Dan's Presents $4,000 Prize for Emerging Young Writers

Calling all aspiring authors! Dan’s Papers is pleased to announce the Dan’s Papers $4,000 Emerging Young Writers Prize for Nonfiction.

All writers 25 years old and younger are eligible to enter the competition. One first-prize winner will receive $3,000, with two runners-up receiving $500 each. The contest runs concurrently with the Dan’s Papers $6,000 Literary Prize for Nonfiction, and also calls for entries to be original works of nonfiction between 600 and 1,500 words. All entries must reference the East End of Long Island in a meaningful way.

“We created the original Dan’s Papers Literary Prize for Nonfiction to honor writers, as Dan’s Papers has been honoring local artists on its cover since 1987,”says Dan Rattiner, founder, president and editor-in-chief of Dan’s Papers. “The Emerging Young Writers Prize is another way to expand our celebration of the rich culture of the East End,”  Rattiner adds. “The contest will allow young people to compete among themselves, rather than against seasoned, professional writers who are well along in their careers.”

Both contests are now accepting entries online at LiteraryPrize.DansPapers.com until August 15. The cost per entry is $25, and writers may enter each contest a maximum of three times. Poetry is not accepted. Entries may be any sort of nonfiction, including autobiography, biography, account of a day, opinion, history, profile of a person or institution, memoir or humor. It may be an excerpt from a previously published work but can only be considered as an entry if permission is granted to the competition for its use. Winners will be decided by an independent panel of judges that includes the chairman of a major publishing house, the chairman of an ad agency, a retired bookstore owner, a college English professor and a major author. The awards will be announced at a ceremony at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater in East Hampton on Thursday, September 3.

Past keynote speakers at the awards ceremony have included National Book Award winner E.L. Doctorow and bestselling author Walter Isaacson. The first prize entries will be read aloud to the audience, and past readers have included Emmy award–winning journalist Pia Lindstrom and Academy Award winner Mercedes Ruehl.

Major funding for the Dan’s Papers Literary Prize is provided by Barnes & Noble. Sponsorships are provided by Southampton Inn, Bridgehampton National Bank, Guernsey’s Auction and Ben Krupinski Builders. Support for the Emerging Writers competition is provided by the Alec Baldwin Foundation.

Visit LiteraryPrize.DansPapers.com for official rules, to view past entries and to enter both the Dan’s Papers $6,000 Literary Prize for Nonfiction and the Dan’s Papers $4,000 Emerging Young Writers Prize for Nonfiction.