The Lowell-Grabill Creative Writing Contest awards student writers for outstanding poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The Lowell-Grabill Creative Writing contest was born out of a generous alumni’s desire to promote creative writing at Wheaton long before our English: Writing Concentration major.
Each spring a panel of literature and writing professors select a group of finalists. An outside judge selects the winner. In past years, our judges have included Bret Lott, Marie Howe, Erin McGraw, Scott Cairns, Gina Oschner, Leslie Leyland Fields, Tom Montgomery-Fate, Bruce Guernsey, and Susanna Childress. Alumni Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech and author of acclaimed books of literary criticism, plays, poetry, and lyric essays, Thomas Gardner is this year's judge. Finalists of the contest have the opportunity to meet with the contest judge for a master class. The Awards Night honors the winning writers and includes a reading by the contest judge. All are welcome to attend the Awards Night.
Please email one story or one essay (up to 7,500 words) or one poem (must not exceed 5 pages) to LowellGrabill@gmail.com. All finalists will be invited to a Master Class with contest judge Thomas Gardner.
Lowell-Grabill Creative Writing Contest Submission Guidelines:
- All submissions should be sent to LowellGrabill@gmail.com.
- Submit as a Word document; your name must not appear anywhere in the manuscript itself.
- Include in the email: your name, email address, title of submission, genre.
- You may enter a single work of fiction or nonfiction (up to 7,500 words) or one poem (must not exceed 5 pages).
- When submitting multiple genres, submit each entry in a separate email.
- Submissions are due no later than March 1.
- The Lowell-Grabill Creative Writing Contest Awards Ceremony will be hosted in the spring. Check with the department for dates and times.
Deadline: Friday, February 28, 2025
Submission Criteria
Student Qualifications:
- The contest is open only to undergraduate students in good standing.
- A student may only win one award from the Jameson fund during his or her tenure at Wheaton College.
Essay Qualifications:
- The essay should be written from a distinctly Christian perspective (e.g., engaging the Bible, Christian history, theology, or a Biblical worldview).
- The essay should be persuasive and should cite a minimum of six secondary sources.
- The essay must be original, written by the student submitting the essay.
- The essay must have been written as a part of a course at Wheaton College. The course must have been completed within the last two years.
- Only one essay per student per year is to be submitted.
- An essay may not win an E. Beatrice Batson Shakespeare Essay Contest Award and a Jameson Critical Essay Contest Award.
Faculty Endorsement:
- The essay must be endorsed by the faculty member in whose course the essay was written.
- Endorsements must be received by the submission deadline.
- Faculty should submit endorsements via this link: https://form.jotform.com/250356317461151
Essay Formatting:
- The essay should not include the author’s name. Instead, it should include the student’s ID number.
- All submissions must include a completed contest entry form: https://wheaton.box.com/s/ocz6618tgfslii1xv2ad28vyohn6avrc
- Paper submission and contest entry form should be submitted via email to alison.gibson@wheaton.edu.
Jameson Critical Essay Contest Winners, 2024:
First place: Hope Chun, "Sonic Ritual: Defending Theological Beauty in the Music of Arvo Pärt"
Second place: Micailyn Geyer, "Running the Race for an Imperishable Crown: The Desire for Glory as an Essential Component of the Christian Virtue of Magnanimity"
Third place(tie): Chloe DuBois, "Cain, Clan, and Christ: the Nature of the Blood-Feud in Beowulf" and Emily Van Beek, "Imago Intelligentiae Artificialis: Theoretical Analyses and Christian Perspectives on the Adoption of Medical Artificial Intelligence"
Honorable Mentions: Laura Granger, "A Comparison of Relational Life Writing in Revelations Of Divine Love and Holy The Firm" and Samantha Ferreira, "The Curse of Ham versus the Beauty of Blackness: Rhetorical Framing as Oppressive and Liberating"
This contest recognizes outstanding ENGW 103/104 research papers written in the fall and spring semesters. All recipients of the James G. Jameson First-Year Writing Award will have their work published in the Wheaton Writing: An Online Journal of Academic Essays.