top of page
Write-on-the-River-Writers-Competition.png

16th Annual Writers Competition

Do you have a memoir brewing? Got good pages filed away? Feeling inspired to finish that story? Winter is a fine time to hone your writing or create something brand new—and the 2025 Writers Competition is a way to find discerning readers.

​

Write On The River, in partnership with the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center, will award $1200 in cash prizes to writers of fiction or nonfiction. Submissions are 1000-word maximum, either a complete work or beginning pages. Anyone residing in Eastern Washington is eligible to submit entries January 1 through March 3.

​

See guidelines and criteria below.

Submissions opened January 1, 2025 and are due by Midnight, March 3, 2025.

2025 Competition Guidelines

Submit up to 1000 words of FICTION: novel, short story, “flash fiction,” or NONFICTION: essay, memoir, humor, etc. The judges will evaluate your entry on its overall quality, looking for writing that has impact, depth and clarity. Whether fiction or nonfiction, the reader’s interest should be satisfied (by a complete piece) and/or intrigued (by the start of a longer work). 

​

Please read the following information carefully.
 

  • Entries not adhering to these guidelines will be disqualified.

  • Membership in WOTR is not a requirement for any submitting Washington writer living east of the Cascades, but it is a requirement for an entrant living elsewhere in Washington. No out-of-state submissions will be considered.

  • Submit prose entries only. Watch the WOTR website for upcoming 2025 poetry competitions.

  • Entries must be previously unpublished and the original work of the submitting party.

  • All entries must be double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman, with standard 1-inch margins.  Entries must not exceed the 1,000-word maximum.

  • Entries must be provided electronically in PDF format.

  • Do not include your name anywhere on the manuscript.

  • The first page must contain a title and page number. ADDITIONALLY, at the top of your first page put F for fiction, or N for nonfiction, and the term “complete” (fully contained in the submission) or “start” (the opening of a novel, novella, short story, nonfiction book, memoir etc.)  Each succeeding page must contain the title and page number.

  • You may submit multiple entries, each with a separate entry form completed and fee paid, but you can only win one prize per category.

  • Directors of Write on the River and current competition judges (in genre categories which they are judging), are not eligible for prizes.

​

$20 per writing submission

$20 additional for 3 writing critiques per submission

​

​

SUBMISSIONS ACCEPTED FROM

JANUARY 1, 2025 UNTIL MIDNIGHT MARCH 3, 2025​

​​

bottom of page