CLA Creative Writing Contest
and
Margaret Walker Memorial Prizes in Creative Writing
Call for Judges

Greetings, CLA Colleagues.

Soon you’ll be receiving a flier and letter announcing the start of the 2007-2008 Creative Writing Contest period. Central to accomplishing the goal of growing the Contest to great heights is identifying Members who are willing to judge student submissions.

Official Contest Guidelines mandate that students submit three copies of their work to me. I send the copies to Judges with evaluation forms. These forms include three categories (Literary Worth, Originality and Voice--Poetry; Literary Worth, Characterization and Originality--Short Story; and Literary Worth, Characterization and Technique--Drama) and require the Judge to check a numeric score.

Judges return their ratings to me, and I tally the scores. I award up to four cash prizes in each genre to the students with the highest scores (first place, second place, third place and--sometimes--honorable mention), and I announce the names of the winners at the Conference Banquet. The names of winners are also published in the summer volume of the CLA Journal.

Probably I will be receiving the first set of submissions in the next few weeks. The goal is to evaluate all submissions by March, 2008.

I know that some of you regularly serve as Judges, and I invite you to continue to serve. I also invite those of you who have never served to consider doing so. Please write to me at Clarence.holmes@sbcglobal.net to inform me if you wish to serve this year or in the future.

Finally, this special appeal: I ask students on the Official Entry Form to indicate in which language division they are submitting. This is my effort to increase the volume of submissions in French and Spanish. Given this, I want especially to recruit as Judges those of you specializing in International Languages.

I look forward to hearing from you soon and seeing you in April in Charleston.

Clarence Holmes, Chair
Creative Writing Contest Committee