We are honored to announce the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards’ Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry

Inspired by poet and activist Amanda Gorman, this award grants a college scholarship of up to $10,000 to one young, promising poet.

We are passionate about encouraging the next generation of readers and authors and promoting diverse voices and stories. For more than 26 years, we have supported this mission through the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards, which in 2019 entered into an innovative new partnership with We Need Diverse Books. Through this program, we award college scholarships of up to $10,000 each to five U.S. high school seniors nationwide. In addition, honorable mentions receive “creativity kits,” which include a selection of Penguin Random House titles and writing resources. Creative Writing Award winners have gone on to become professional and award-winning authors.

This year, we are thrilled to announce that we are adding the Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry to our program. This award is one of five creative writing awards given by Penguin Random House. Other categories include fiction/drama; personal essay/memoir; and the Maya Angelou Award for spoken-word. In recognition of the Creative Writing Awards previously being centered in New York City, the competition will award an additional first-place prize to the top entrant from the NYC area. Full press release here.

The 2022 competition will launch on October 1. If you are a current high school seniors who attends public schools in the United States, including the District of Columbia and all U.S. territories, and are planning to attend college – either a two-year or four-year institution – in the fall of 2022, please check back in October to apply.

Since 1993, this program has awarded more than $2.8 million to public high school students for original poetry, memoir/personal essay, fiction/drama, and spoken-word compositions. This signature program continues to empower and celebrate hundreds of young writers each year and underscores our unwavering commitment to identifying and nurturing new literary talent.

To read a selection of the 2021 Winning entries click here. To read a selection of previous year’s winning entries click on the year:  2020, 2019