The 2024 Best in Rural Writing Contest is accepting fiction and nonfiction entries until Monday, September 30th, 11:59 EST. First place will win $500, and the runner-up $200.
Last year the contest received 66 entries. Shortlisted submissions came from the US, Canada, Scotland, Ireland and Northern Ireland. Laura Lewis’s essay “Leaving” took top honors, while Barbara Schmidt’s short story “Rural Route One” was runner-up.
Regarding winning last year’s contest, Lewis remarked that it “was just the boost I needed to pull together a book I was working on about my experiences as a single, woman farmer for 25 years in North Missouri. It is so wonderful to find a group of writers and readers from rural communities.”
This year’s contest is co-sponsored with The Daily Yonder and judged by Dr. Chea Parton. More information about them can be found below.
To learn more about the contest and enter your work, visit this page. Note: When submitting, select “contest-fiction” or “contest-nonfiction” as the genre of your submission to make sure you’re directed to paying the $5 entry fee.
Good luck and happy writing.
The Judge
The judge for the 2024 Best in Rural Writing Contest is Dr. Chea Parton. Dr. Parton currently runs Literacy In Place, where she seeks to catalogue rural YA books and provides teaching resources, hosts the Reading Rural YAL podcast where she gives book talks and interviews rural YA authors, runs the Rural Teen Writing Contest and is co-chair of the Whippoorwill Book Award for Rural YA Literature selection committee. Learn more about Chea here!The Co-Sponsor
The Daily Yonder offers news, analysis and stories from Rural America, free for readers to enjoy. From agriculture to arts and culture, The Daily Yonder covers the topics that affect those in small towns and the diverse countryside around them. Visit dailyyonder.com to get more great rural stories, or sign up to their newsletter to receive rural reporting directly in your inbox. Alternatively, you can listen and subscribe to their podcast, Rural Remix, wherever you get your podcasts.