Central Oregon Community College’s Writing Contest is back this spring, featuring a number of categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry. Novels or memoirs are allowed, but they must be complete and not in a series. It all started in the 2021 – 2022 academic year, when members of the Humanities Department wanted to give opportunities to the COCC students to showcase their written works, based on the inspiring essays, stories, and poetry that they had read.

In the first year the contest didn’t have any categories selected for the submitted work, as the contest submissions grew in size the second year, the need for categorization was needed.

“Last year we got I think just over 30 submissions, which was three times as many as we had gotten the first year,” said Eileen Sather, an Assistant Professor of English, who runs the contest along with others in the Humanities Department.

Each type of written work in a given category is read over and by faculty members within the department who specialize in that subject matter. Last year, there were more poetry submissions than fiction and non-fiction submitted by students.

The readers would evaluate, discuss, and choose which work stood out in that particular category. Each student who is a nominee gets a paragraph written to them with feedback, via email on their written piece, which may include what the readers like about the students work, including tips on how they can apply their work to other mediums.

Just like last year’s writing contest, there was a reading in the Barber Library, where the nominated winners and some of the faculty members would read out their work.

“One day we had three out of the six winners read their work, and it was just a really lovely moment to hear them share their words out loud with other people and it just felt like a fun, supportive way to end the year we did right at the end of the term,”said Sather. “We had a really good turnout,.” she added.

As the Writing Contest evolves towards the future, it might partner with a student-run literary magazine or another creative public outlet on the main campus such as where students can have another opportunity to express their creativity and publish their work, while allowing them to sharing it with other students and people in the community.

Promotion for the Writing Contest has been scattered among campus with flyers promoting the contest throughout campus, along with Facebook posts, and Bobcat newsflash that is sent to students. “As of right now, the contest is only accepting submissions from students, so I haven’t really been advertising off campus,” said Sather.

This year’s reading date for the contest hasn’t been chosen yet, with May 3, at the end of the day being the deadline to submit any writing.
For more information on how to get your writings into the contest, students can send their writing to [email protected]. or visit the Humanities’ Department’s Writing Contest page at www.cocc.edu/programs/humanities/annual-writing-contest.aspx.