The William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition is sponsored annually by The Pirate’s Alley Society, Inc, a non-profit literary and educational organization. Overall goals of the competition are to seek out talented writers and help them improve their work, assist them in finding literary agents and, ultimately, help them find publishers. Click Here for guidelines.
In addition to Nobel Laureate William Faulkner, Faulkner Society’s namesake, our competition is named for literary scholar and collector William B. Wisdom of New Orleans, who amassed a significant collection of memorabilia related to William Faulkner. His collection is housed today in Tulane University’s library .
Mr. Wisdom’s daughter, New Orleans attorney, socialite, and philanthropist Adelaide Wisdom Benjamin, was among earliest Faulkner Society supporters and board members. An instigator in creating the competition, she arranged funding for our first prize for Best Novel. Later, Mrs. Benjamin created our poetry prize and underwrote it for several years. She is a trustee of The Mary Freeman Wisdom Foundation, which has supported the competition. Mrs. Benjamin was among the first to receive Faulkner Society’s ALIHOT (A Legend in Her/His Own Time) Award for community service and philanthropy.
A competitive talent search open to all writing in English, William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition is for previously unpublished work. Self-published and print-on-demand books are considered published if more than 500 copies have sold. Books, stories, essays previously published in their entirety on the Internet are considered published. With changes adopted for 2026, entries are now to be accepted in nine categories:
Novel; Collections-Fiction and Non-fiction; Creative Non-Fiction Book; Short Fiction – both novellas and short stories; Book-in-Progress; Essay; Poetry Collection; Individual Poem; and Short Story by a High School Student. Collections, whether prose or poetry are accepted only if the individual pieces are linked together by incident, place or characters.
Please review your work carefully prior to entering. Some of our judges traditionally are well known literary agents and editors who take a dim view of sloppy editing. Our general guideline for both preliminary and final judges is “ready for publication.”
2026 Deadline for Entries
Because we are a small organization and our traditional membership drive kick-off is now in May, we are permanently changing our deadline for entries to June 1. For 2025-2026 Entry Form, Click Here! For Competition Guidelines, Click Here! For tips on editing your manuscript for the competition, Click Here!