The Larry McMurtry Prize in Fiction $1,000
Judged by Morgan Talty
The Max Apple Prize in Nonfiction $1,000
Judged by Courtney Zoffness
The Susan Wood Prize in Poetry $1,000
Judged by Sasha West
The Paul Otremba Award for Literary Citizenship $1000
Judged by Rice Creative Writing Faculty
Overview
The Fondren Library Awards for Undergraduate Literary Excellence honor Rice undergraduates who show exceptional literary promise through writing in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; or through literary citizenship. The awards will be given every spring.
Contest Rules:
Creative Writing
- Currently enrolled undergraduates may submit in as many genres as they’d like within the following page limits: one short story up to twenty pages double-spaced 12pt Times New Roman font, one piece of creative nonfiction up to twenty pages double-spaced 12pt Times New Roman font, up to five poems not to exceed ten pages total. Submit works in different genres separately. Students who have graduated are not eligible.
- Submissions must be original literary works written while Rice students, and students must be the sole author of their submissions. Any use of generative AI should be thoroughly explained as part of the writing submission (i.e. not on the cover page). Any language generated by AI should be explicitly denoted as such. Please do not submit works wholly or primarily generated by AI; they will not be forwarded to judges.
- Each submission (in each genre) must include a cover page with your name, email, phone, and your submission’s genre. This cover page will be removed and the entry anonymized before being sent to the judge. Please number all pages of your submission. Include all poems in a single document with a cover page. You may submit word processor documents or PDFs.
Literary Citizenship
The Paul Otremba Award for Literary Citizenship is given in memory of the beloved teacher and poet, Paul Otremba, and celebrates an outstanding graduating senior who embodies Paul’s spirit of literary service, engagement, and activism. It comes with a $1000 prize and is selected by Rice Creative Writing faculty members.
To apply for this award, please describe your activities in literary citizenship, service, and community engagement while a student at Rice. Write up to 3 pages, double-spaced Times New Roman font, and include a cover page with your name, NetID, phone number and the name of the award.
You may also include supplementary material and/or links with your submission-– such as to podcasts, magazines you helped edit, projects you designed and executed, etc.
Submission Guidelines
- Submit your entry using the form below, entering a URL to a cloud service such as Google Drive, Box or Dropbox. If your document is set to Private, please share it with jeg3@rice.edu
- The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM on March 10, 2025.
- Winners will be announced by April 2, 2025.
- Winners will be asked to read at the Fondren Undergraduate Creative Writing Showcase on April 16, 2025 at 7:00 PM as part of Inquiry Weeks.
Questions? Please contact Joe Goetz ( jeg3@rice.edu)
Application
Judges' Bios
The Larry McMurtry Prize in Fiction judged by Morgan Talty
Morgan Talty, a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation, is the author of the national bestselling and critically acclaimed story collection Night of the Living Rez from Tin House Books, which won the New England Book Award, was a Finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers, and is a Finalist for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His writing has appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, and elsewhere. A winner of the 2021 Narrative Prize, Talty’s work has been supported by the Elizabeth George Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts (2022). Talty is an Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. Talty is also a Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review. He lives in Levant, Maine.
The Max Apple Prize in Nonfiction judged by Courtney Zoffness
Courtney Zoffness is the author of the memoir-in-essays SPILT MILK (McSweeney’s), which received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and BookPage, and appeared on over a dozen “best of” lists. She was the second-ever woman to win the Sunday Times Short Story Award, the most valuable international prize for short fiction, amid entries from 38 countries, and joins a list of winners that includes Anthony Doerr, Junot Díaz, and Yiyun Li. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, The Iowa Review, the New York Times, The Believer, and elsewhere, and has been translated into several languages.
Zoffness holds graduate degrees from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Arizona, and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. Currently she directs the creative writing program at Drew University, where she’s an Associate Professor of English. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, NY.
The Susan Wood Prize in Poetry judged by Sasha West
Sasha West is the author of How to Abandon Ship, finalist for the 2025 Kingsley Tufts award from Claremont Graduate University. Her first book, Failure and I Bury the Body, was a National Poetry Series selection and received a Texas Institute of Letters First Book of Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies, including: American Poetry Review, Ecotone, Georgia Review, The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, and Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency. As eco-arts collaborative Hammonds + West, her multi-media shows with visual artist Hollis Hammonds have been exhibited at the Columbus College of Art and Design, Texas A&M, ArtPrize Michigan, and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor at St. Edward’s University in Austin, where she founded the Environmental Humanities program.