QWF Awards Call for Submissions: Spoken Word

• On November 10, 2025, QWF will award one to three prizes totalling $3,000 to honour excellence in spoken word as a literary art. 

• All finalists will be invited to perform at a showcase co-presented by SpokenWeb and their performances will be preserved online via the SpokenWeb Archive of the Present

Eligible Applicants

The Ian Ferrier Spoken Word Prize is open to Quebec-based spoken word artists, storytelling artists, and literary performance artists working in English in any form of performative writing, including poetry, story, monologue, hip hop, dub, sound poetry, and experimental and interdisciplinary work, who:

• Write and perform original work; and
• Have a history of public presentation that includes a minimum of three spoken word performances of different texts in front of a live audience, in person or online.

The text you submit to the prize does not have to be one of the texts you have previously performed for an audience.

Residency Requirement

The author/performer 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.

Eligible Submissions

Types of videos eligible for submission include:

• A recording of a live performance before an audience
• A recording of an online performance
• A self-made recording made in any location, with or without an audience.

Submission must be primarily in English.

The recording must have been made between January 1, 2024 and July 6, 2025. You may submit the same recording you submitted for the 2024 prize, provided that you were not selected as a finalist and that it meets the other eligibility criteria.

Additional Submission Guidelines

• You must be performing your own original text.
• The purpose of the video is to present your spoken word performance.
• The jury will be instructed to evaluate only the text and the performance and to disregard sound quality, lighting, and other visual features in the recording.
• If you are working with a musician, dancer, or artist in another discipline, only your text and performance will be evaluated.
• You may submit only one performance per year.

How to Submit

1. Prepare a video file (maximum 10 minutes) featuring your live performance of your own text. The submission can be an excerpt from a longer work. The following formats are accepted:
   • MP4 (MPEG-4 Video File)
   • .AVI (Audio Video Interleave File)
   • .3GP (3GPP Multimedia File)
   • .WEBM (WebM Video File)
   • .WMV (Windows Media File)
   • .MKV (Matroska Video File)
   • .MOV (Apple QuickTime Movie)
   • .MPG (MPEG Video File)
   • .FLV (Animate Video File)
   • .M4V (iTunes Video File)
2. Prepare a Word or PDF file with the following components:
   • Your name and contact information
   • A list of three different pieces you have performed in public including the following information: title of text, title of event, date of event, venue
   • A written copy of the text you perform in your video submission
3. Go to Submittable to complete the application form and upload your video and text document

For further information: (514) 244-9088 or riley@qwf.org

A paper copy of this call for submissions is available upon request.

Submissions to the 2025 QWF Literary Awards are now closed.