About Bluefire

What is Bluefire?

Bluefire is an annual literary journal published by The Leyla Beban Young Authors Foundation. Consistent with the mission of our organization, the journal publishes the work of middle and high school students who are passionate about creative writing. Our goal is to give a forum to young authors interested in telling their stories.

How can I get a copy of the contest flyer to share with my school, writing group, and friends?
We’re glad you asked! Please feel free to share the love. Our current contest flyer can be found here

How can I get published in Bluefire?
The stories published in Bluefire come from our “$1000 for 1000 Words” fiction writing contest, which runs every year starting on December 1st and closing on  February 1st. The contest is open to students in grades 6 through 12, and selected pieces from our contest–one from each grade level and a number of ‘honorable mentions’, are chosen for publication. The best submission from each grade gets a cash prize, and the best overall high school and middle school piece receive a $1000 grand prize each.

To learn more about the contest, go to our contest page, join our mailing list using the Contact Us form, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

How can I get a copy of Bluefire?
Copies of our journal are available as a thank you gift for a donation to our foundation.

Our Mission

The Leyla Beban Young Authors Foundation was founded to support middle and high school students in pursuit of their passion for creative writing. We were inspired to do this in memory of Leyla Beban, who loved to read and write stories, to get lost in the adventure of imagination, and had hoped to publish at least one book in her life. She was fortunate to have mentors in middle school that encouraged her to follow her passion and help her develop, and we wanted to provide support and encouragement in her name to others with similar talents and dreams.

So our mission, simply put, is to provide the encouragement, resources, training, and inspiration to young writers like Leyla.

How do we do that?
We focus on four main activities in support of this mission. The biggest are the ‘$1000 for 1000 Words’ fiction-writing competition and the journal, Bluefire, which publishes the work from the competition. All submissions are eligible and the pieces judged as showing the most promise are awarded scholarships and prizes, and guaranteed a spot in the journal. Other ‘honorable mentions’ are also published in the journal. The Grand Prizes are $1000, one for the best submissions in each of middle school and high school grades. We give $100 cash to the best submission in each grade, and $50 to each honorable mention entry. Our goal is to encourage students and to provide an avenue for them to feel accomplished, to see their name in print, and get a taste of what it feels like to be a published author. We engage school age students in the design, layout, and publishing of the journal, furthering our mission by providing experience in self-publishing and publishing tools.

We want to expose the students to writers, publishers, and literary agents through a series of public lectures. Our goal is to further inspire students by introducing them to people who have committed their life and livelihood to writing and publishing.