Writing Prizes
The Department of English holds two writing contests each year. Submissions for 2025 are now open! Prize winners are announced in April and participate in a student reading.
Guidelines:
- 15 double-spaced pages max. for fiction; 3 poems max. and no more than 6 pages for poetry
- Your name should NOT appear on any page of your manuscript
- Fill out a submission form
- Email a copy of your typed manuscript and submission form to english@tufts.edu by 11:59 PM on Friday, March 14th 2025
- Only one submission in each category per student
The Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize
The Academy of American Poets offers more than 200 prizes each year to college students who have excelled at writing poetry. Founded in 1955, the University and College Poetry Prize has awarded more than $350,000 to nearly 10,000 students since it began. The program is notable for having recognized many of America's premier poetic voices during their college years, including Diane Ackerman, Alice Fulton, Tess Gallagher, Allen Grossman, Kimiko Hahn, Robert Hass, Brad Leithauser, J.D. McClatchy, Heather McHugh, and Gregory Orr, among others.
Students may submit up to 3 poems and should be no longer than 6 pages. The Academy offers first-, second- and third-place awards to three Tufts undergraduate students each year. The first-place winner receives a prize of $100.
About the 2025 judge: Jessica Laser grew up in Chicago. She is the author of Sergei Kuzmich from All Sides (Letter Machine Editions, 2019) and two chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Boston Review, Hyperallergic, the Iowa Review, jubilat, Typo, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has taught at Brown University, the University of Iowa, Manhattanville College, Parsons School of Design, and SUNY Purchase. She is pursuing a doctorate in English literature at the University of California in Berkeley, where she lives, and is a Visiting Instructor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College.
2023-2024 Winners
1st place: Zacchai (Sage) Singer
Honorable mentions: Lili Newberry and Alyssa Garciano2022-2023 Winners
1st place: Andres F. Arevalo Zea
Honorable mentions: Ivy Lockhart and Jay Guo2021-2022 Winners
1st place: Adam Krasnoff
Honorable mentions: Layla Landrum and Ivy Lockhart2020-2021 Winners
1st place: Juanita Asapokhai
Honorable mentions: Mackenzie Tatananni and Madison Reid2019-2020 Winners
1st place: Leticia Rocha
Honorable mentions: Akbota Saudabayeva and Evan Schwartz2018-2019 Winners
1st place: Sarah Walsh
Honorable mentions: Nicole Delcore-Kaifetz and Samantha Crozier2017-2018 Winners
1st place: Allie Merola
Honorable mentions: Zoeey CW and Sarah Walsh2016-2017 Winners
1st place: Sarah Walsh
Honorable mentions: Marie Elena Ee Si Qian, Aishvarya Arora
The Morse Hamilton Fiction Prize
The Morse Hamilton Fiction Prize, sponsored by the Department of English, recognizes one full-time Tufts undergraduate each year who has excelled at fiction writing. The prize is named after the late Professor Morse Hamilton, who was a memorable and beloved figure in the English department for many years.
Students may submit fictional works of up to 15 double-spaced pages. The winner, selected by a fiction writer outside the department, will be awarded a prize of $100. In addition, submissions may be selected for honorable mention.
About the 2025 judge: Taisia Kitaiskaia was born in the Soviet Union and raised in the United States. She is the author of The Nightgown and Other Poems (Deep Vellum, 2020); Literary Witches (Hachette/Seal, 2017), a collaboration with artist Katy Horan celebrating magical women writers and an NPR Best Book of 2017; a divination deck, The Literary Witches Oracle (Clarkson Potter, 2019); and two books of advice from the witch of Slavic folklore, Ask Baba Yaga: Otherwordly Advice for Everyday Troubles (Andrews McMeel, 2017) and its follow-up, Poetic Remedies for Troubled Times: From Ask Baba Yaga (Andrews McMeel, 2020). She has received fellowships from Yaddo and the James A. Michener Center for Writers, and her fiction and poetry have been published in journals such as Virginia Quarterly Review, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, Gulf Coast, Los Angeles Review of Books, StoryQuarterly, Fence, Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Pleiades, and Guernica. She has written for The Hairpin, Electric Literature, Jezebel, and Bitch Media. Her story, “Engelond,” was chosen by Lauren Groff for the Best American Short Stories 2024. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, the writer Fernando A. Flores.
2023-2024 Winners
1st place: Erin Zhu
Honorable mentions: Eloise Vaughan Williams and Cate Tam2022-2023 Winners
1st place: Erin Zhu
Honorable mentions: Aisha Pasha and Jamie Pike2021-2022 Winners
1st place: Maeve Hagerty
Honorable mentions: Maya Ng-Yu and Adam Krasnoff2020-2021 Winners
1st place: Juanita Asapokhai
Honorable mentions: Isabella Jarosz and Joseph Harmon2019-2020 Winners
1st place: Anne Savage
Honorable mentions: Joseph Harmon and Isabelle Chirls
2018-2019 Winners
1st place: Paige Spangenthal
Honorable mentions: Joseph Harmon and Sarah Walsh2017-2018 Winners
1st place: Kayleigh Ford
Honorable mentions: Nicole Cohen and Allie Morgenstern2016-2017 Winners
1st place: Jameson Moore
Honorable mentions: Jei-Jei Tan, Ellie Doyle