Paying For College: A Writer’s Guide

| December 9, 2012

If you’re considering or currently majoring in creative writing, finding scholarships that put your creative talent to use can be a difficult thing. There aren’t that many options out there and you have to do a whole lot of searching to find a decent one. So from one writer to another, here’s compiled a list of scholarships and contests that could help lighten that load of student loans. Every penny counts!

1.       General Creative Writing Scholarships

This particular organization offers competitions in various categories. The awards they offer are publications, recognition for your work, and thousands of dollars in scholarship money. To be eligible, you must be in grades 7-12 and planning on attending one of the many colleges they have listed. If you still haven’t figured out what college you plan to attend, they give you a neat list of creative writing and art schools to consider.

The Young Arts Foundation is annual competition that offers awards up to $10,000 in many categories including poetry, playwriting and novels.  To be eligible, you must either be between the ages of 15 and 18 or in grades 10-12.

 2.       Scholarships for Fiction Writers

This is an annual short fiction contest hosted by Seventeen Magazine, Figment.com and Scholastic. It offers a $5,000 reward with a publication in Seventeen Magazine. Not only that, but Figment has many free writing competitions. The prizes are usually books, but every once in a while they offer cash prizes as well.

This contest, by far, is my favorite. It offers three prizes ranging from $500-$1,000 every three months and one annual grand prize of $5,000. The contest rules are simple, and they only require that you’re an unpublished science fiction or fantasy writer.

This is a $500 award for an original, unpublished fiction work of a short story or novel. This scholarship gives you a lot of leg room when it comes to word count, a whopping max of 2,000 words. So if you’re the type of writer who likes to go crazy with their word count, I suggest looking into this one.

3.       Scholarships for Poets

This is a fairly new $500 scholarship hosted by Zinch and She’s the First. This contest is open to everyone so competition may be big, but the platform is fairly simple. All you need to do is a write a poem based on the question they give you. It can be any kind of poem – lyric, sonnet, you name it. Sounds easy, right?

This poetry contest can give you an award anywhere from $1,000 to a whopping $25,000. Winning this contest can put a serious amount of money into your educational goals, and can even pay for your entire college career, depending on your college’s annual tuition.

Winning this scholarship can mean $15,000 of tuition money in your pocket, but unfortunately the age eligibility is a bit narrow for younger poets. If you’re between the ages of 21 and 31, this scholarship is definitely worth looking into.

4.       Scholarships for Playwrights

The Playwright Discovery Award not only gives the winner a $2000 cash prize, but also a trip to Washington D.C., to view his/her work on stage. The only eligibility requirements to this are that you need to be either a middle school or high school student. Plus, if you’re looking for more playwright scholarships, The Kennedy Center offers many more.

Each year, City Theatre awards the winner of this contest a $2,000 cash prize, and transportation and hotel for the CityWrights Professional Weekend for Playwrights. The winning play will also be produced in their annual Sumer Shorts festival, awarding the writer with additional cash from the royalties of his play.

NerdWallet is a consumer focused website, dedicated to helping students find the best ways to navigate student loans and pay for college. 

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