Joy of the Pen 2016 will be opening for submissions on Saturday, September 3rd!

The Cryer, The Friends of the Topsham Public Library, Just Write Books and the TPL Teen Room are all signed on to be sponsors again this year!

All are welcome! Please share this poster either in print or on social media!

Joy of the Pen reception poster 2015

Thank you for submitting to Joy of the Pen!

Thank you so much for talking part in Joy of the Pen this year. We are pleased to announce that this has been the biggest one yet with over 80 entrants.

Today we have notified the winners of the competition so if you haven’t heard from us then we are very sorry and we encourage you to submit again next year.

Our judges have had a very tough job this year, and every one of them said that it was extremely difficult to pick only 2 winners in each category.

We would LOVE to see you all at the reception on Saturday at 1pm, to celebrate all the writers in the competition and not just the winners. There will be snacks! Directions to the library are here: topshamlibrary.org/about-us/directions. Please keep watching joyofthepen.topshamlibrary.org for news and to read the winners’ work. If you have any more questions about Joy of the Pen, please email me at emma@topshamlibrary.org.

Emma Gibbon
Adult Services Librarian

Hi everyone,

The waiting begins! All of our submissions are with the judges. Here are the final stats for the 2015 competition:

Entrants: 83
Poetry Entries: 45
No of poems: 108
Fiction entries: 27
Creative nonfiction entries: 20
Maine-related nonfiction entries: 10
Teen entries: 10

Good luck everyone and we hope to see you at the reception on November, 14th!

Help us to spread the word about Joy of the Pen with some of our promotional materials!

Poster: Joy of the Pen 2015

Smaller flyer: Joy of the Pen 2015 small flyer

Image for social media:

We are now accepting submissions in all categories! Click here to apply!

Accepting submissions: September, 1.
Submission deadline: October, 10.
Awards Reception: November, 14 at 1pm.

It’s that time of year again when we start accepting submissions for Joy of the Pen! This will be our third annual competition for Maine writers, and to celebrate we have a brand new website and a new category: Maine-related Nonfiction! This year our submissions are electronic and from Sept, 1, you will be able to access the application form by clicking the Joy of the Application tab above!

Great news! The 2014 Joy of the Pen poetry winners will be reading at the Longfellow Days poetry festival this year on Sunday, February 15th at 1pm at Curtis Memorial. More information is here: http://brunswickdowntown.org/events/longfellow-days-2015/

We just added the online version of the Joy of the Pen Cryer article to the gallery. You can also read it here if you missed it!