Young Writers Competition

The Bennington Young Writers Competition was established in 1999 to encourage a love of reading and writing amongst high school students. Bennington College regards writing as a serious academic endeavor and the College hopes to affirm this commitment through the Awards program.

The faculty who teach literature at Bennington are writers, editors, and critics. It is our belief that students are best served by inspired faculty who share their passions, thus we wish to promote a community of young writers.

Each year, Bennington invites students in the 10th, 11th, or 12th grade to submit their original writing for the Bennington Young Writers Competition. The annual deadline is November 1. First-place winners in each category are awarded a prize of $500; second-place winners receive $250.

Students submit one of the following:

• poetry (a group of three poems)
• fiction (a short story or one-act play),
• nonfiction (a personal or academic essay)

For submission guidelines or to submit an entry, please go to our submission form.

More than 2,300 students submitted poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to last year's Young Writers Competition. We congratulate all entrants on their extraordinary submissions. Entries were judged by current Bennington students and literature faculty members. We are pleased to share past winning entries:

2009-2010 Winners

• Poetry:
  First Place, Caroline Bayne, The Fine Arts Center, Greenville, SC
  Second Place, Shon Arieh-Lerer, Saint Ann's School, Brooklyn, NY
• Fiction:
  First Place, Mackenzie Allen, Warren Hills Regional High School, Washington, NJ
  Second Place, Nora Moncada, Bard High School Early College, New York, NY
• Nonfiction:
  First Place, Graham Duff, Bishop Hendricken High School, Warwick, RI
  Second Place, Caitlin Owsley, Alabama School of Fine Arts, Birmingham, AL

2008-2009 Winners

• Poetry:
  First Place, Michael Lambert, Alabama School of Fine Arts, Birmingham, AL
  Second Place, Neha Parthasarathy, SC Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities,
  Greenville, SC
• Fiction:
  First Place, Eliot Gerson, Bethesda Chevy Chase High School, Bethesda, MD
  Second Place, Zachary Zimmerman, Concord Academy, Concord, MA
• Nonfiction:
  First Place, Amal Abbass, Home School, New York, NY
  Second Place, Kaitlin Loftur-Thun, George Mason High School, Falls Church, VA

Writers who teach, have taught, or studied at Bennington include: W.H. Auden, Steven Bach, Ben Belitt, April Bernard, Robert Bly, Kenneth Burke, Annabel Davis-Goff, Nicholas Delblanco, Bret Easton Ellis, Richard Elman, Gretel Ehrlich, Marguerite Feitlowitz, Wallace Fowlie, John Gardner, Rebecca Godwin, Donald Hall, Doug Bauer, Amy Hempel, Edward Hoagland, Dan Hofstadter, Stanley Kunitz, Jonathan Lethem, Philip Lopate, Bernard Malamud, Christopher Miller, Rick Moody, Howard Nemerov, Kathleen Norris, Mary Oliver, George Packer, Michael Pollan, Liam Rector, Theodore Roethke, Reginald Shephard, Donna Tartt, Anne Waldman, Alec Wilkinson, Mark Wunderlich.