Contests
Climate and Our Earth - Writing
Deadline
Explore the many impacts of the climate crisis. With a series of prompts and readings, YWP Alumni Advisor Sam Aikman urges YWP writers and artists to dig deep and find "both the heavy and the hopeful, the worried and the appreciative, the challenged and the uplifted ... to create!"
[Photo credit: "Tide" by Sam Aikman, YWP Alumni Advisor]
Dear YWP Writers and Artists,
As a generation growing up in a world we’ve always known was in serious danger, many of us are closely connected to our environment, our effects on nature, and what we can do to stop the tide of crisis from rising.
The continual charge from older generations that we will be the ones to fix it and the mental weight of growing up on a planet that sometimes (maybe even often) seems doomed is hard to reconcile with our everyday excitement, perseverance, and hopes of growing into lives that look bright in other ways.
These prompts are meant as a place to process, to mourn, to consider our futures and what we can create within them, to gather, and to imagine solutions. As young people, our position also gives us a special chance to appreciate our world today, a capability to savor what we have, to enjoy the beauties of a reality that may drastically change in our lifetimes. Use those feelings, both the heavy and the hopeful, the worried and the appreciative, the challenged and the uplifted ... to create!
– Sam Aikman, YWP Alumni Advisor
SUGGESTED PROMPTS:
- What are some things about our current world you’d like to remember 50 years from now? Write about them.
- Pick an ecological crisis you’ve been considering recently. Write about this event and how you process it.
- Pick a letter of the alphabet. Write a list of things at risk of being lost that begin with this letter.
- Write an ode to Earth with the deep appreciation you feel. (learn more about odes here)
- Do you have a particular animal you love but are concerned about losing to extinction? Write about this animal and what they mean to you.
- Is there a solution or a strategy you'd like to see implemented that isn't yet? Write about it.
- What can be done? What must be done? Write with an urgency and clarity that cannot be ignored.
- Is there something about our world or the climate crisis that you see but think others miss or should know more about? Share it with us.
- How does the climate crisis manifest in your daily life? Write about it.
Are you looking for inspiration, or are you curious about others' writing on this topic?
Check out these examples:
Missing Glossary by Claire Wahmanholm (later published in her book Meltwater as "Glossary of What I'll Miss")
My Eighteen-Month-Old Daughter Talks to the Rain as the Amazon Burns by Dante Di Stefano
Adrift by Kim Steutermann Rogers
Mother Earth: Her Whales by Gary Snyder
Vanishing by Brittney Corrigan
Wasteland: On the California Wildfires by Forrest Gander
Remember by Joy Harjo
Trophic Cascade by Camille T. Dungy
Another Day in Climate Crisis by Sam Aikman
This challenge was created by YWP's Sam Aikman, March 2025, as part of the Tomorrow Project Contest.
TOMORROW PROJECT CONTEST DETAILS:
- Open to teens, 13-19, who have a YWP account. (It's free to join!)
- Must be original work and not published elsewhere. No AI.
- No limit to number of submissions.
- Each submission will be considered for the Tomorrow Project's six grand prizes of $250 to be awarded when the first phase of the project is completed in October 2025.
- Prize winners and honorable mentions will also be published in The Voice.
- Submissions due: April 21, 2025
Questions? Contact Susan Reid, YWP Executive Director: Reid@YWP on the site, or by email: sreid@youngwritersproject.org
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