The School of Cities, along with the departments of English at the University of Toronto Mississauga and University of Toronto St. George, is hosting a short story & image competition inspired by the School of Cities’ annual themes (see below). Submissions are welcome from full-time undergraduate and graduate students at U of T from any discipline, department, or campus.
The competition is divided into two categories: undergraduate and graduate. These will be evaluated separately, and three finalists will be selected from each group:
- Undergraduate competition: one winner and two honorable mentions
- Graduate competition: one winner and two honorable mentions
The winner in each category will receive a prize of $500. The honorable mentions will receive $250 each.
Contest rules and submission guidelines
────୨ৎ──── SHORT STORIES + VISUAL ART ────୨ৎ────
We are looking for works of narrative fiction of up to 1,250 words in length. Each story must be accompanied by an original work of visual art such as a photograph, drawing, painting, collage, cartoon, etc., created by the author of the short story. The visual art component should be an integral part of the short story: you may want to build the story around the image, or the image may serve to illustrate a fundamental aspect of your story. We are encouraging creative and productive connections between story and image for this competition.
The submitted story and visual art component should substantively engage with an aspect of urban experience related to one of the School of Cities’ annual themes (climate and justice; migration, belonging, and thriving in cities; or inequality, data, and democracy). We welcome submissions about any city, anywhere in the world!
We are unable to provide written/oral responses or feedback to submissions.
- This contest is open to all full-time students at the University of Toronto, both undergraduate and graduate.
- Entries must be original, unpublished works of fiction and visual art. No generative AI tools have created parts of or the whole story or image.
- Short stories should be up to 1,250 words maximum (Times New Roman, font 12, double-spaced, with 1” margins). We encourage writers to abide by these limits. The judges reserve the right to disqualify stories that do not meet these guidelines. We are looking for literary short fiction for which the visual artwork constitutes an integral additional part. Please do not submit chapters from novels, work for children, non-fiction articles or memoirs, screenplays, poems, etc.
- Please submit your short story as a PDF file and your image as a JPEG file in the submission form (see submission link below).
- Entries will be judged anonymously. Authors should only include their name on the form and not in the story or image.
- Entries must be received by 11:59pm on Monday March 3, 2025.
- Each author can submit only one entry (made up of one story and one image) for the annual contest.
- Entries will be judged solely on artistic merit. Decisions of the judges are final.
- The results of the competition will be announced in late March-early April 2025. The winners will be invited to showcase and read from their work at a celebratory public event in late spring.
This competition is generously supported by the School of Cities, the Department of English and Drama at UTM and the English Department at St. George.