Eligibility, submissions, and judging

01

Eligibility

The awards are planned for fiction created by human authors or author teams using AI-assisted workflows.

• The work must be fiction.
• The work must be original to the submitting author or author team.
• At least one named human author must direct, review, and accept responsibility for the work.
• AI or LLM-assisted methods must be used in a meaningful part of the creative workflow.
• The submission must include a process dossier and AI disclosure.
• The entrant must control the rights or have permission to submit.
• The work must be available in English, either originally or in translation.

For Year One, fan fiction and unauthorized derivative works are not eligible. Submissions should not use copyrighted characters, settings, worlds, or franchise material without permission.

02

Fees and submission gate

Public submissions will require an entry fee. The fee supports review labor, administration, anti-abuse handling, and prize funding.

Fee waivers may be offered, but they will be limited and manually reviewed so they do not become an unprotected spam lane.

03

Required materials

Each submission is expected to include the work, an author statement, process dossier, AI disclosure, and rights/responsibility attestation.

• The work: manuscript or published text.
• Author statement: 500-1,000 words on creative intent and workflow relationship.
• Process dossier: tools, prompts, systems, drafts, revisions, and human decisions.
• AI disclosure: systems used and their role in the work.
• Attestation: right to submit, disclosure accuracy, and human responsibility.

Git repositories, prompt excerpts, workflow diagrams, and draft comparisons are welcome but not required.

04

Youth entrants

Authors under 18 may be eligible with additional consent and privacy safeguards.

• A parent or legal guardian must submit, consent, and sign required attestations.
• The awards will not publish a minor's legal name, contact details, school, location, private notes, or process materials without explicit approval.
• Minors may use a public author name or initials.
• Parent or guardian approval is required before publication of any finalist summary, excerpt, author bio, or process note.
• Prize payment handling must be confirmed before any cash award is announced for a minor.

Eligible youth submissions may be considered for the Future Scriptorium Citation.

05

Judging standard

The first question is whether the work succeeds as fiction: did it move, provoke, unsettle, delight, or stay with the reader?

A complex workflow will not rescue an unengaging story. A simple workflow can be excellent if it produces strong creative control, meaningful revision, and a distinctive result.

06

Submission integrity

Submissions may be disqualified for spam, fraud, bad-faith disruption, undisclosed automation, or rights issues.

• Raw or minimally edited model output passed off as serious human-directed work.
• Plagiarized or knowingly infringing material.
• Fan fiction or unauthorized derivative work.
• Use of copyrighted characters, settings, worlds, or franchise material without permission.
• Direct unauthorized imitation of living authors.
• Spam, content-farm output, or bulk-generated submissions.
• Harassing, threatening, or deliberately disruptive material.
• Coordinated or automated attempts to overwhelm the review process.
• Prompt-injection, hidden instructions, malicious files, adversarial metadata, or attempts to manipulate administrative, review, or AI-assisted tools.

Knowingly attempting to poison, bypass, or compromise award review systems may result in immediate disqualification without refund and a permanent ban from future award cycles.

07

Rights and privacy

Entrants retain copyright and publication rights to submitted work.

The awards should request only the limited rights needed to privately review submissions, list finalists and winners, publish approved process summaries, and publish short excerpts with permission.

Private prompts, drafts, notes, repositories, and process materials will not be published without permission.

08

AI-assisted review

The awards may use AI-assisted tools to support administration and review, but human readers and judges remain responsible for evaluation, scoring, finalist selection, and award decisions.

AI tools may assist with metadata extraction, completeness checks, routing, consistency checks, process-dossier summaries, workflow analysis, and review-packet preparation.

AI tools will not independently reject submissions, score works, rank finalists, select finalists, recommend winners, or determine winners.

First-round fiction reading remains human-led and story-first. Full unpublished manuscripts will not be processed by third-party AI systems without explicit entrant consent and acceptable confidentiality safeguards.