“My territory as a writer is exploring the unknown.”
Benny Williams, “The Yard”
$1000 Grand Prize Winner: High School Division
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2025 $1000 for 1000 Word Contest
Serena Liu, “The Last Man on Earth”
$1000 Grand Prize Winner: Middle School Division
GRADE LEVEL WINNERS
Grade 12: Tara Prakash, “The Girl Who Birthed a Moon
Grade 11: Annabelle Lang, “Minellensia”
Grade 10: Benny Williams, “The Yard”
Grade 9: Marie Craig, “Iron Seagull”
Grade 8: Teri Sullivan, “Butterfly”
Grade 7: Nathaniel Howe, “Mouse Problem”
Grade 6: Serena Liu, “The Last Man on Earth”
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Grade 12:
Acadia Reynolds, “The Living Tree”
Grade 11:
Anoushka Chopra, “Hour Twenty-Five”
Veronica Qui, “Pasta, Rainbow Socks, and Panic”
Katrianna Wheeler, “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words”
Grade 10:
Jua Kim, “Pete’s Fried Chicken”
Keerthi Eraniyan, “Dear Nate”
Grade 9:
Bradford Davidson, “Formicidae
Sophia Kim, “Language Barriers”
Grade 8:
Elena Dils, “Dark Purple Stain”
Lauren Wade, “To Dance in the Rain”
Arianna Freeman, “Red, White, and Black”
Payton Tu, “Still Life”
Sofia Ou, “Blood Ink King”
Grade 7:
Melody Fei, “The Hopes of Aurora”
Grade 6:
Annabel Xu, “Reaching for the Sun”
Eva Naiman, “Empty Hallways”
Five Hopes for the Writers
Tom Newkirk, Professor Emeritus of English, University of New Hampshire and our 2023 Guest Judge, offered these suggestions at our 2023 awards ceremony:
- Keep writing. Gather a group of friends or attend a writing camp.
- Read fiction. Get inspiration, discover strategies, and study the use of dialogue. Find authors you like. (Stravinsky once said, “I steal from Mozart because I know Mozart.”) Read!
- Find other writers to share work with—online or in person. Learn to be a good responder. Be alert to what’s working. Be specific: dialogue, voice, humor, etc. Be positive and specific: where were you engaged? How can we be generous, but specific and not focus on the negative? Be kind and attentive.
- Don’t play it safe. Fiction is about people in trouble; choices are not always good ones. Home in on tough issues. Take on stress, anxiety, violence. Invent characters who aren’t you! Play with new characters. Experiment.
- Use storytelling in all writing you do. It’s the way we understand the world. Storytelling brings a human dimension to everything in life. It’s persuasive writing. It makes it personal—with facts, etc.
1,000 Word Creative Writing Curriculum
The principal authors of this curriculum unit are David Susman and Karen Tiegel. Their very useful curriculum document for educators is available to help guide classroom topics related to creative writing. Curriculum is available here.
Need more inspiration?
We have a limited number of previous editions of the Bluefire journal available here.
“Just for one moment, I keep my eyes closed, trying to hold on to the last faint tendrils of the dream I was just having, but they slip away from my grasping hands like silk.”
7th Grade Honorable Mention
“Along the course of my life, I was repeatedly told that the mere scratch of ink on a parcel of paper was a sin. …
Unfortunately, the need to rebel against authority was a crippling disposition of mine. My fingers itched for the release of my thoughts onto paper.”
11th Grade Prize Winner
“Writers…live in a sort of twilight between the world they belong to and the world they create.”
British novelist and screenwriter
“Being swept away by a story [is] not such a bad thing.”
in Little Bookshop of Murder (Crooked Lane Press, 2020)
“When you write, you write by the seat of your pants.”
There’s an apprenticeship to be served in becoming a writer at least as much as an apprenticeship to be served in becoming a doctor.
You have to learn your craft so well that you’re not even conscious of it when you write.
THE 2024 CONTEST RESULTS ARE IN!
Congratulations to all the young authors who put the time and effort into crafting their stories. Thank you for sharing them with us. From more than 800 entries, we selected 23 stories to publish in Bluefire 2024. Here are the $1000 for 1000 Words Creative Writing Contest Results for 2024.
$1000 GRAND PRIZE WINNERS
“Buried Things” by Karma Abboud (12th Grade)
“Climbing the Mind Stairs” by Nayoon Lee (6th Grade)
$100 Prize Grade Level Winners
“Stealing Past Dragons” by Olivia Mooneyham (11th Grade)
“The Myth” by Hannah Rouse (11th Grade)
“Cicadas and Summer” by Chelsea Guo (10th Grade)
“A Conversation with the Living” by Raleigh Rhodes (9th Grade)
“Tick Tock” by Weston Fleming (8th Grade)
“Florals and an Orange” by Eleanor King (7th Grade)
Honorable Mention Winners
“Last Dance” by Rori Kennedy (12th Grade)
“Remembering My Name” by Abby Talbert (12th Grade)
“Angel-ish Delusions” by Claire Hennemeyer (11th Grade)
“Izzy’s Wings” by Karissa Chmil (11th Grade)
“I Hope Heaven Has Dragonflies” by Lee Luna (10th Grade)
“Not (O)Kay” by Sydney Grodin (9th Grade)
“Screens” by Lauryn Brown (9th Grade)
“My Boy” by Leila Brawner (8th Grade)
“Tamish’s Trapdoor” by August Smith (8th Grade)
“A Loop of Lies” by Suha Mirza (7th Grade)
“Long Time No See” by Yushin Chen (7th Grade)
“The Stranger in Her Skin” by Payton Tu (7th Grade)
“Coaster Courage” by Rowan Iyer (6th Grade)
“Sweet Tea” by Wrenna Baldwin (6th Grade)
“The True Meaning of Bravery” by Lucia Barraco (6th Grade)