2025-26 Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship

This Fellowship was established to encourage and inspire new, high-quality writing by parents of children under 10. The word count is intentionally low (there are CHALLENGES inherent in being a parent!) and the count changes every year, to incentivize the creation of new work. One talented writer who is the parent of at least one child under 10 years old will receive $2000 to further their writing career, a year of mentorship as a Title Member of Pen Parentis (including access to the accountability group of your choice), and will be offered the opportunity to read their winning story online at the Pen Parentis Literary Salon on the second Tuesday of November. The winner will be reading alongside three established writers who are also parents with the opportunity to interact personally with these authors. The confirmed readers will be available by September.

Second and Third Place winners will receive $500 and $250 and each place-winner will become part of our exclusive (and lovely) Fellowship Ring which includes a year of Pen Parentis Title Membership (with the accountability group of your choosing) – we zoom twice per year.

(Gratitude to The deGroot Foundation for doubling the prizes!)

The winning story will be published in Dreamers Creative Writing Magazine (both online and in print) as well as included in the annual Dreamers Writing Anthology.

The winner will reign as the Pen Parentis Fellow from November 2025 through November 2026, and will gain full access to Pen Parentis Title Member perks during that time period. (It’s a lot, so knock our socks off with your writing!) From time to time, as career opportunities arise, they will be presented to the Fellow.

Requirements

IMPORTANT FOR ALL ENTRANTS:

• One dependent child MUST still be under ten on November 12, 2025 for a writer to be eligible to win this Fellowship.
• Please do NOT add any additional information in your cover note, even if you have published a thousand novels and won the Pulitzer. Just give them the information they request. They judge blind and prefer to be surprised by your extensive credentials.
• Entry Fees will not be refunded. Simultaneous submissions are okay, please let them know if it is accepted elsewhere (they are thrilled for a writer when this happens! Acceptance is always good news!) Multiple submissions are fine: simply submit as if you were submitting for the first time.
• Cover letters are not necessary. If you would like to tell them how you felt when you heard of their Fellowship and/or how you heard of them, they may use that as a testimonial on their website.

JUDGING:

Judging is blind and based only on the following 5 criteria:

• adherence to contest rules
• creativity
• narrative arc
• emotional truth
• elements of surprise, humor, writing skill, and/or layers of depth.

Application Instructions

Word Count/FORMAT:

Submissions call for a new, never-published fiction story—any genre, on any subject—of up to 350 words, double-spaced in Times New Roman 12 point or similar font, with one inch margins. (This word count is intentionally small so that you can write something new - be brilliant!)

DO NOT PUT YOUR NAME OR ANY SORT OF CONTACT INFO ON THE STORY ITSELF–ONLY THE TITLE OF THE STORY AND WORD COUNT. Please number your pages.

They no longer accept mail-in submissions.

Write something new! You can do it!

TITLE MEMBERS:

If you are a Pen Parentis Title Member, your first entry is free (at higher levels, your second and third entry are also free, see website for details.)

Put only the title of the story and its word count on the manuscript. Please number your pages!