We are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2026 Creative Writing Awards, including the inaugural winner of the Chinua Achebe Award for Freedom of Expression. The Chinua Achebe Award for Freedom of Expression is a new creative writing prize honoring the celebrated author’s powerful legacy. Open to public high school students, the award invites applicants

Six outstanding public high school seniors from across the country have been selected as recipients of the 2025 Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards in partnership with We Need Diverse Books, a national grassroots organization that advocates for diversity in children’s literature. This year marks the first time the James Baldwin Award for Fiction has been presented, in

We are honored to announce the Penguin Random House Creative Writing Awards’ Michelle Obama Award for Memoir. In recognition of Michelle Obama’s long-standing commitment to mentorship and education, as well as her inspiring leadership in encouraging young people to discover the power of telling their own stories, this award grants a college scholarship of $10,000 to one

Penguin Random House has partnered with Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, to launch The Amanda Gorman Award for Poetry, a new creative writing award for poetry for public high school students. The award will recognize a student for an original literary composition in English for poetry with a first-place prize of