WeyMedia Books for Young People Prize

Short stories or poems written by adults for Children, Middle Grade or Young Adult Readers

  • New Brunswick resident author or WFNB member
  • Up to 4,500 words
  • First Prize $200, Second Prize $100, Third Prize 1 year WFNB membership

2025 Judge: Jocelyn Shipley

Born and raised in London, Ontario, Jocelyn graduated from York University and has studied writing at St. Lawrence College and the Humber School for Writers. She always wanted to be a writer, and won her first award at age nine, for poems entered in the local Hobby Fair.

Jocelyn has published several YA novels, her first with the former literary/feminist Sumach Press, and her most recent with Orca Books in their series for reluctant teen readers. She has appeared at the Eden Mills and Telling Tales literary festivals, and has received the US Gold Medal Moonbeam Award for YA fiction and the Surrey International Writers’ Conference Writing for Young People Award. Her work has been translated into many languages for Stabenfeldt's GIRL:IT book clubs, and her short stories published in several anthologies.

Jocelyn is a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada, the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers, the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, and the _Hlk23414599Children’s Writers and Illustrators of BC Society. She lives in Toronto and on Vancouver Island.

2024 Judge: Lorna Schultz Nicholson
Winners

First Place Winner - Marven Morton’s Marvellous Notions – Author, Cheryl Thomas, Lower Coverdale, NB 

Second Place: A Bridge to the Past – Author, Mary Mesheau, Fredericton, NB 

Third Place: Dirt Angels – Author, Kelly Alcorn, Rollingdam, NB 

Honourable mention:  Call Me Captain Molly Kool: First female Master Mariner in North America– Author, Gail Collette, Miramichi 

Honourable Mention: The Wishing Broom – Author, Jennifer Houle, Hanwell, NB 

2022 - 2023 Judge: Kristin Butcher

Winners

First place: Kelly Alcorn (Rollingdam, NB) - Randy the Race Coon

Second place: Leo LaFleur (Saint John, NB) - The Black Branch

Third place, Gail Collette (Miramichi, NB) -  The Climate Changes Terr

Honourable Mention: Odette Barr (Petit Cap, NB) - Arrivals and Departures


2021 - 2022 Judge: Orysia Dawydiak

Winners

First place: Betty Sleep - The Caterpillar That Roared

Second place: Brandi Estey-Burtt - The Art of Repetition

Third place: Odette Barr - Becoming Canadian

Honourable Mention: Nola Hicks - Reach for the Rain


Prize Sponsors


The opportunity to enter your work in a competition offered by a reputable group or body, is one that every writer should take advantage of. It offers all the participants a chance to have what they have written judged alongside others who may also be new writers, or trying a different area of writing for the first time.  I am delighted to have won the children’s fiction category for 2022 and pleased to add that my children’s novel “Magic in the African Bush” was published in October.

Betty Sleep, First Place in the Quantiphi Books for Young People prize 2022, for The Caterpillar that Roared

You don’t know until you try! Winning 3rd place in a new genre to me provided the motivation and confidence to continue writing in that particular genre—I now have a 51,000 word YA manuscript almost ready for querying. Go for it!

Odette Barr, 3rd place winner, Accreon Prize 2022 (now the Quantiphi Books for Young People Prize) for Becoming Canadian.

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