Call for Submissions: 2023 QWF Spoken Word Prize

Deadline for submissions: July 2, 2023

Winners to be announced at the QWF Awards Gala: November 13, 2023

The 2023 QWF Spoken Word Prize is currently open for submissions. Read below to learn about the eligibility criteria and how to submit.

Eligible Applicants

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

• write and perform original work
• 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 does not have to be one of the three texts you have previously performed for an audience.

Residency requirement: The author/performer must 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

Each submission is to be made in the form of a single video file (maximum 5 minutes) documenting your performance of an original text primarily in English, and a written copy of the text.  

Eligible videos include the following:

• 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 audience.

The recording must have been made between January 1, 2020 and July 2, 2023. You may submit the same recording you submitted for the 2022 prize, provided that you were not selected as a finalist.

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 5 minutes) featuring your live performance of your own text. The submission can be an excerpt from a longer work. Accepted formats:

• 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
• The written version of the text you are performing on the video.

3. Go to Submittable, complete the application form, and upload your video and text document.

Deadline to Submit: July 2, 2023