The International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir is given to an exceptional work of memoir writing.

The contest was created in celebration of the life of the wondrous Amy MacRae
and in support of her living legacy to improve the outcomes of women with ovarian cancer.

Contest Details

Writers anywhere in the world are invited to enter.
Submissions must be no longer than 2,000 words.
The prize is US$1,000.

The 2024 contest is now closed for submissions.

To receive updates, including the opening of next year’s contest, subscribe using the form below.

Contest Guidelines

• The International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir is given to an exceptional work of memoir writing.

• Memoir writing, or personal essay, is defined as a work of creative nonfiction that illustrates a personal experience using literary techniques and narrative devices such as dialogue, character, setting and scene. Rather than simply recounting past events, successful memoir tends to offer a higher perspective on that past, use personal experience as an illustration of universal themes and/or endeavour to derive meaning, understanding or wisdom from the story it sketches. The quality of the writing is as important as the content of the story. (Note: Travel writing told from a personal perspective does qualify as memoir.)

• This is a prose competition, so poetic prose (or prose poetry) is eligible, but poetry that is not prose is better submitted to a poetry contest. (Still not sure if your work qualifies? If your work looks like poetry, then that is what it is.) :)

• Submissions must be no longer than 2000 words. There is no minimum word count requirement.

Entry Fee

• US$25 per submission, payable in the writer’s home currency.

• Proceeds from the contest and the anthology are donated to Amy’s Living Legacy for ovarian cancer research.

Eligible Entries

• Original, unpublished work that follows the definition of memoir [in the guidelines above] is eligible.

• Work that has already been published or simultaneously submitted elsewhere is NOT eligible for consideration. This includes online publications.

• Work that has been posted on forums such as Facebook or has appeared on a personal website or in a personal newsletter is still eligible for consideration.

• Writers are welcome to write under a pseudonym. In this case that the story becomes a finalist (or a winner), the writer may choose to remain pseudonymous.

Additional Entries

• Additional entries are welcome. The same guidelines apply to additional entries as to the initial submission.

Rights

Writers retain all rights to their stories (ie. even winning stories may be submitted elsewhere for publication following the contest).

Suggestions

• Remember that punctuation and grammar matter! You’ve worked hard on this story, so it would be a shame to let simple errors mar it (and the truth is, if it contains a lot of errors, your story will not be seriously considered). So, if you can, try to have someone proofread your story before you submit it.

• Please note: raw, cathartic personal writing can be vital and satisfying for the writer, but writing that is ready to be read and appreciated by others has been polished, revised, given time and space, sculpted with an eye to its literary merits, and revised again(!).

Notification

• The winner and shortlisted finalists will be notified by email. Other entrants will not be notified of the judge’s decisions.

• The shortlisted finalists will be announced on Alison Wearing’s social media accounts:

  • Facebook: AlisonWearingWriterPerformer

  • Instagram: @alisonwearing_memoirwriting

• The winner will be interviewed and the winning story published on Alison Wearing’s website and featured in the Memoir Writing Ink course. The winner will receive a cash prize of USD$1,000.

How to Submit

• Please follow these steps carefully so your submission is not disqualified (which would be a terrible waste of hard work!).

• Submissions must be received by 11:59 pm EST on June 30th, 2024.

Submission Checklist:

1. Before you make your submission, check that your story is double-spaced, in Times New Roman 12-pt font.

2. Submissions must be no longer than 2000 words. (Your title and word count do not count as words.)

3. Make sure your story begins with a title and word count, but NOT YOUR NAME. Judging is blind, so if your name is visible on any part of your submission, it will be disqualified.

4. Please make your file name the title of your story. (In other words, if your story is called “Sparrow Lake,” your file should be saved as SparrowLake.doc or SparrowLake.docx or SparrowLake.pdf.)

5. Check that your file has been saved in Word (.doc or .docx) or as a PDF (.pdf).

6. Review steps 1-5! Give your story a fighting chance by double-checking that you are complying with all of the guidelines. Having someone proofread it for errors is also a good idea.

7. Make your entry fee. Your receipt will be emailed to you following your payment (check Spam!) NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE LAST STEP! BEFORE PAYING, PLEASE MAKE NOTE OF THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW.

8. Complete your submission by visiting the submission portal, or by clicking the button below. You will need your receipt number to complete your submission. ***IMPORTANT NOTE: Please use the same email address for your submission as you did for your payment.

9. Exhale and congratulate yourself! Just preparing and submitting a piece is an accomplishment worthy of celebration.

10. Finalists won’t be announced until the fall, so best to distract yourself until then. :)

For a downloadable (and printable) version of the submission checklist, please click HERE.

The 2024 contest is now closed.

Please fill out the form below to be notified about the 2025 contest.

To receive updates about the Amy Award,
including news about the current contest,
please fill out the form below.

About Amy MacRae

by Alison Wearing

In May 2019, a small group of writers met on a retreat in the south of France. Among them was a sparkling young woman named Amy.

The writing she presented during the retreat was spectacular, and she spoke often of her daughter, then four years old, and her husband (who, among other things, surprised her with a bouncy castle at their wedding—the photo of Amy and her bridesmaids bouncing in their dresses might be the most beautiful wedding photo I’ve ever seen). Amy also spoke of her work as a kindergarten teacher, which she adored, and of her cancer, the terminal diagnosis she had been given a year earlier, and how deeply she wanted to write her story, to give life to her voice on the page.

On the last night of the retreat, Amy invited everyone into the living room of the château, where she handed out glow sticks and invited us all to join her in dancing to her favourite tunes in the dark. It was crazily fun, and watching her dance around, swirling colour into the darkness, was one of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed.

Over the ensuing months, Amy worked hard revising and polishing one of the pieces she had written in France. "Do you really think it could be published," she asked me at one point, "or are you just being nice?"

I assured her I was being honest, that her writing was strong and pure, simple and majestic, but I'm not sure she ever believed me. The best writers often don't.

On June 1, 2020, at the age of 35, Amy died of ovarian cancer.

A few weeks later, the CBC Literary Awards contacted the writers whose stories had been selected as finalists for their prestigious annual contest. These awards are some of the most competitive in the country, with thousands of stories submitted every year. Amy MacRae was one of 5 writers shortlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. You may read her story here.

In the months after Amy's death, she became a near-constant presence for me, one that reminded me how fortunate I was to have a body healthy enough to scale a rock face, skip over tree roots, or just close my eyes and listen to the wind peel a layer of water from the surface of the lake. She taught me to see every grey hair as a privilege, every interaction as an opportunity for kindness, and every morning an offering, even in the midst of a lockdown.

A few months after she died, I was snowshoeing through the forest, when I had an idea. Or rather, Amy passed me an idea. Or rather, she pressed a thought into the shape of a snowflake, blew it off a high branch and let it spiral down and land on my nose, at which point I smiled and looked up, blinked a few times, and felt like I had an idea. (Pick your preferred understanding of inspiration.)

The idea was to create a literary contest in Amy's honour and donate the proceeds to her living legacy fund for ovarian cancer research.

And here we are.

To learn more about her living legacy fund, or to make a donation without submitting a piece to this contest, go HERE.

Hug someone you love really tight, eat your favourite food just because you can, sprint down your street and yell at the top of your lungs. We take so much of this beautiful life for granted.
xo Amy