Deadline: June 15, 2025
Applications are open for the Norton Writer’s Prize 2025. This is a non-fiction prize for undergraduates in the US, who are enrolled in an accredited 2- or 4-year college or university, enrolled during the 2024-25 year, and aged 18 and above. They will accept literacy narratives, literary and other textual analyses, reports, profiles, evaluations, arguments, memoirs, proposals, multimodal pieces, and other forms of original non-fiction pieces of 1,000-3,000 words.
Three cash prizes will be awarded in 2025 for coursework submitted during the academic year, one in each of the following three categories:
- Writing by a first-year student in a 2- or 4-year college or university.
- Writing by a student in a 2-year college or university.
- Writing by a student in a 4-year college or university.
Prizes
- Each prize is $1,000. The retail value of all prizes is $3,000.00. All prize amounts are US dollars. All expenses, if any, associated with the acceptance and use of prizes, including but not limited to taxes, are the sole responsibility of the winners.
Eligibility
- Open to legal residents of the fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia;
- Be 18 years of age or older at the time of entry and who are enrolled in an accredited 2- or 4-year college or university in the 2024-2025 academic year.
- Employees of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., including its member companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, suppliers, and agencies, and their immediate family members and persons living in their households, are not eligible to enter or win.
- Contest is not open to previous Contest winners or runners-up.
- All federal, state, and local regulations apply. Void where prohibited by law.
Application
Entry requires nomination by an instructor in entrant’s undergraduate institution and must consist of all of the following:
- one (1) copy of a double spaced student essay, between 1,000 and 3,000 words in length, without any identifying student information;
- instructor’s short summary of the essay’s merits, typed on departmental stationery, on a single sheet that also includes instructor’s name, school email address, phone number, and title; and
- a completed Information Form, setting forth student’s name, school email address, phone number, and projected year of graduation; the instructor’s name, email address, phone number, and title; the title of the essay; the name of the course for which the essay was written; and a statement signed by the student confirming (a) that the essay represents the student’s original work and (b) that the student is knowingly entering the Contest, has read and understood these Official Contest Rules, consents to be considered an “entrant” for purposes of these rules, and consents to the disclosure of the personally identifying information (“PII”) required for entry.
For more information, visit Norton Writer’s Prize.
