Contest Calendar
Poetry | July 15 – September 30
Short Forms | October 1 – December 1
Fiction | February 15 – April 15
Creative Non-Fiction | May 1 – July 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
Poetry Contest
Our 2023 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
EXTENDED DEADLINE: September 30th, 2023
2023 Judge: John Elizabeth Stintzi
John Elizabeth Stintzi is a writer, cartoonist, and editor who grew up on a cattle farm in northwestern Ontario. Their work has been awarded the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, The Malahat Review’s 2019 Long Poem Prize, the Sator New Works Award, and has been shortlisted for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and the Raymond Souster Award. JES is the author of the novels My Volcano (longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library’s Book Prize for fiction, and named a book of the year by Kirkus Reviews and the New York Public Library) and Vanishing Monuments, as well as the poetry collection Junebat. They are currently at work illustrating their first graphic novel: Automaton Deactivation Bureau.
Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with issue 46.4.
Short Forms Contest
Our 2022 Short Forms Contest is now closed. The 2023 Short Forms Contest will reopen in 2023.
FIRST PRIZE: $500 + possibility of publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $500 + possibility of publication in Room
HONOURABLE MENTION: $50 + publication on Room’s website
DEADLINE: November 1st, 2022
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, and two prizes of $500 will be awarded. Winning entries (1st place, 2nd place) have the possibility of being published in upcoming issues of Room.
2022 Judge: Alix Ohlin
Alix Ohlin is the author of six books, mostly recently the novel Dual Citizens and the story collection We Want What We Want. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and many other places. She lives in Vancouver and teaches at the UBC School of Creative Writing.
Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with Issue 46.1 (March 2023).
Fiction Contest
The 2023 Fiction Contest is now closed.
FIRST PRIZE: $1,000 + possibility of publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $250 + possibility of publication in Room
HONOURABLE MENTION: $100 + publication on Room’s website
DEADLINE: April 15th
2023 Judge: Heather O’Neill
Heather O’Neill is a novelist, short-story writer and essayist. Her most recent bestselling novel, The Lonely Hearts Hotel, won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and CBC’s Canada Reads. Her previous work, which includes Lullabies for Little Criminals, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and Daydreams of Angels, has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize two years in a row. She has won CBC’s Canada Reads and the Danuta Gleed Award. Born and raised in Montreal, O’Neill lives there with her daughter.
Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with issue 46.3 (September 2023).
Creative Non-Fiction Contest
Our 2023 Creative Non-Fiction Contest is now closed. The CNF Contest will open again in Spring, 2024.
FIRST PRIZE: $1000 + possibility of publication in Room
SECOND PRIZE: $250 + possibility of publication in Room
THIRD PRIZE: $100 + publication on Room‘s website
DEADLINE: July 1st, 2023
2023 Judge: Tajja Isen
Tajja Isen is the author of Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service, named a Best Book of the Year by Electric Literature, The Globe and Mail, CBC Books, and Daily Hive. She has edited for Catapult, The Walrus, and Electric Literature, and is co-editor of the anthology The World as We Knew It: Dispatches from a Changing Climate. Born in Toronto, she lives in Brooklyn.
Photo credit: Karen Isen
Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with issue 46.3 (September 2023).
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: $35
US: $45
everywhere else: $55Additional 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. Each entry may include up to two submissions. Please submit in the same document.
- Additional details for each contest can be found on Submittable.
Past Contest Winners
Short Forms Contest 2021: The Winners
The results are in. Many thanks to all those who've submitted, and to our incredible judge, Michelle Good, for her careful consideration and kind words about each of these pieces. Our warmest congratulations to these three winners of our 2021 Short Forms Contest!...
Poetry Contest 2021: The Winners
We are absolutely thrilled to announce the winners of our 2021 Poetry Contest. A huge congratulations to the following three poets, whose works have been carefully selected by our esteemed judge, Kama La Mackerel, after hours of deliberation. We won't keep you waiting...
Creative Non-Fiction Contest 2021: The Winners!
The results are finally here! Here are the winning entries to our Creative Non-Fiction Contest as selected by our esteemed judge, Dr. Njoki Wane. A major congrats to these three writers! Here are what our judge has to say about the winning submissions: First Place:...
I Can Feel Him Breathing
I Can Feel Him Breathing is the honourable mention for the 2021 Creative Non-Fiction Contest, as selected by Judge Dr. Njoki Wane. _____________ In the morning I stand in front of the bedroom closet, half-dressed, wrestling with the sliding door. The door won’t...
Creative Non-Fiction Contest 2021: The Longlist
It's finally here: our 2021 Creative Non-Fiction Contest longlist! Congratulations to these thirteen writers, and a heartfelt thank you to all those who submitted work to this year's contest. Light and Shadow: One Painting, Two Lives, Emily McKibbon Zebrafish, Neive...
Your Skinny Daddy
Joya Guzmán is a Mexican-Canadian emerging writer and translator at home in northern Mexico and the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Sḵwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples known as Vancouver. Her prose and poetry have been published or forthcoming in Acentos Review, Room Magazine, SOMOS Magazine, and others. Joya Guzmán is a nom de plume.
Fiction Contest 2021: The Winners
The results are in! Congrats to these three talented writers for being selected as the winners of our 2021 Fiction Contest! First Place: Of Dust, by N.B. N.B. is a queer friend, writer and researcher who cares a lot about the meaning of care. She is currently...
Cover Art Contest 2020: The Winners
The results are in. Major congrats to the three winners of our 2020 Cover Art Contest! First Place: MENTAL LOAD 02, by Masha Nova Masha Nova explores womanhood, feminism, and ongoing events in her latest collage work. Born in 1992 and raised in Russia (Siberia), as a...
Cover Art Contest 2020: Honourable Mention
Honourable Mention: My Father Catches Me Confronting Memory, by Tea Gerbeza During my adolescence, I often returned to photographs of my family during the Yugoslavian civil war, packed away in a shoebox. Memories stacked on each other. Even though I was barely a...
Mind the Sentencing Gap
Mind the Sentencing Gap is the honourable mention for the 2020 Short Forms Contest, selected by Judge Lisa Bird-Wilson. It is meant to be read in the graph it is presented in above; the text version of the piece is below. --- The day dawns cool; it turns mild by noon....
