Deadline to Submit: June 3, 2024
On November 12, 2024, QWF will award a prize of $3000 to honour excellence in dramatic literature by a Quebec playwright writing in English. The winning playwright will be offered an opportunity to have a professional reading or workshop hosted by Infinithéâtre in its 2024-2025 season. This prize is awarded every two years.
Publishers or playwrights with eligible titles (see eligibility criteria below) must send 5 printed copies of the play and one PDF. If it is published only as an e-book, we require 4 printed copies and one electronic copy in PDF format. Please submit the PDF online via Submittable. If the PDF is not available at the time you complete your submission (i.e., the book is forthcoming), please send it to [email protected] when it becomes available by the appropriate deadline date (see “Submission Deadlines,” below).
It is the responsibility of the publisher or author who is submitting the books, whether electronic or hard copies, to ensure that the submission has been received.
Each submission must be accompanied by a completed entry form, and a $35 non-refundable registration fee.
Online Payment and Submission
Submission and payment of registration fees can be made electronically via Submittable.
Eligibility Criteria
- To be eligible, a play must have an estimated performance length of at least 45 minutes and meet one of the following criteria:
- it must have been published during the eligibility period with an ISBN (copy scripts are included); or
- it must have been professionally produced during the eligibility period through a PACT company or through independent theatres that work under equity rules. In the latter case, the submitted script must be the final production script.
- Electronic and print-on-demand books are eligible provided that they became commercially available in their final form during the eligibility period, and that they meet all of the other criteria listed here.
- The playwright must be alive and have a residence in Quebec at the time of submission. A person who has been living outside of Quebec continuously for the past five years will be considered ineligible. In the case of joint authorship (by two playwrights), one of the writers must satisfy all of the above requirements. Province of publication or performance is not considered.
- The prize will be awarded to the author of the play. If two writers collaborated, the prize money will be divided equally between them, or, if one of them has died, between the living playwright and the deceased playwright’s estate. Plays with more than two writers are not eligible.
- The play must be an original work, written in English (translations are not eligible; retellings of traditional stories will be considered only if the text and interpretation are the original work of the present author).
- A play may be submitted to the QWF Awards only once.
- Rewritten, expanded or otherwise altered plays may be considered eligible only if the new version is deemed a new play by QWF.
Submission Deadlines
- Plays published or performed between August 1, 2022 and September 30, 2024 may be submitted, provided that they were not submitted for the 2022 awards.
- Plays published or performed between August 1, 2022 and May 15, 2024 must be submitted for the June 3, 2024 deadline, along with a completed submission form and a $35 non-refundable submission fee.
- Publishers or playwrights whose plays are to be published or performed between May 16, 2024 and September 30, 2024 must send in the completed submission form and submission fee by the June 3, 2024 deadline. Completed books, ARCs or bound galleys must be received in the QWF office by August 1, 2024. The final published book (including copy scripts) or the final production script must be received by September 30, 2024, or the submission will be disqualified.
- QWF reserves the right to determine the eligibility of all submissions.
- Plays published between August 1, 2024 and September 30, 2024 may instead be submitted for the 2024 awards.
Plays may be submitted by publishers or authors.
Books and/or scripts should be sent to:
QUEBEC WRITERS’ FEDERATION AWARDS
1200 Atwater Avenue, Suite 3
Westmount, QC H3Z 1X4
PDFs should be uploaded via Submittable or sent to [email protected].
For cheque payments, please make cheques payable to Quebec Writers’ Federation.
For further information: (514) 244-9088 or [email protected]