The Gertrude Conference - a cross-pollinating wonderland for literary and screenwriters - is open for submissions for the Gertie Award, which will be presented at the writing conference September 27-28, 2024 in Los Angeles.

Poetry: Max of 3 poems in one pdf file 

Fiction: Max of 5,000 words, double-spaced

Nonfiction: Max of 5,000 words, double-spaced

PANEL PROPOSALS: follow specific directions (in January 2024) 

$15.00

Thank you for submitting!

The JUDGE is KaToya Ellis Fleming is the editor of Lookout Books  and an Assistant Professor of creative writing at the University of  North Carolina, Wilmington. 

Please keep entries for the Gertie Award under 5,000 words and remove your name from the manuscript. Use double-spacing in 12 pt. font as a PDF (no other formats will be accepted). 

All Finalists will be able to attend an exclusive Roundtable at the 2024 Conference in LA, to meet with agents, managers, and other writers. Winners of The Gertie Award will be announced at the Closing Night Gala on September 28, 2024 and will receive a complimentary, all access pass to the 2025 TGC Conference.

Thank you and good luck!

$15.00

GUEST JUDGE

Maisy Card 

Author of the novel These Ghosts Are Family,  which won an American Book Award, the  2021 OCM Bocas Prize in fiction,  and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, The  Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the LA Times Art Seidenbaum  Award for First Fiction.

Please keep entries for The Gertie Award under 5,000 words and remove your name from the manuscript. Use double-spacing in 12 pt. font as a PDF (no other formats will be accepted). 

Finalists will be able to attend an exclusive Roundtable at the 2024 Conference in LA. Winners of the Gertie Award will be announced at the Closing Night Gala on September 28, 2024 and will receive a complimentary, all access pass to the 2025 TGC Conference!

Thank you and good luck!

$15.00

Thank you for submitting!

Your judge is Eduardo C. Corral, the son of Mexican immigrants. He’s the author of Guillotine, published by Graywolf Press, and Slow Lightning,  which won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. He's the  recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary  Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Endowment for the Arts  Fellowship, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. He  teaches in the MFA program at North Carolina State University.

Please bundle up to three poems in ONE pdf when submitting for The Gertie Award (no other formats, please) and remove your name from the pdf.

Finalists will be able to attend an exclusive Roundtable at the 2024 Conference in LA. Winners of The Gertie Award will be announced at the Closing Night Gala on September 28, 2024 and will receive a complimentary, all access pass to the 2025 TGC Conference! If you can't make it, you will be notified via email afterwards.


Thank you and good luck!

The Gertrude Conference