DEADLINE: Waterman Fund Essay Contest for Emerging Writers

Event Date:

March 10, 2025

Since 2008, Appalachia, the mountaineering and conservation journal published by the Appalachian Mountain Club, and the Waterman Fund have joined to sponsor an annual essay contest for emerging writers. Writers who have not published a major work of fiction or narrative nonfiction on topics of wilderness, wildness, or the ethics and ecology of environmental issues are eligible.

The Waterman Fund provides generous prize money of $3,000 for the first-place essay selection and $1,000 for a runner-up.

For 2025, we invite essays that address the following prompt:

"The clash of wilderness preservation versus use and enjoyment by thousands is inherently unresolvable. But that does not absolve any of us from striving to resolve it, from doing the best our generation can to preserve the spirit of wildness." — Wilderness Ethics by Laura and Guy Waterman, 1993

Deadline: Mar 10, 2025