Submissions wanted (struggles, identity, mental health) | $1,500 for the winning essay

COMPANY/PUBLICATION: WRITING FOR LIFE ESSAY CONTEST

Deadline: 15 August 2025

Girls Write Now proudly joins forces with Chasing Spirits to present the inaugural "Writing for Life" Writing Prize. This award honors the free, rebellious spirit of fourteen-year-old Maya Logan Eileraas, who used the pandemic to write their novel and fought for writing as a lifeline while in foster care and mental healthcare facilities. Together, we amplify the vitality of today’s most promising young writers who use the power of their creative voices to confront the world around them.

EXTENDED Deadline: August 15, 2025

ESSAY CONTEST WRITING PROMPT

Describe an especially difficult time you have faced, or something you have struggled to navigate, as a teenager. How has writing helped you to survive and creatively transform your experience into new understandings of self, home, and well-being?

MAYA'S STORY

About The Novel Chasing Spirits

Chasing Spirits honors the audacity and integrity of Maya Logan’s chosen path and the creative expressions that sustained them: intricate brushstrokes on canvas, poetic verses echoing their deepest thoughts, melodies strummed in solitude, and the midnight aromas of freshly baked confections.

After six months on the run from DCFS custody, hospital emergency rooms, adolescent psychiatric wards, police cars, strangers’ apartments, ambulances, and temporary shelters, Maya Logan was found unconscious in a group home in north Los Angeles.

Late one night in May 2021 during a global pandemic, fourteen-year-old Maya Logan Eileraas ran away to live with their girlfriend in Bel Air. “Nothing left to lose,” they posted on social media. Searching for their own truths around identity, home, family, world, and belonging, Maya Logan was fiercely determined to author a new life.

More than a tribute to an extraordinary teenager’s bold journey into the wild, gift for storytelling, and art of self-invention, Chasing Spirits is a stunning meditation on what it means to love, a nuanced exploration of the infinite complexity of the human psyche, and an unflinching look at a rebel heart whose light was extinguished too soon.

Centering Maya Logan’s novel, penned during the isolation of remote learning, as a testament to their profound introspection and boundless imagination, Chasing Spirits brings together investigative journalism, personal reflections, short stories, artwork, social media posts, and secret journals.

This contest is open to young people who identify as girls, gender expansive, and/or LGBTQIA+ in the United States, ages 13-19.

TO QUALIFY, YOUR PIECE MUST BE…

• A personal essay that is 750 words or under in length

• Unpublished in any medium or outlet

• Not recognized with any prior award

• Submitted as a Google Doc via the form on this page before 11:59 P.M. ET on August 15, 2025

ONE FIRST PLACE WINNER IN EACH AGE CATEGORY (13-15 AND 16-19) WILL…

• Receive $1,500

• Be published on Girls Write Now Media

• Invited to be featured on Girls Write Now’s podcast Writing Our Way to Wellness

Two honorable mentions in each age category (13-15 and 16-19) will be published in a Chasing Spirits + Girls Write Now Story Collection.

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CONTACT INFORMATION:

Submissions: Via the webform

Website: https://girlswritenow.org/partnership/chasing-spirits-writing-contest/

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