PRH 2026 Creative Writing Awards Open for Submissions

Penguin Random House and We Need Diverse Books (WNDB), a national organization advocating for diversity in literature, have opened submissions for the 2026 Creative Writing Awards. Current high school seniors who attend public schools in the United States, including the District of Columbia and all U.S. territories, and are planning to attend college in fall 2026, are eligible. Winners will be announced in early June.

Six first-place $10,000 prizes will be awarded as the Chinua Achebe Award for Freedom of Expression; the Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry; the Maya Angelou Award for Spoken Word; the Michelle Obama Award for Memoir; and the James Baldwin Award for Fiction. In recognition of the Creative Writing Awards previously dedicated to New York City, the competition will award an additional first-place prize to the top entrant from the NYC area. Runners up will also be honored.

This is the first year the awards include the Chinua Achebe Award, named after the Nigerian author whose novel Things Fall Apart (1958) has sold more than 10 million copies in 45 different languages.

“Chinua Achebe’s legacy is integral to the work we do at WNDB, where we uplift diverse voices and stories to increase empathy and literacy,” said Caroline Richmond, executive director of WNDB. “We are thrilled to partner with Penguin Random House again this year to celebrate and amplify young voices in the United States.”

Since their founding in 1993, the PRH Creative Writing Awards have awarded more than $2.9 million dollars to public high school students for their original compositions. In addition to scholarships, PRH also hosts a virtual development week for award winners each summer that includes one-on-one virtual meetings with PRH editors, networking workshops, a panel about career opportunities in publishing, and fireside chats with PRH authors.