Our 2024 Judge:
Kelly McMasters
Kelly McMasters is an essayist, professor, mother, and former bookshop owner. She is the author of the Zibby Book Club pick The Leaving Season: A Memoir-in-Essays (WW Norton, 2023) and co-editor of the ABA national bestseller Wanting: Women Writing About Desire (Catapult, 2023). Her first book, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, was listed as one of Oprah's top 5 summer memoirs and is the basis for the documentary film ‘The Atomic States of America,’ a 2012 Sundance selection, and the anthology she co-edited with Margot Kahn, This Is the Place: Women Writing About Home (Seal Press, 2017), was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The Paris Review, The American Scholar, River Teeth: A Journal of Narrative Nonfiction, Tin House, Newsday, Time Out New York, Columbia Magazine, and MrBellersNeighborhood.com, among others.
About the Contest
HerStry has long been a place for women identifying and nonbinary folks to tell their stories. We are a brave space for brave stories. Now, we’d like to amplify your stories even more with our contest and prize.
There is no theme to adhere to for this contest, simply nonfiction written by you, about you. Give us your best work, the stuff of your heart. Our stories are what make us, tell yours.
DEADLINE EXTENDED: Submissions Close January 1, 2024
The Important Stuff:
All essays must be true, about you, and previously unpublished.
Essays must stay under 5,000 words.
Essays must be submitted in a word document (please no PDFs). Must be in 12pt Times New Roman or Calibri font, double spaced.
All essays are judged blind, please do not put any identifying information on your document. Essays with identifying information will be discarded without being read.
Writers are asked to submit a third person bio. Cover letters are fine but, honestly, we don’t care. It’s the quality of the writing we are looking for, not the amount of times you’ve been published. Plus, we judge blind, so we won’t read your cover letter.
Do not submit more than one piece.
While your work is under consideration we ask that you DO NOT submit it elsewhere. Winners will be announced no later than April 5, 2024.
HerStry centers the experiences of women identifying persons. We’re looking for work from bigender/polygender persons, cisgender women, intergender persons/intersex persons, non-binary persons/gender non-conforming persons, transgender women/transfeminine persons, two-spirit. In other words, if you are a cis man, please refrain from submitting.
Interested in becoming a volunteer reader for the contest? Apply here! Note, readers may not submit to the contest.
Submissions Close January 1, 2024.
*All Submission fees go toward contest prize and paying HerStry readers and judges
The 2023 Eunice Williams
Nonfiction Prize Winners
Who Was Eunice Williams?
And Why did We Name Our Contest After Her?
First, Eunice Williams was not a writer. But at HerStry, our first mission is to amplify women’s stories and Eunice is a woman we want you to know about.
In 1704 Eunice and her family were abducted in raid at Deerfield, Massachusetts by the Kahnawake Mohawk people. Eunice’s story is not uncommon, especially in the early 1700s. What is uncommon about her story is that while the rest of Eunice’s family was redeemed from their captors, Eunice chose to stay. Eunice, a child of Puritans, found freedom with the Kahnawake Mohawk people. She was adopted by a Mohawk mother, married into their community, and, over time, forgot how to speak english all together.
We want to honor Eunice’s story, and the life she chose for herself. Although she was just a young girl when she was taken captive, she made it clear that she did not want to be redeemed out of captivity and that for her, it wasn’t captivity. For her it was finding a place where she belonged.
HerStry’s mission is to empower women through storytelling. Eunice’s story is one of courage, resilience, and finding the strength to forge her own path.
Further Reading on Eunice Williams
The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story From Early America by John Demos
An unredeemed Captive: Being the Story of Eunice Williams by Clifton Johnson
Puritan Girl, Mohawk Girl: A Novel by John Demos
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Julia Nusbaum
Eunice Being Led Away from Deerfield by Francis Back