*CALLING ALL WRITERS* 📝

We are BACK for this year's annual Writing Contest! We are so excited for the yearly anthology for our 12 Days of Book-Club-Mas Advent Calendar coming later this year!

For those of you new to our brand, each year we create an Advent Calendar box to celebrate our love of books! Each box contains 12 gifts to open as you read 12 short stories written by 12 different authors over the course of 12 days! These gifts and stories are the perfect way to cozy up and read this coming winter as well as to highlight your love of books!

Chosen authors from this contest are assigned one of the 12 gifts to write a non-Christmas-themed short story to bring their gift to life in their own unique way. It has been such a joy to see how our authors incorporate our gifts in their stories each year, and for our 9th year of creating this box, we cannot wait to see how they come to life!

Stories go through multiple rounds of editing and revising before being printed into a bound anthology included in ALL our Advent boxes. This is a phenomenal way to get your work out there if you are an aspiring writer or a great way to reach a new demographic if you are already published!

Not only will the 12 selected authors be published and have their work printed in our boxes, they will also be promoted on all OUABC social media accounts, AND the selected authors will receive a full 2026 Advent Calendar including not only their story and gift, but the work and gifts associated with all the featured authors. All featured authors will also receive a $150 prize for a total prize value of OVER $500!

How Do I Apply?

We are asking writers of ANY genre to submit a sample of their work (any sample, can be part of a larger/past piece, 8k max word count) to our team at collabs@onceuponabookclub.com (Subject: 2026 Writing Contest). Please include your entry as a DOC or PDF attachment along with a short bio for us to get to know you as an author (please separate this from your writing sample). This contest is open now through May 3rd! Winners will be contacted via email by May 12th.

Previously featured authors and entrants from past years are welcome to enter again. Multiple samples are accepted, however please note this does not necessarily increase your chances as each sample is treated as a completely separate entry. Selected authors will be required to write in the genre of their selected sample, so it is encouraged to submit multiple entries if you would like your various writing voices to be considered. Please submit multiple entries in separate emails.

Bios can be a separate attachment or written directly in the body of the email. Bios do not need to be professionally written and those featured will have an opportunity to revise their bio prior to being printed in physical copies of the Advent books.

Requirements:

• Authors must be 18+ or have parental permission to participate.
• All authors must agree to not use generative AI for any part of this project, including the sample submission and, if chosen to participate, the final Advent Story.
• Authors can be located anywhere in the world, however all samples and final stories must be written in English.
• Authors must be able and willing to write a new piece for the Book-Club-Mas anthology with deadlines set over the summer months with OUABC team members. Full schedules will be provided to the winners prior to committing to write for this box.

Best of luck writers! We cannot wait to meet you!