Contests

Thank you for considering Room for the publication of your original short stories, poems, creative non-fiction, or art.

Get a sense of our tastes by reviewing material we’ve published in recent issues. Visit our shop to order single copies of specific issues, including our sold-out digital exclusives for just $10. Questions or problems with your submission? Contact us at contests[at]roommagazine.com

Contest Calendar

Creative Non-Fiction | April 1 – June 15
Poetry | June 15 – August 15
Short Forms | September 1 – November 1
Fiction | January 8 – March 8

We have ten free entries to offer to low-income writers for each of our contests in order to encourage barrier-free access to contest submission. We encourage those who may benefit from a free entry, for any reason at all, to contact us at contests [at] roommagazine [dot] com.

Read our Contest General Guidelines
See our Past Winners

Poetry Contest

Our 2026 Poetry Contest is now open!

FIRST PRIZE: $1,000 + publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $250 + publication in Room
HONOURABLE MENTION: $100 + publication on Room’s website

DEADLINE: April 1st, 2026

2026 Judge: Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch

Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is a mixed-Arab writer, and translator, and co-publisher at Metonymy Press living in Tio’tia:ke. Their book, knot body, waspublished by Metatron Press in 2020. Their second book, The Good Arabs, published by Metonymy Press in 2022, was granted the honorary mention for poetry by the Arab American Book Awards, the KhayrallahPrize honorary mention, and won the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. With co-editor Samia Marshy, they edited El Ghourabaa, an anthology of queer and trans writing by Arab and Arabophone writers, published by Metonymy Press in June 2024. In October and November 2024, they were the writer-in-residence at the Arab American National Museum. You can find out more about them on their website, elitareqwrites.com, or you can sign up for their newsletter, https://softsyrup.substack.com/.

Photo by Hamza Abouelouafaa.

Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with issue 49.1.

Enter our Contest

Creative Non-Fiction Contest

Our 2025 Creative Non-Fiction Contest is now closed.

FIRST PRIZE: $1000 + potential publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $250 + potential publication in Room
THIRD PRIZE: $100 + publication on Room’s website

EXTENDED CONTEST DEADLINE: June 15th, 2025

2025 Judge: Amy Lin

Amy Lin lives in Calgary, Canada where there are two seasons: winter and road construction. Her debut memoir Here After was named a Best Book of 2024 by Kirkus, The Globe and Mail, CBC Books, NPR, and ELLE. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares and she writes the Substack At The Bottom Of Everything where she wonders: how do we live with anything?

Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with issue 48.3 (September 2025).

Enter our Contest

Short Forms Contest

Our 2024 Short Forms Contest is now closed.

FIRST PRIZE: $500 + publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $350 + publication in Room
HONOURABLE MENTION: $150 + publication on Room’s website

EXTENDED DEADLINE: December 15, 2024

Please note: Each entry can consist of one or two prose poems, flash fictions, or flash creative non-fiction works of up to 500 words. Authors are not required to clarify which genre(s) they are writing in, as long as each work is 500 words or less. All submissions, regardless of genre, will be judged in a single category.

2024 Judge: Zalika Reid-Benta

Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian writer. Her debut novel River Mumma received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist Magazine. River Mumma was selected as a Best Book of the Month for Amazon and Apple Books in February 2024. It was the October 2023 pick for the CityLine book club and has been listed as one of the best fiction books of 2023 on numerous platforms, including CBC Books, Indigo Books, Kobo Books and The Walrus.

Reid-Benta’s debut short story collection Frying Plantain won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction in 2020. Frying Plantain was longlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and it was shortlisted for the 2020 Toronto Book Award, the 2020 Trillium Book Award, the 2021 White Pine Award and the 2020 Evergreen Award.

Her picture book, Twelve Days of Jamaican Christmas, will be published in 2025.

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Photo by Rogene Reid.

Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with Issue 48.1 (March 2025).

Enter our Contest

Fiction Contest

Our 2025 Fiction Contest is now closed.

FIRST PRIZE: $1,000 + publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $250 + publication in Room
HONOURABLE MENTION: $100 + publication on Room’s website

DEADLINE: March 15, 2025

2025 Judge: Janika Oza

Janika Oza (she/her) is a writer, editor, and educator based in Toronto. Her best-selling debut novel, A History of Burning (2023) won the 2024 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and was a finalist for numerous awards including the Carol Shield’s Prize for Fiction, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Her stories and essays have appeared in publications such as BOMB Magazine, The New York Times, The Toronto Star, and The Kenyon Review. Currently, she is the 2025 Writer-in-Residence at University of Toronto Scarborough and teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.

Photo by Yi Shi.

Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with issue 48.3 (September 2025).

Enter our Contest

General Guidelines

Room‘s contests are open women (cisgender and transgender), transgender men, Two-Spirit and nonbinary people.
Each entry must be original and unpublished.
We accept simultaneous submissions, but if your submission is accepted elsewhere, please notify us and withdraw your submission immediately.
All first submissions include a one-year subscription to Room. We’ve priced our entry fee to cover shipping costs and they are:
Canada: $39
US: $49
Everywhere else: $59
Additional entries are $7 each and do not include an additional subscription.*Current subscribers will be given an extension on their subscription.
We use Submittable, a secure online submissions management tool, to manage our submissions. For more information about using Submittable, please check our Submissions page.
Submissions must be anonymous—please do not include your name or personal details anywhere in your document, including the file name. You will have a chance to include your contact information on the Submittable form. Cover letters are not necessary and will not be forwarded to the judge.
Previously commissioned Room writers (writers who have been featured on the cover of an issue) and contest judges are barred from participating in subsequent contests at Room.

Contest-specific guidelines

For Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction, one submission includes one short story or essay of up to 3,500 words.
Please double space your prose.
Submit all work in 12-point font, Times New Roman preferred.
One poetry submission can include up to three poems or a maximum of 150 lines of poetry altogether. (The titles and spaces between lines do not count)
When submitting multiple poems, please begin your second and third poems on a new page in the same document.
For the Short Forms Contest. a submissions may be up to 500 words in any genre. Authors are not required to clarify the genre(s) they are writing in; all pieces submitted will be considered on their individual merit as standalone pieces.
Each entry may include up to two submissions.
Additional details for each contest can be found on Submittable.