Asian & Pacific Islander

Heritage Contest 2026

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The theme for this contest is “Borrowing.” For more details on the contest prize, see below.

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We live in an era where being API is an aestheticized identity to be borrowed, consumed, and discarded. With the rise of TikTok trends such as ‘Chinamaxxing’ — adopting Traditional Chinese Medicine wellness routines such as drinking hot water and eating congee — the threat and power of cultural commodification has never been so ubiquitous. A million views here, a million views there: it has become profitable for the Western gaze to confine Asian and Pacific Islander multiplicities, sometimes as blatantly as the one-dimensional Chester Ming in Hollywood blockbusters like The Wolf of Wall Street. Beneath this superficial adoption, however, a deeper, necessary borrowing serves as a touchstone of the Asian and Pacific Islander experience. 

For this contest, we invite you to explore the economy of borrowing. What may we borrow from our own cultures — the inherited griefs, the peripheries of a homeland we may have never seen, the tidbits of language passed down like heirlooms? Conversely, what do we borrow from other cultures? The artistic process, after all, is fundamentally a rite of borrowing until something new arises from the potpourri of inspiration. 

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Take the poet Stephanie Chang, whose acclaimed poem “Lotus Flower Kingdom” in The Adroit Journal deftly weaves surrealistic inheritance and the bodily grotesque. Listen to the Cantonese rock band Beyond, whose luminous rock ballads borrow the revolutionary ardor of the South African anti-apartheid movement to mirror Hong Kong’s own mounting fears over the encroaching 1997 handover — “風雨中抱緊自由.” (Holding fast to freedom in the wind and rain) 

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Bask in the expansive world of Pacific Islander literature – like Epeli Hauʻofa’s foundational essay Our Sea of Islands or the fierce, documentary poetics of Craig Santos Perez, which radically reclaim the inheritances of Oceania from colonial narratives. Turn to the hit animated film KPop Demon Hunters, which borrows from the Korean experience to make spectacle of it. Perhaps you will consider the myriad of loanwords in the Malay language, ranging from motosikal from English and kueh from Chinese, which borrow from Malaysia’s rich multiethnic history. 

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What have you borrowed, what have you inherited, and what will you refuse to give back? The theme is entirely open to your interpretation – have fun with it!

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Contest Guidelines

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

• Please note that this is a separate submission category from Polyphony Lit Volume 22.​ Submissions to Polyphony Lit Volume 22 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 22 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 22 category after the contest is finished.

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Writer Qualifications​

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• High school students age 14-18 who identify as Asian (Eg: Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, etc) or Native Pacific Islander (Eg: Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Chamorro, Tongan, Fijian, Maori, etc) are eligible to submit. For ease of reference, we roughly define this as writers of Asian or Native Pacific Islander origin. However, we understand that people of Asian / Pacific 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. If you are not fall under these demographics, but still interested in writing about the theme, then feel free to submit to our Volume 22 submission category.

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

• Works may be written in English or Mandarin. If your piece is written primarily in one of these languages, but also features brief words or phrases written in another language, then we will certainly consider multilingual pieces like this, but please keep in mind that our contest readers will only be able to provide English translations for the languages listed above. For multilingual words and phrases, you are welcome to provide English translations of your own as footnotes or as part of the context in the piece.

• Submit a maximum of three pieces.

• If submitting multiple pieces, please upload as separate submissions. Multiple pieces submitted in a single document may 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.

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Length

• Poetry must be 80 lines or less.

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

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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.

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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.

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Prize

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

• Publication in Polyphony Lit Volume 22

• Eligibility for the Claudia Ann Seaman Awards

• Editorial feedback from the Contest Judge

• 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.

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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