Submissions for the 2024 Ilona Karmel Writing Prizes are now closed. Check out the winners! Submissions will reopen in early 2025.
The Ilona Karmel Writing Prizes, awarded each May to acknowledge the best MIT student writing across a range of categories, was named in honor of the late Ilona Karmel, novelist, poet and senior lecturer in the Writing program. Throughout her teaching career, Karmel’s outstanding contributions to creative writing at MIT were her inspirational teachings and relationships with students.
Ellen King Prize for First-Year Writing
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| First-year students | Short story Essay Drama Poetry (at least three poems) | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) $300 (3rd prize) |
Enterprise Poets Prize for Imagining a Future
Essays, short stories or poems that convincingly imagine a future human enterprise. The word enterprise is used in the broadest possible sense to cover products, processes, companies, industries, forms of government, social movements, artistic forms — any human endeavor.
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduates and graduate students | Essay Short story Poetry | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) |
The Arthur Reidel Prize for Writing to Advance Anti-Racism
The best writing on what it means to be anti-racist, engaging with the history of anti-racist thought and expressing how to take anti-racist action now.
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduates | Any genre | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) $300 (3rd prize) |
Robert A. Boit Writing Prize
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduates | Essay Poetry (at least three poems) Short story | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) $300 (3rd prize) $100 (4th prize) |
S. Klein Prizes
Entries should be 10-40 pages long, not including appendices. Co-authored entries are acceptable if all authors are MIT undergraduate or graduate students at the time of submission.
- Scientific Writing
Manuscripts should be intended for non-specialized but educated audiences and show evidence of publishable quality. - Technical Writing
Manuscripts should be intended for an audience of peers and professionals.
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduates and graduate students | Scientific writing Technical writing | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) |
DeWitt Wallace Prize for Science Writing for the Public
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduates | Writing of any length addressed to lay audiences on issues and developments in science, medicine, and engineering. | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) $300 (3rd prize) |
Boit Manuscript Prize
Awarded for longer works and collections that give evidence of publishable quality. Entries must be less than 50 pages.
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduates | Fiction Poetry (minimum length of 200 lines or 10-15 poems) Essay Drama (a play in one act or equivalent) | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) $300 (3rd prize) |
Boit Prize for Engineering Writing
Manuscripts from any engineering discipline intended for an audience of engineers and other professionals who are knowledgeable about the subject matter. These might include design documents, engineering lab reports, literature reviews focused on a particular technology or engineering problem, design reports or proposals, and analyses of testing or other experiments.
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduates | See description above | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) $300 (3rd prize) |
King Prize for Writing Science Fiction
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduates | Science fiction short stories | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) $300 (3rd prize) |
Vera List Prize for Writing on the Visual Arts
Writing in an accessible forum about contemporary art and culture in the world today. Essay and interview formats of a maximum length of 15 pages. Sponsored by the List Visual Arts Center.
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduates and graduate students | See description above | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) |
Obermayer Prizes For Writing on the History of Innovation Process
The three Obermayer prize categories recognize excellence in student writing about one of the core goals of an MIT education: understanding how innovation happens. The awards seek to encourage undergraduate interest in that process; in the history of invention as an intellectual and imaginative pursuit; academic investigation of that process in historical context; and the importance of sharing the stories of what can be understood as the making of the modern world with the broadest possible audiences.
| Obermayer Prize Category | Topic/Eligibility | Prize Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Prize for Undergraduates | Undergraduate writing on any Obermayer Prize theme. | $500 |
| Prize for Graduate Students | Graduate student writing on any Obermayer Prize theme. Papers may be written for an assignment or as part of the authors’ graduate research. Published works (within the prize year) are eligible. | $1,000 |
| Prize for Writing for the Public | Graduate student writing for the public. Published works (within the prize year) are eligible. | $2,000 |
The Rebecca Blevins Faery Prize for Autobiographical Essay
| Eligibility | Genres | Prize Amounts |
|---|---|---|
| Undergraduates | Autobiographical essay | $700 (1st prize) $500 (2nd prize) |