Please read these rules carefully before submitting an entry. You can find more details in the Frequently Asked Questions section below.
- Your tiny memoir should be a short, powerful, true story about a meaningful experience from your own life.
All entries must be submitted by Dec. 4, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific using the submission form at the bottom of this post.
It must be 100 words or fewer, not including the title.
You must be a student ages 13 to 19 in middle school or high school to participate, and all students must have parent or guardian permission to enter. Please see the F.A.Q. section for additional eligibility details.
The work should be fundamentally your own — it should not be plagiarized, written by someone else or generated by artificial intelligence.
Your piece should also be original for this contest, meaning, it should not have been published anywhere else at the time of submission, such as in a school newspaper.
Keep your audience in mind. You’re writing for a family newspaper, so, for example, no curse words, please.
Only one entry per student is allowed. And while many of our contests allow students to work in teams, for this one you must work alone.
As part of your submission, you must also submit an “artist’s statement” that describes your process. These statements, which will not be used to choose finalists, help us to design and refine our contests. See the F.A.Q. below to learn more.
