2025 Breakout! Writers Prize
The 2025 Breakout! Writers Prize opens for submissions on March 1st. The Breakout! Writers Prize brings visibility to and supports outstanding undergraduate and graduate student writers. Winners have won the PEN/Dau Prize and gone on to get agents, publish books, and discover new careers in publishing. This year’s prize judges are: Victoria Chang for poetry, and Hilary Leichter for prose. Submissions close April 15th.
Two Writers, One in Prose and One in Poetry, Will Each Receive:
A $1000 cash prize
Publication in the Summer 2025 issue of Epiphany
A one-year subscription to Epiphany
To apply you must have been enrolled in an accredited university, at least part-time, for the academic years 2024 or 2025. The prize is open to both undergraduate students and graduate students receiving a Masters degree. PhD candidates are not eligible. Students need not be specifically enrolled in MFA programs or creative writing programs.
Meet this year’s prize judges:
Victoria Chang’s most recent book of poems is With My Back to the World, published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the U.S. and Corsair/Little Brown in the U.K. It received the Forward Prize in Poetry for Best Collection. A few of her other books include The Trees Witness Everything, OBIT, and Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Chowdhury International Prize in Literature, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and Director of Poetry@Tech.
Hilary Leichter is the author of the novels Temporary and Terrace Story. She has been a finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Prize, and her work in Harper's Magazine won the 2021 National Magazine Award in Fiction. Terrace Story has been named a best book of 2023 by Time Magazine, The New Yorker, The LA Times, Publishers Weekly, and other publications. Hilary teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
