Young Adults Write YA Contest - Uncharted
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Young Adults Write YA Contest

By The Voyage Team
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This contest is now closed. Thank you for your submissions!

Young Adult literature is a cutting-edge and captivating genre, beloved by authors who choose to write for teens. YA authors build mesmerizing worlds that fascinate young, curious minds. In turn, YA is devoured by its target audience—young people who crave excitement, adventure, love, and acceptance. Now, we are giving those most intrigued by these worlds a chance to create them.

We are thrilled to introduce Voyage’s latest contest: Young Adults Write YA, guest judged by Theodora Goss! If you’re a writer of young adult literature and age twenty-four or younger, we invite you to submit your original, unpublished YA writing for the chance to win the first-place prize of $1,000. Second- and third-place winners will receive $600 and $400, respectively. All three winners will be published by Voyage YA by Uncharted and their work will be considered by an agent.

Here is what Theodora Goss has to say to submitters:

What I’m looking for in these stories is YOU. Your voice. The things you think about and find interesting. Your perspective on the world. Contemporary YA is a broad and innovative genre. There are all sorts of characters and places in it, and endlessly fascinating stories to tell. What story do YOU want to tell, that only you can tell in your own distinctive way? That’s a story I look forward to reading.

Theodora Goss is the World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award-winning author of the Athena Club trilogy: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. Her published works also include the short story and poetry collections In the Forest of Forgetting, Songs for Ophelia, Snow White Learns Witchcraft, and The Collected Enchantments as well as two-sided novella The Thorn and the Blossom. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her writing has been translated into fifteen languages. She teaches literature and writing at Boston University.

Young adults are invited to submit their short YA stories between December 1, 2023, and February 1, 2024.

Guidelines

  • The deadline for entry is February 1, 2024.
  • All participants must be twenty-four years of age or younger.
  • The $20 reading fee allows for the submission of one <5,000 word short story in English, in the YA genre.
  • Stories must be written primarily in English, but some code-switching is welcomed.
  • We encourage multiple submissions, but each story should be submitted separately, each with a separate reading fee.
  • Reprints are not eligible. If your story has been published anywhere else, even on a blog or social media, it will be automatically disqualified from the contest.
  • If your story is a simultaneous submission, please withdraw immediately if it’s accepted elsewhere.
  • Submissions should be double-spaced and use Times New Roman 12, or larger if needed.
  • All submissions should include a cover letter, however brief, with your publication history, if applicable.
  • We do not accept anonymous submissions, but the judge will read the shortlist anonymized.
  • Please include a content warning, if applicable. This information will not factor into whether your submission is accepted, but rather simply serve to safeguard our staff.
  • AI-generated stories will be automatically disqualified.

Optional Editorial Feedback

Participants are invited to request a two-page editorial feedback letter about their submission for an extra fee of $69, or three editorial letters from three different editorial consultants for $179. These letters will provide the recipient with valuable and personalized input from a qualified editor. If your work is chosen for publication, no feedback will be given and your fee will be refunded.