The Wallace Prize is the most prestigious independently awarded undergraduate writing prize for fiction and nonfiction at Yale. Winners will receive a substantial cash prize, and winning submissions in each category will be published in the Yale Daily News Magazine. 

Read last year’s winning entries here.

Submissions Procedure:

Entrants must fill out a cover sheet, then submit it alongside each piece at the beginning of the file. Each piece must be submitted via this Google form by Friday, March 31, at 11:59PM EST. No late entries will be accepted. Please do not put your name anywhere on the submissions except on the cover sheet. Name the document with the title of your piece.

Judges are professionals drawn from the fields of academia, literature and journalism. They have no connection to the Yale Daily News. The specific division of funds will be distributed to the top winners according to the discretion of the judges.

The Fine Print:

• Each submission must be between six and twenty double-spaced pages in length.
• Each entrant may submit up to three previously unpublished pieces of fiction or non-fiction. Each piece needs its own cover sheet. Purely academic work is not eligible (with the exception of fiction and non-fiction pieces written for classes such as ENGL 114 and ENGL 120).
• By unpublished, we mean that pieces may not have been printed in any campus or professional publication. Winning submissions have been disqualified in past years for failure to comply with this rule.
• All undergraduates in Yale College, including students on a leave of absence, are eligible to enter — with the exception of previous winners.
• Graduating seniors are eligible to enter.
• Special to non-fiction: The Magazine reserves the right to revoke the prize from a recipient who has not made reasonable attempts to uphold professional standards of accuracy. After winners have been selected, the Magazine may request to see notes on sources and research for the piece.
• The Magazine will print winning pieces as written. All submissions will be considered to be in their final, finished form. The Magazine reserves the right to disqualify pieces with numerous grammatical and spelling errors.
• All work will be published under the writer’s real name. No awards will be given to writers who wish to publish under pseudonyms.
• The Wallace Prize is awarded annually in memory of Peter J. Wallace ’64, a former member of the Yale Daily News editorial board. It is endowed by the Peter Wallace Memorial Fund and is presented in conjunction with the Yale Daily News Magazine.

Questions?

Email the Yale Daily News Magazine editor-in-chief, Abigail Sylvor Greenberg, at abigail.sylvorgreenberg@yale.edu