USBWA Best Writing Contest Rules

RULES OF ENTRY

USBWA members can submit entries in the Best Writing Contest until June 30. For the first time, the USBWA will also have a writing contest for student journalists as well. If you entering the student contest, be sure to indicate clearly on your submission.

MAIN CATEGORIES (5)

  • Column Writing
  • Moderate-Length Feature
  • Magazine-Length Feature
  • Spot News/Game Coverage
  • Enterprise/Investigative

STUDENT SUBMISSIONS (UP TO THREE FOR EACH STUDENT ENTRANT)

  • One Game Story
  • One Feature Story
  • One Wild Card story

You must be an USBWA member in good standing to enter.

Deadline: June 30, 2025. Entries sent after the deadline WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED.

Limit: One (1) article per category, although a series of articles may be submitted in the enterprise category, or one entrant per student.

Entries must have appeared in print or on line between May 1, 2024 and April 30, 2025.

Entries must be submitted electronically to usbwacontest@gmail.com. Entries not sent to this e-mail address will not be accepted.

Send MS Word or text files only. DO NOT SEND HTML files, Word Perfect files, stories in other word processing software or links to stories on the Internet or electronic libraries.

Make your entry easy to read by taking out unnecessary carriage returns (They can give your entry an odd look when opened by a judge’s word processing program).

Delete any embedded advertising, photos and cutlines from the files (The file should contain only your story and your identifying information).

At the top of each entry, the following information should be included:

  • Writer(s)
  • Publication or online service
  • Category (Please indicate if you are a student)
  • Date(s) of publication
  • E-mail address and telephone number for the writer(s) of the entry.

The entries will be sorted and stripped of identifying information and forwarded to the judge(s).
Files containing your entries should follow this naming convention: yourname-category.doc
The category must be one of these five: Game, Moderate Feature, Magazine Feature, Enterprise or Column

Example: MalcolmMoran-game.doc.

Questions on the Best Writing Contest? E-mail Malcolm Moran at malcolm@usbwa.com.