PLEASE ANNOUNCE, POST, AND CIRCULATE TO COLLEAGUES AND GRADUATE STUDENTS

The Marxist Literary Group is pleased to announce the twenty-seventh annual Michael Sprinker Graduate Writing Competition, established to remember and further Michael’s commitment to Marxist intellectual work and to graduate teaching and students. The award recognizes an essay or dissertation chapter that engages with Marxist theory, scholarship, pedagogy, and/or activism. A committee of the MLG will judge submissions. The winner receives a prize of $1000 and automatic entry of the essay into the peer review process of the MLG's journal Mediations.

This year’s winner will be announced at the annual business meeting during the ICS as well as through the MLG’s listserv.

Any and all current graduate students are eligible. Submissions must be in English. Membership in the MLG is encouraged but not required. Essays or chapters must be unpublished, finished work, not currently under review, and must be an absolute maximum of 8000 words, including notes and/or works cited. 

To increase the likelihood of success, papers should be conceived of as free-standing articles, engaging with relevant bodies of scholarship as they explore whatever texts or issues are being featured. Submissions based on dissertation chapters should limit allusions to the larger project and be able to muster their own arguments. Very short papers (substantially under 8000 words) may be too brief to mount a significant argument.

Please include your name, mailing address, phone number, and email address on a separate cover sheet. The writer’s name should not appear on the essay itself.

Deadline: Friday, May 15, 2026.  Please send your documents as attachments in MS Word to Courtney Maloney at maloney.courtney@gmail.com, and send any questions about the competition to the same address.