Submit Your Story, Elevate Your Voice: Win $1,000 in Professional Editing
- Jun 1
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 28
The #ForThePeople series is now accepting submissions of nonfiction stories, essays, poems, and visual works from June 2025 through June 2026. Eligible entries must address urgent real-world issues such as civil rights violations, deportation injustices, protest suppression, systemic inequality, or abuses of power. Submissions must be original, truthful, and unpublished unless otherwise disclosed. One contributor will be awarded $1,000 in professional editing services, including developmental editing, manuscript reviews, query and proposal support, line editing, and one-on-one coaching. This initiative is designed to elevate voices that are too often silenced and to bring their experiences into the public record with professional support.
Submit Your Story
Enter to Win $1,000 in Professional Editing Services
For The Writers is now accepting submissions for our #ForThePeople series from June 1 to July 31, 2026. Every submission is automatically entered to win $1,000 in professional editing services from our literary coaching team.
We are seeking powerful firsthand accounts that confront today’s most urgent issues. This includes stories of injustice, immigration struggles, illegal deportation, protest experiences, systemic failure, and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We also welcome voices from other regions and movements where truth is suppressed and lives are disrupted.
Selected contributors will gain the chance to work with editors who specialize in elevating raw, personal narratives into manuscripts that command attention. Submit your story today to amplify your experience, refine your voice, and bring critical realities into the spotlight.
What You Could Win
One contributor will receive $1,000 in professional editing services. The award can be applied toward any combination of the following:
Developmental Editing
Get detailed guidance on structure, pacing, and narrative clarity. This includes chapter reorganization, identifying weak points, and strengthening your voice so the manuscript carries impact from start to finish.
Manuscript Review
Receive a full editorial report that covers tone, consistency, and effectiveness. This review highlights where your story connects, where it stalls, and how to sharpen it for maximum reader engagement.
Query Letter and Book Proposal Support
Work with an editor to refine your query or proposal for agents and publishers. This includes crafting a clear hook, defining your target audience, and ensuring that your submission materials meet industry standards.
Line Editing
Focus on sentence-level improvement. Editors will refine word choice, tighten language, and eliminate redundancy while preserving your unique style and voice.
Strategy Sessions
Schedule one-on-one coaching calls with our editorial team. Sessions are tailored to your goals, whether preparing for submission, planning revisions, or mapping out your publishing path.
Who’s Eligible
Eligibility is open to anyone who submits a nonfiction story, essay, poem, or visual work such as photography or art for the #ForThePeople series during the June 2025 through June 2026 submission window.
Submissions must focus on lived experience. Topics can include civil rights violations, unlawful deportations carried out by ICE, suppression of protest movements, systemic inequality in housing or healthcare, or abuse of power by government or corporate actors.
Entries must be original, factual, and previously unpublished unless otherwise disclosed at the time of submission. Every piece should present a truthful account that documents what is happening now.
Why This Matters
This is about truth. It is about refusing silence and making clear that what happened matters.
The #ForThePeople series is a platform for people living through events that governments, corporations, and institutions try to hide. Families are being separated by ICE through unlawful deportations. Children in Gaza are losing their homes and families to airstrikes and forced displacement. Workers in the United States are losing rights through union busting, unsafe conditions, and poverty wages. Small businesses are closing because of tariffs, broken supply chains, and labor shortages. Lives are being destroyed by systemic failure, and those who are directly impacted are often the last to be heard. This project is here to put their words first.
Every submission is entered to win $1,000 in professional editing services. This support ensures that stories are not only told but refined and made ready for impact. Whether you are an established writer or putting your experience into words for the first time, your account will be taken seriously. This is an opportunity to put lived reality on record and demand recognition of what is happening now. If your story has been ignored or silenced, this is the place to bring it to the forefront.
How to Enter
Submit your work directly to the #ForThePeople series.
Include your full contact details, a short biographical statement, and a cover letter with your entry.
All submissions received between June 1 and June 30, 2026, will be automatically entered into the contest for the one-thousand-dollar professional editing prize. Selected entries will also be published in For The Writers’ digital and print magazine.
The winner will be announced in September 2026 through email notification and on For The Writers’ official social media channels.
Need to Remain Anonymous?
Speaking out can be dangerous. Around the world, people face surveillance, censorship, and punishment for telling the truth. In the United States, immigrants risk detention or deportation if they speak publicly about ICE abuses. In Gaza, journalists and civilians documenting bombings face targeted attacks and communications blackouts. In Russia, citizens can be fined or jailed for voicing dissent against the war in Ukraine. These are not abstract fears. They are the reality for people trying to make their stories heard right now.
We recognize that sharing experiences of trauma, injustice, or government abuse carries real risk. If revealing your identity could endanger your safety, legal standing, or family, you can submit your story anonymously. Our Anonymity and Consent Policy outlines how we safeguard your information, remove identifying details when necessary, and ensure you maintain full control of your narrative throughout the editorial process.
If you have concerns about how your story will be handled, reach out to us directly. We will work with you to ensure your safety while ensuring your voice is heard. Every story deserves to be recorded, even if the name attached to it cannot. Your words can still carry weight, spark change, and receive the professional support needed to reach readers safely.
Continue reading: Review the For The Writers Anonymity and Consent Policy
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