2021 Update

The deadline for entering The Word Awards was March 31st. They are now closed for submissions.

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.

New for 2021!

Timing:

The submissions will be staggered beginning with the Published Works category. Submissions for Published Works will be open until March 31.

The Awards Celebration will be held in September this year rather than June.

Recognition:

There will be more 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 2021 Word Awards will not include a cash award for most of the category winners (with the exception of specialty awards.)

In addition, for 2021 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 2021 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, this means a shift from sending us a physical book to submitting an electronic (PDF) copy instead.

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.