Black History

Contest 2025

​​

 

In celebration of Black History Month, Polyphony Lit is honored to host a special contest for  submitters with Black, African, and African American backgrounds. The theme for the contest  is “Through the Melanin Lens: Exploring the Black Gaze Through the Chromatics of Culture.”  For more details on the contest prize, see below: 

 

Black History Month recognizes the moments captured and forgotten that celebrate the vital  contributions made by Black people in American history and culture. When written history falls  short of expressing the Black experience, it is important to look at visual memories, both past  and present.  

 

Sight has been the gateway to human experience for centuries. In an era of innovation,  technology has further advanced the ways sight has affected people around the world. We witnessed Nelson Mandela win the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize and become South Africa’s first  Black President in 1994; we saw Barack Obama’s historic inauguration as the first African  American President of the United States in 2009; and we stood witness to the tragedy of George  Floyd in 2020. Yet while these are the stories the world knows, they are not the only stories of  struggle and triumph that Black people have seen and faced. 

 

What does it mean to look at your life through the melanin lens? You may write a creative  nonfiction piece that explores the darkness that you see when you close your eyes. You may craft  a fiction piece that is centered around news media and the influence that may be gained by sight. You may pen a poem that uncovers the effects of historical visions on your own culture. The  choice is yours! 

 

We remind you that there are no limits to the creativity that encompasses Black History Month. Take chances, be bold, and own your work. This is your chance to show the world how sight has  shaped your perspective!

 

Interested in honing your poetry-writing skills for the contest? Then try taking our poetry workshop, Around the World of Poetry in 80 Days. This workshop will help you to brainstorm, draft, and revise poems of your own!​

​

Interested in becoming an editor for Polyphony Lit? Take our editorial training course and join the staff!

 

Black History Contest Guidelines

• Submissions will open on January 1st and will remain open until March 31st or until we reach our submission cap of 200 submissions.

• Please note that this is a separate submission category from Polyphony Lit Volume 20.​ Submissions to Polyphony Lit Volume 20 will receive feedback from the editors, but for the seasonal contests, only the winning submissions will receive feedback from the judge.

• If you have already submitted your work to the Volume 20 category, then please do not send the same submission to the contest category.

• If you submit to the contest category first and your work is declined, then you may submit it to the Volume 21 category after the contest is finished.

​

Writer Qualifications​

• High school students aged 14-18 who identify as Black / African American / African / Afro-Latinx are eligible to submit. For ease of reference, we roughly define this as writers of Black or African origin (Eg: African American, Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, Ethiopian, Somalian, etc). However, we understand that people of African descent are incredibly diverse and often come from many different backgrounds, so we hope that you will not be limited in any way by these categories. In the interest of reaching a diverse array of demographics, we are also open to submissions from writers who may identify as Middle Eastern / North African. For the purpose of this contest, we simply use the term “African” in a geographic sense. If you do not fall under these demographics, but are still interested in writing about the theme, then feel free to submit to our Winter Contest submission category!

• We do not accept submissions from editors who currently serve on the staff of Polyphony Lit.

• Submit a maximum of three pieces.

• If submitting multiple pieces, please upload as separate submissions. Multiple pieces submitted in a single document will be withdrawn, and you will be asked to resubmit your pieces separately.

• We accept simultaneous submissions and work that has been published elsewhere. If submitting previously published work, please send a message in Submittable noting where and when your work has been published, and if it is eligible for republication. If it is accepted for publication elsewhere after submitting to Polyphony Lit, please notify us immediately but do not withdraw your submission if you are still interested in publication at Polyphony Lit. If we accept a previously published submission for publication, we will acknowledge the place of the original publication.

• Previously published pieces are not eligible for the Claudia Ann Seaman Awards.

​

Length

• Poetry must be 80 lines or less.

• Fiction and creative nonfiction must be 1,800 words or less.

​

Formatting

• Do not put your name on the piece, as all work is blind juried.

• Submissions longer than one page should have the page number inserted at the top (right or left side) of every page, as it would help our Judge specify the location for their commentary.

• We accept submission in .doc, .docx or .rtf formats.

• We prefer common conventions:

  • Color: Black & white

  • Font Size: 12 pt throughout, including titles

  • Font Type: Times or Times New Roman

  • Margins: 1-inch at the top and bottom, and 1.25 inch at the left and right. One space after periods. There should be no extra returns after paragraphs unless you have a meaningful reason for the extra space.

​

Using Submittable

• Please upload submissions through Submittable. We do not accept email submissions or hard copies via mail.

• Upload only one piece per submission file; to submit more than one piece, make more than one submission file.

• Submissions for this contest are free.

• There is a submission cap of 200 submissions, so we may close submissions for the contest before the deadline if we receive 200 submissions. We recommend submitting early, to ensure that you do not miss the deadline.

​

Prize

There will be one winner and two finalists. The winners/finalists will receive:

• Publication in Polyphony Lit Volume 21

• Eligibility for the Claudia Ann Seaman Awards

• Editorial feedback from the Contest Judge

• Social media posts announcing the winners

• A full scholarship for Polyphony Lit’s "How to be a Literary Editor" course. Upon completion of the course, students will be eligible to join the editorial staff of Polyphony Lit!

• Please note that only the three winners will receive feedback from the Judge.

​

Additional Guidelines for Creative Nonfiction​

• At Polyphony Lit, we look for creative nonfiction pieces that are written in the style of short personal memoirs. We are looking for pieces that are informal, flexible in form, and most importantly, personal. Personal discovery is the keystone of a personal essay. Self-revelation, human experiences, humor, and flexibility of form are all aspects that we look for in pieces we publish as creative non-fiction.

• We do not look for op-ed pieces, critical analyses, research papers, or academic essays.

• We would advise reading some samples of our work, in order to understand the material that we publish. Here are some samples of creative nonfiction that we have published:

• Memories of the Boy I Didn't Know

• responses to love

• Holiday in a Burning City