2022 Update

The Word Awards are open for submission as of Wednesday January 19 2022

The deadline for entering The Word Awards is March 31st.

A team has been working on changes that need to be made to the awards in order to make them sustainable especially in this season which is uprooted by the COVID-19 situation.

For 2022!

Timing:

Submissions for will be open until March 31.

The Awards Celebration will be held in September this year again.

Why Enter the Awards:

The role of critique and affirmation in the writer’s journey—what to expect when you enter The Word Awards.

Kelly Ditmars,  a member of The Word Awards Planning Team,  speaks with one of the judges, writer and speaker Dayna Mazzuca, about this dynamic topic for writers wanting to take their work to the next level. Be inspired. Watch the videos and join the conversation. We are on this path together, to make Christian writing in Canada the very best it can be.

In the first video Kelly and Dayna discuss the spectrum of where we land as writers; some of us starting out and looking for affirmation and constructive feedback; some of us writing professionally for years and open to more in-depth comments and input. Either way, we all need to own our work and be the ones to sift what might refine our work, and set aside what’s not helpful for us. This is an important process; Kelly and Dayna share their experience and stories.

In the second, shorter, video Kelly and Dayna unpack what writers might want to look for, in detail, to better align their writing with the spiritual gift they bring to the page or screen. These are bonus insights and meant to springboard your own inspiration as a writer wanting to press ahead; to finish with a flourish!

Recognition:

There will be opportunities provided for promotion of the winning entries. We believe that this will be a practical way to boost sales for the winners. However, the 2022 Word Awards will not include a cash award for most of the category winners (with the exception of specialty awards.)

Again,  we have also decided to omit the engraved glass awards. This is an attempt on our part to move toward going green.  Both of these measures are efforts to cut costs in order to enable us to continue to provide the Word Guild Awards program that we believe fosters quality writing from a Christian perspective in Canada.

In order to share cost cutting measures with those who will be submitting books for the Word Guild Awards, we will be accepting all books online for the 2022 Word Guild Awards. Details for this will be included in the submission process. Not having to supply and mail bound copies of the books will reduce significantly the cost to authors making submissions.

For authors, as we did last year, it will mean submitting an electronic (PDF) copy instead of sending us a physical book.

Our original process required authors to mail their books to our coordinators, who then mailed them to our judges. In our new process, entrants will submit PDF copies of their books over the internet. This results in savings for authors, who no longer need to purchase and send us copies of their own books by mail. It also eliminates the potential challenges of visiting a post office during the pandemic, or of your book arriving late or getting lost in transit.