The Catholic Artist Network invites all Catholic writers in the St. Louis region to make one submission to our annual St. Robert Southwell Literary Contest. For purposes of this contest, the St. Louis region includes any residence within 100 miles of the city of St. Louis, MO.

The contest is named for St. Robert Southwell. Southwell was Shakespeare's cousin, a composer of beautiful poetry, a heroic Jesuit priest and a martyr under Queen Elizabeth I.

We are accepting short story and poetry submissions. Submissions must be no more than 3000 words. Authors can only submit one entry to the contest.

We are looking for original submissions that engages, explores, and illuminates the goodness and redemptive value of beauty. The desired submission is to be in conversation with spiritual faith, particularly within the rich tradition of Catholicism, but we are not looking for devotional or catechetical writing. (For example, Flannery O'Connor's Wildcat and St. Francis of Assisi’s poem "Canticle of Brother Sun" would qualify, but St. Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life would not.) The submission need not be overtly religious, only serious and thoughtful, written in the context of a world that is subject to transcendent grace. Possible themes include the honesty about the human condition, the difficulty of grace, and struggles with faith. Submissions will not be accepted if they are disparaging, or if their main theme is contrary to the official teaching of the Catholic Church.

Submissions must substantially be the creative work of the submitting author. Submissions may be honed with the assistance of other human beings or Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents. Licit uses include asking a friend for feedback on a poem, or asking Claude's opinion on whether a paragraph you wrote has the emotional impact you're aiming for. Illicit uses include asking ChatGPT to generate all or part of your poem or story. Authors may use AI to refine their creative work, but not to replace their creativity or work.

We will collect votes from two sources: from a panel of judges, and from the public as the “popular vote”. We will have separate awards for winners chosen the judges, and winners chosen by popular vote.

We will have separate judging panels for short stories and poetry, although some judges may be on both panels. Judges have been selected for their varied literary backgrounds and experience. Monetary awards will only be given to the submissions chosen by the panel of judges (see Awards, below).

Accepted submissions will be shared on the Catholic Artist Network website and available to the public for voting. The online voting will begin on 10/26/2026 and finish at the end of the day on 12/9/2026. You can vote for your own submission, since you will be required to vote for other submissions at the same time. Only one ballot will be allowed per person.

We will have separate awards for the short story category and the poetry category. A prize of $200 will be awarded to the short story selected by the panel of judges; and a prize of $200 will be awarded to the poem selected by the panel of judges.

The popular vote winners will receive no monetary prize, but will receive public recognition. These winning submissions will be announced in the CAN newsletter, and listed as popular vote winners on the website.

All submitting authors will be notified of the results by 12/12/2026.

Submissions will be shared on our website for public voting, and will remain on the website after voting concludes for future viewers to read and enjoy.

Authors retain the copyright of their submissions. Your copyright will be listed as “© 2026 <Your Name>” unless you specify otherwise. Publishing under a pseudonym is permitted.

Click on the 'Submit' button, below, to submit an entry for the contest. That will take you to a form on our website where you can fill out all of the relevant information for your submission. Please perform any spellchecking or grammar checking before submitting entries.

All submissions will be reviewed before being approved and posted online. Submissions may take up to a week to appear online.