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 15 – June 15
Poetry| June 15 – August 15
Short Forms | September 1 – November 1
Fiction | January 10 – March 10
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
Creative Non-Fiction Contest
Our 2024 Creative Non-Fiction Contest is now open!
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.
Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with issue 47.3 (September 2024).
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 2023 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
EXTENDED DEADLINE: December 31, 2023
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.
2023 Judge: Tsering Yangzom Lama
Photo credit: Paige Critcher
Tsering Yangzom Lama’s debut novel, WE MEASURE THE EARTH WITH OUR BODIES, was a finalist for The Giller Prize, The Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writers Prize, The Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and The Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes. Winner of the GLCA New Writers Award, the novel has also been longlisted for The Carol Shields Prize, The VCU Cabell First Novel Prize, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and The Toronto Book Awards.
Tsering holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and a BA in Creative Writing and International Relations from the University of British Columbia. A lifelong activist, Tsering is a Storytelling Advisor at Greenpeace International, where she guides and trains people around the world in storytelling. Born and raised in Nepal, she currently splits her time between Vancouver, Canada and Sweden. WE MEASURE is being published in eight languages and ten countries.
Entry fee includes a one-year subscription to Room, beginning with Issue 47.1 (March 2024).
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’swebsite
DEADLINE: March 10
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).
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
Creative Non-Fiction Contest 2019: The Six Shortlisted Essays
The selection process is never easy, but here are the six shortlisted essays for the 2019 CNF Contest as chosen by our esteemed and hardworking judge, Terese Marie Mailhot! Photo credit: Carissa D'andradeThe selection process is never easy, but here are the six...
Congratulations to the Winners of our Fiction Contest 2019!
We are over the moon to be sharing with you the winners of our Fiction Contest 2019!First of all, we would like to extend our gratitude again to our judge, Catherine Hernandez, for her work on the contest, and to every writer who shared their work with us. Short...
Fiction Contest 2019: The Shortlist
After much careful deliberation by our judge, Catherine Hernandez, author of award-winning Scarborough and and the forthcoming I Promise, the shortlist is finally here. Congratulations to the three writers, whose short stories were handpicked by our judge! After much...
Fiction Contest 2019: The Longlist
Thank you to all the writers who shared their short stories with us and our esteemed fiction judge, Catherine Hernandez! Here are eight longlisted short stories from this year's contest. Thank you to all the writers who shared their short stories with us and our...
Here are the Winners of Room’s 2018 Cover Art Contest!
The results are in! Congratulations to the following artists on winning Room’s fourth Cover Art Contest! You can find the first place winner’s work on the cover of our very next issue, 42.2, and the second place winner featured in the same issue. We want to give a...
Announcing the Winners from our Fall 2018 Short Forms Contest!
Congratulations to the two Short Forms Contest first-place winners and the honourable mention, as chosen by judge Hiromi Goto! Room's 2018 Short Forms Contest #2 WinnersCongratulations to the two first place winners and the honourable mention, as chosen by judge...
Shortlisted Writers from our 2018 Short Forms Contest!
We're excited to announce the shortlist from our 2018 Short Forms Contest! Here are the six shortlisted short forms pieces, as selected by our esteemed judge Hiromi Goto. We're excited to announce the shortlist from our 2018 Short Forms Contest! Here are the six...
What’s up, Room’s Short Forms Contest Winners?
When Room decided to launch a Short Forms Contest a few years ago, we wanted to create an avenue for writers who write flash fiction, non-fiction, and/or prose poems—and perhaps writers who experiment with blending and bending genres—to submit their work. (Contest...
Congratulations to the winners of Room’s Poetry & Fiction Contest 2018
We are thrilled to finally share the results of our 2018 Poetry & Fiction Contest! Here's our heartiest of congratulations to the following six writers. Room’s 2018 Poetry & Fiction Contest WinnersWe are thrilled to finally share the results of our 2018 Poetry...
Room’s Poetry and Fiction Contest 2018: The Shortlists
After much deliberation, our poetry and fiction judges, Vivek Shraya and Zoe Whittall, have determined the shortlists of our 2018 Poetry and Fiction Contest! Congrats to the following thirteen writers whose work—or works—have been chosen. After much deliberation, our...
