Elizabeth Boatwright Coker
​Student Prize in Short Fiction

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Submission period begins: November 15, 2025
​Deadline: January 15, 2026
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The Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Student Prize in Short 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 college student fiction writers in the state of South Carolina.
 
The award is $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is no restriction on content, but submissions may not exceed 15 pages double-spaced and must be either one original, unpublished short story or one excerpt from a longer, unpublished work.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.

Entry is free.

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 18-25 years old at the time of submission and enrolled full time as an undergraduate at a private or public South Carolina institution of higher education. In a change to the contest from previous years, applicants may now have an out-of-state permanent address, but they must be currently living full time in South Carolina while attending a South Carolina institution of higher learning (applicants will be required to list a South Carolina student address). Applicants also must not have won this prize 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].

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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. ​

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