the golden quill literary prize

• Prompt: Write a story in which a familiar rule suddenly changes—or stops working entirely. The rule might govern a family, school, community, game, natural phenomenon, or imaginary world. Who notices first, and what happens when people must decide whether to restore the old rule or live without it? 
• Historical Fiction Option: Set your story during a historical moment when an established rule, law, or social expectation was being challenged. 

• Prompt: Write about something ordinary that became more interesting when you examined it closely. It might be an object, habit, place, tradition, activity, or natural phenomenon. Explain what most people overlook and what paying closer attention helped you understand. 

• Prompt: Write a story about something that disappears. It may be a person, object, memory, place, sound, emotion, or even an idea. Show how its absence changes the characters or the world, and what they discover while trying to recover or replace it. 

Prompt 1: Personal Narrative – “Between Two Versions of Myself” 

• Write a true story about a moment when your understanding of yourself began to change. Focus on the tension between who you had been, who others believed you were, and who you were becoming. 

Prompt 2: Cultural Critique – “An Unwritten Rule” 

• Examine an unwritten rule that shapes a community you know. Where did the rule come from? Who benefits from it, who struggles with it, and what becomes visible when someone breaks it? 
• “Community” may refer to a family, school, neighborhood, team, online space, culture, or social group.