The 2025 contest is now closed to submissions. Winners will be announced in February 2026.

All eligible undergraduates are invited to submit a paper to the 2025 Student Learning Commons writing contest.

One entry per eligible student in First Year, Middle Years, and Fourth Year+ categories. One entry per eligible student in the Plurilingual Prize Category. This means that students can enter up to two papers, if they are submitting to the Plurilingual Prize Category. The same paper can be submitted to both the Plurilingual and the relevant year category, or two different papers can be submitted.

Winning entries will be awarded a cash prize. All winners and “honourable mention” papers will be published in this open access journal as examples of strong writing across the disciplines.

All submissions will be pre-screened for eligibilty by Graduate Writing Facilitators who work for the SLC. Papers will then be assessed by a panel of judges comprised of SFU faculty, retired SFU faculty, and writing specialist staff members. After the judges have made their selections, the SLC will run the winners and honourable mentions by the instructors for whom the papers were originally written before announcing the winners.

The SLC warmly encourages submissions from students for whom English is an additional language. Elements that are unique to writing in an additional language will be considered when selecting contest winners.

Eligibility

In each category, students are invited to enter a paper that has been or will be submitted to any SFU course between January 1 and December 31, 2025.

Papers can be revised before submission in order to meet the contest guidelines and to address outstanding comments from the professor or TA. Students may choose to attend an SLC writing consultation to support their revisions.

First Year Category

SFU undergraduate students who have completed 0-29 credit units as of September 1st 2025 may enter in this category.*

Middle Years Category

SFU undergraduate students who have completed 30-89 credit units as of September 1st 2025 may enter in this category.*

Fourth Year+ Category

SFU undergraduate students who have completed 90+ credit units as of September 1st 2025 may enter in this category.*

Plurilingual Prize Category

SFU undergraduate students who have completed any number of credit units as of September 1st 2025 may enter in this category.*

Learn more about the Plurilingual Prize here.

Winning entries in each category will be awarded a prize:

First prize: $200
Second prize: $150
We will also award Honourable Mentions in each category

* Note: To be eligible, you must be working on your first undergraduate degree. Transfer credits are included in your total number of credits completed.

Deadline

The contest opens on November 24th. Submissions will be paused December 23-January 1, and will re-open January 2-4 2026. The contest closes January 4 (at midnight), or until the maximum number of papers has been received. We will accept the first 25 papers in each category.

Criteria

Criteria for Submission

In the First Year category, papers must be between 500 and 2,000 words.

In the Middle Years category, papers must be between 1,000 and 2,500 words.

In the Fourth Year+ category, papers must be between 1,500 and 3,500 words.

In the Plurilingual Prize category, papers must be between 500 and 2,500 words.

Word count does not include the abstract or references list. Papers that are more than 20 words over the word count, or more than 20 words under the word count, will not be accepted. Please revise your paper to ensure that it falls within the accepted word count. 

Students are welcome to submit an excerpt of a longer paper as a way to meet the contest word count criteria. When taking up this option, please consider adding some description of what comes before and after the excerpt, for context.

Criteria for Adjudication

The overall goal of these guidelines is to ensure that the contest remain celebratory of students' writing, including writing that is submitted to the contest but isn't selected for a prize. 

Higher order concerns

The paper is the students’ own work. Any use of GenAI tools in the research or writing of the paper is clearly indicated in a transparency statement.

The paper is written in a language, style, and organizational structure that is understandable by an educated, interdisciplinary audience.

The paper’s central thesis, focus, hypothesis, or observation is interesting, accessible to an interdisciplinary reader, and richly developed.

The key arguments of the paper are clearly supported by appropriate evidence.

A deep and nuanced understanding of the subject matter is evident throughout the paper.

The writing style engages the reader.

Depending on the subject matter at hand, the author makes appropriate use of unbiased and inclusive writing strategies. Relevant resources to support this criterion include:

Dr. Gregory Younging’s Elements of Indigenous Style

inclusive and antiracist writing guides

APA bias-free language guide

Radical Copyeditor’s style guide for writing about transgender people

Lower order concerns

Transitions between paragraphs and arguments are effective

Vocabulary is well-chosen and there is variety in sentence structures.

Citations are largely done correctly

Paper shows evidence of thoughtful revision/editing.

Judges must give equitable consideration to all writers. The contest welcomes papers written "with an accent" and papers that challenge the traditional hegemonic norms of academic writing. 

The excellence of all papers should be judged consistently, using the criteria above; however, the Writing Contest committee acknowledges that excellence in writing is not culturally or disciplinarily neutral. Everyone involved with the writing contest will work toward greater awareness of our unconscious biases about what makes for “good” writing as we engage with student submissions. 

Revisions to papers are allowed

While papers must have originally been written for a class, contest entrants are allowed to revise papers to fit the contest's criteria, particularly the word count and the expectation that the paper will be understandable by an educated, interdisciplinary audience. Students entering into the Plurilingual Prize category may be especially interested in revising a paper in order to engage with codeswitching and translingual writing strategies. Yes, this means you can bring in multiple languages in your paper!

To support you in meeting the contest criteria, we strongly encourage you to attend an SLC writing consultation about your paper before submitting it for the contest. Book a writing consultation.

Timeline

After the judges have made their selections, the SLC will run the winners and honourable mentions by the instructors for whom the papers were originally written. If an instructor expresses a concern about a paper, that paper will be disqualified from the contest.

Winners will be contacted and results will be posted by the end of February 2026.

A celebration of contest winners will be held on March 11, 2026.