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
Short Forms | September 15 – November 15
Fiction | January 10 – March 10
Creative Non-Fiction | April 15 – June 30
Poetry | July 1 – September 1
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
Short Forms Contest
Our 2024 Short Forms Contest is now open!
FIRST PRIZE: $500 + publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $350 + publication in Room
HONOURABLE MENTION: $150 + publication on Room’s website
DEADLINE: November 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).
Fiction Contest
Our 2024 Fiction Contest is now closed. The Fiction Contest will open again in January 2025.
FIRST PRIZE: $1,000 + publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $250 + publication in Room
HONOURABLE MENTION: $100 + publication on Room’s website
DEADLINE: March 10, 2024
2024 Judge: Sarah Bernstein
Sarah Bernstein is from Montreal, Canada, and lives in Scotland. Her writing has appeared in Granta among other publications. Her first novel, The Coming Bad Days, was published in 2021. In 2023 she was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.
Photo by Alice Meikle.
Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with issue 47.3 (September 2024).
Creative Non-Fiction Contest
Our 2024 Creative Non-Fiction Contest is now closed. The CNF contest will reopen in Spring, 2025.
FIRST PRIZE: $1000 + publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $250 + publication in Room
THIRD PRIZE: $100 + publication on Room‘s website
DEADLINE: June 15th, 2024
2024 Judge: Angela Sterritt
Angela Sterritt is an award-winning investigative journalist and national bestselling author from the Wilp Wiik’aax (we-GAK) of the Gitanmaax (GIT-in-max) community within the Gitxsan (GICK-san) Nation on her dad’s side and from Bell Island Newfoundland on her maternal side. Sterritt worked as a television, radio, and digital journalist at CBC for more than a decade. She hosted the award-winning CBC original podcast Land Back.
Her book Unbroken, a work that is part memoir and part investigation into the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women and girls, published by Greystone Books became an instant national bestseller in May of 2023. Unbroken was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, one of Canada’s oldest and most prestigious literary prizes. It is also nominated for the prestigious Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust award for best non-fiction book in Canada.
In 2021, Sterritt won an Academy Award (Canadian Screen Award) for Best Reporter of the Year in Canada for her coverage of an Indigenous man and his then 12-year-old granddaughter who were arrested while trying to open a bank account at BMO. Sterritt also won a national Radio Television Digital News Association award for the same reporting. In 2020, Sterritt was named in Vancouver Magazine’s Power 50 list of the city’s 50 most influential people.
As a motivational speaker, Sterritt talks about overcoming adversity, breaking stereotypes, and creating change and relationships in Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.
Photo Credit: Georgie Lawson
Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with issue 47.3 (September 2024).
Poetry Contest
Our 2024 Poetry Contest is now closed. The Poetry Contest will open again in Fall, 2025.
FIRST PRIZE: $1,000 + publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $250 + publication in Room
HONOURABLE MENTION: $100 + publication on Room’s website
DEADLINE: September 1st, 2024
2024 Judge: Rafeef Ziadah
Rafeef Ziadah is a Palestinian spoken word artist and human rights activist based in London, UK. Her performance of poems like ‘We Teach Life, Sir’ and ‘Shades of Anger’ went viral within days of its release. Her live readings offer a moving blend of poetry and music. Since releasing her first album, Rafeef has headlined prestigious performance venues across several countries with powerful readings on war, exile, gender and racism.
Her third album Three Generations is a selection of spoken word poems, with original music compositions. The sequence of linked poems is a deeply moving, powerful, personal remembrance of Palestine, Al-Nakba, exile, defiance, and survival. It is also a beautiful testament to the human spirit, to ‘love and joy against skies of steel’.
We Teach Life, her second album, is a powerful collection of spoken word with original music compositions, which she brings to the stage with Australian guitarist and We Teach Life producer Phil Monsour. Rafeef received the Ontario Arts Council Grant from the Word of Mouth programme to create her debut spoken-word album Hadeel. She regularly conducts spoken word workshops with the aim of empowering expression through writing and performance. She was chosen to represent Palestine at the South Bank Centre Poets Olympiad in 2012.
Rafeef’s debut ablum Hadeel is dedicated to Palestinian youth, who still fly kites in the face of F16 bombers, who still remember the names of their villages in Palestine and still hear the sound of Hadeel over Gaza. Rafeef’s debut CD Hadeel, We Teach Life and Three Generations are available at Bandcamp.
Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with issue 47.4.
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.
Past Contest Winners
The Chipmunk
The Chipmunk is the Third Place Winner of Room’s 2022 Short Forms Contest, as judged by Alix Ohlin. You can find the full list of winners, and what judge Alix Ohlin had to say about each winning piece, here. ___ The Chipmunk At the campsite, my sister and I knot...
Short Forms Contest 2022: The Winners
We are so very pleased to announce the winners of our 2022 Short Forms Contest. A huge congratulations to the following three writers whose works were handpicked by our amazing judge, Alix Ohlin. We won’t keep you waiting any longer: here they are! ____ First Place:...
Creative Non-Fiction Contest 2022: The Winners
Drumroll, please! Here are the three winners of our 2022 Creative Non-Fiction Contest, as chosen by judge Luna Ferguson. A big congratulations to these three writers! Here is what Luna had to say about their works: First Place: Clink Canoe, by Sydney Roberts Sydney...
Fiction Contest 2022: The Winners
The results are finally here! Here are the three winning fiction pieces as selected by our esteemed judge, Shashi Bhat. A major congrats to these three writers! --- Room Magazine’s 2022 Fiction Contest Winners First Place: Mermaid’s Tears, by Hannah Brown...
Transcendent Expectation
“Transcendent Expectation” is the Third Place winner for Room’s 2022 Fiction Contest. Of this piece, judge Shashi Bhat writes: "Transcendent Expectation is a story about a modest prayer on a family road trip, felt deeply by its young protagonist. This piece is...
Fiction Contest 2022: The Shortlist
It's finally here! Congrats to the following six writers who were shortlisted by our judge, Shashi Bhat, for our 2022 Fiction Contest! ------ Room Magazine's 2022 Fiction Contest Shortlist Fuzzy Peaches, by Kelly Pedro Mermaid’s Tears, by Hannah Brown The Mother...
Cover Art Contest 2021: Third Place
This piece is the third place winner for the 2021 Cover Art Contest, as judged by Chief Lady Bird. THIRD PLACE: It’s Complicated, by Laura Silva "El hombre es Dios cuando crea. Years ago an esteemed teacher told me this while discussing art. It translates to “humans...
Cover Art Contest 2021: Second Place
This piece is the second place winner for the 2021 Cover Art Contest, as judged by Chief Lady Bird. SECOND PLACE: 莫(Mò), by Kyla Yin "莫(Mò) represents absence. Something that isn’t there or isn’t able to be done. I was first drawn to this idea when the Chinese...
Cover Art Contest 2021: The Winners
The results are in. Major congrats to the three winners of our 2021 Cover Art Contest! FIRST PLACE: Nimisenh mizhishawabi, by Sarah McPherson Raised in Thunder Bay, Sarah McPherson is a 2S Anishinaabe youth from Couchiching First Nation, currently completing an MA at...
Music Box
Music Box is the honourable mention for Room’s 2021 Short Forms Contest, as judged by Michelle Good. You can find the full list of winners, and what judge Michelle Good had to say about each winning piece, here. ------- Music Box I’ll begin this song with the click of...
