Cash awards and prizes are given to adults aged 19 and up for artistic excellence in writing in three categories: poetry, short story and dramatic writing, and to youth (ages 8-12) and teens (ages 13-18) in three categories: poetry, short story and essay.

Special Initiative for 2009: The Big Read–DC Special Recognition Award for Creative Expression. As part of DC’s 2009 Big Read celebration of Carson McCuller’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, a special prize will be given in each age group to writers who compose an essay on the theme of courage.

In this work, McCullers exposes the limitations, prejudices, and frustrations of her community. Writers are asked to consider, in an essay, the ways in which they exhibit courage in their own writing.

The 2009 deadline for submitting works is 7 pm, Thursday, March 19, 2009. View program guidelines and complete the PDF application form*.

The Larry Neal Writers' Awards Ceremony for 2009 occur on Friday, May 8, 2009 at 6 pm:The Elizabethan Theater of the Folger Shakespeare Library201 East Capitol Street, SEWashington DC 20003 View the winners for 2008.* The Larry Neal Writers' Competition is sponsored by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Larry Neal Biography

Born in Georgia in 1937, Neal moved to Philadelphia as a child. He gained an appreciation for all aspects of black life, such as folk tales, slang, and street chants, and used them as sources of artistic expression. He enrolled in courses at Drexel University and continued graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1963, Neal moved to New York as arts editor of The Liberator. In 1965, Neal founded the Black Arts Repertory Theater and School with Amiri Baraka (also known as LeRoi Jones) in Harlem. His powerful works of poetry include Hoodoo Hollerin' BeBop Ghosts and Black Boogaloo. In 1969, Neal and Baraka coedited Black Fire, the definitive anthology of the 1960s black cultural experience. In addition to his writings, Neal was a well-respected academic. He was a professor at Yale and Wesleyan universities, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1971, and held a chair in Humanities at Howard University. He also served as the Executive Director of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities from 1976 to 1979. At his untimely death in 1981, Neal had just finished an introduction to a three-volume series on Zora Neale Hurston's works, was collaborating on a jazz series for WGBH-TV in Boston, and had nearly completed a book on the rise of black consciousness during the 1960s.

The Larry Neal Writers' Award program commemorates his artistic legacy and vision of cultural understanding. The program's activities are among the most anticipated of the events sponsored by the Commission