Above: Previous winners of the Nick Adams prize include (clockwise from top left) Soren Eversoll (2022), Natalie Marsh (2021), Catherine Johnson (2019), and Ruby Elliot Zuckerman (2020).
Student entries are now being solicited for the 51st annual Nick Adams Short Story Contest, which offers a prize of $1,000 for the best story by an ACM student.
In 2022, “Jean-Pierre Melville is Dead” by Soren Eversoll, a student at Carleton College, was named the winning story by bestselling author and historical preservation advocate Steve Berry. Previous winners are listed on the ACM website.
How to Participate
Each entrant may submit up to two stories to their campus English Department. The story need not have been written especially for the competition, but it cannot have been previously published off campus or reached finalist status in this contest.
Each department will select and submit their four best stories to ACM no later than February 10, 2023. Two faculty from ACM member institutions will select finalists; the winner will be chosen by a professional writer in March. (Read the complete guidelines.)
A Storied Legacy
Past final judges have included such writers as Maya Angelou, Saul Bellow, Larry Heinemann, Bharati Mukherjee, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Tyler, John Updike, Stuart Dybek, Audrey Niffenegger, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Scott Turow, and Sandra Cisneros.
The Nick Adams prize, named for the young hero of many Ernest Hemingway stories, was given by an anonymous donor to support creative writing at ACM colleges.
For more information or to learn your on-campus submission deadline, please contact the chair of your college English Department.
