whole or in part by artificial intelligence are forbidden: no exceptions!
• No more than 5,000 words per submission
• Prose pieces may stand alone, such as a short story, or may be a portion of a larger work.

 PROCEDURES 

Each submission must be in a separate document. That is, a student submitting a poem and a short story must submit two separate files—one with the poem and one with the short story, each submitted separately via the appropriate form below.

The file must be named with the writer’s last name followed by the initial of the writer’s first name, a hyphen, and the name of the writer’s text, such as the following poem by John Smith entitled "Fly Away":

Smith J - Fly Away.docx

 RIGHTS TO PUBLICATION 

By the act of submission, each contestant releases one-time rights for their work to Montreat College for editing and publishing in both print and online versions of the college’s arts magazine, The Lamp Post. Submission does not guarantee publication in The Lamp Post. Authors retain full ownership of their works, and this release does not prohibit authors from publishing their works elsewhere. Please see past editions of The Lamp Post here: https://www.montreat.edu/academics/undergraduate/english/lamp-post/