Coker Fiction

Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Fiction

Submission period begins: November 15, 2025
Deadline: January 15, 2026

The Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Fiction, supported by the Penelope Coker Hall/Eliza Wilson Ingle Fund of Central Carolina Community Foundation and sponsored by the South Carolina Academy of Authors, recognizes the talent of fiction writers in the state of South Carolina.

The award is $1,250 and an invitation to be honored at a future SCAA event.

There is no restriction on content, but submissions may not exceed 15 pages double-spaced and must be either one original, unpublished short story or one excerpt from a longer, unpublished work. You may submit multiple entries, but each entry must be accompanied with an entry fee.

The entry fee is $20 per entry. Entry fee will be made to the SCAA PayPal account under the Donate category on this website.

Authors grant the SCAA first publication and electronic reprint rights to prize-winning work. Authors retain all re-publication rights and are free to reprint the work in any publication, subject to acknowledging original publication in South Carolina Academy of Authors annual publication. The author guarantees that the submitted work has not previously been published elsewhere. Entries generated by AI will not be accepted.

We will accept entries in doc, docx, rtf, and pdf file formats.

Applicants must be full-time residents of South Carolina and must not have won this Fellowship in the previous three years.

Your name should not appear anywhere on the pages submitted. Include contact information with a brief bio in the body of the email. Submissions should be sent to [email protected].

This year’s final judge will be Monic Ductan.

Questions about the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Fiction should be sent to: [email protected].

Monic Ductan will serve as Judge for the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fiction Fellowship and High School Fiction Fellowship Awards.

Monic Ductan's book of short stories, Daughters of Muscadine, won the Weatherford Award and the Tennessee Book Award. Monic is also the recipient of a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in fiction (2025), a Tennessee Arts Commission grant in fiction (2023), and the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival Prize in poetry (2025). For more info, visit https://Monicductan.com.