Honors & Awards

Creative Writing Program honors and awards include the Honors Thesis Program (available to English majors pursuing a concentration in Creative Writing); the Creative Writing Program Prizes for student writing (prizes for original student work in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, scriptwriting, translation, and journalism, open to any enrolled student at Penn); and the Bassini Writing Apprenticeships (for-credit apprenticeships that offer students the opportunity to work closely with a member of our faculty on a major writing or multimedia project in their field, open to any enrolled undergraduate student at Penn).

We are a partner, along with the Kelly Writers House, CPCW, and The Daily Pennsylvanian, in supporting the Nora Magid Mentorship Prize.

Click on the links at right for full details.

We also encourage students to explore links to a number of other honors and awards available to student writers at Penn. Many of these opportunities are available to any currently enrolled student at the University of Pennsylvania as well as especially to students who demonstrate an active commitment to the projects and programs of our partner organizations, RealArts@Penn and the Kelly Writers House. At their sites you will find information on opportunities such as the Creative Ventures Capital Prize, the Terry B. Heled Travel and Research Grant, the Kelly Writers House Junior Fellows Award, and more. Penn’s Cinema and Media Studies Program hosts awards for student screenwriters, and the Department of English hosts prizes for student scholarly writing. 

Another exciting source of support available to our student writing community is the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation. The Sachs Program’s grantmaking supports innovative arts activities throughout the Penn community, providing funding to Penn faculty, staff, students, departments, programs, and centers. Find out more here.

Finally, we make students aware of writing-related prizes sponsored by outside organizations and provide support as needed. These include the National Program Directors’ Prizes for undergraduate literary magazines, produced by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP); the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation Sports Essay Contest; and the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) Magazine Internship Program.

Prize and internship opportunities are announced regularly to our majors and minors and posted on our Twitter feed and Facebook page.