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The 2025 Proximity Prize Issue

We’re pleased to announce: The 2025 Proximity Literary Journalism Prize and Personal Essay Prize with the theme transplant.

Proximity is a publication of true stories exploring place, space, and connections in the modern age. At Proximity, we’re curious about the shape-shifting nature of our proximity to one another. We’re fascinated by the things that connect us, across real and imagined boundaries, across time and place. Read more about our founding ideas here.

Out of respect for the wide spectrum of creative nonfiction, we’ve decided to split this contest in two, affording us the opportunity to recognize the best in both personal and documentary storytelling. Personal essays and literary journalism pieces for our 2025 prize issue should explore the theme “Transplant." 

What does it mean to be of a place? What does it mean to transfer something from one place to another? What does it mean to settle into a place? What does it mean to receive something from somewhere or someone else? 

We’re looking for true stories that explore the many interpretations of transplant, from the literal meaning of lifting up and placing somewhere else or giving or receiving an organ; or all the metaphorical meanings of feeling new or different from those around you, to place feelings from one thing onto another, giving your heart to someone else just to have it crushed…

As always, we seek stories across a wide range of forms with a strong sense of place — so keep that in mind as you send us your personal essays, photo essays, reportage, flash nonfiction, and multimedia around the theme of transplant. Pieces should be previously unpublished and if writing, no longer than 6,000 words. At the top of your submission, please include your word count and remove all identifying information from your submission. 

Do you have a transplant story to share? We want to read it (or see it, or take a listen).

Deadline: November 15, 2024. 

Entry Fee: $5.

Each Prize winner will be awarded $200. Entry fees go toward this award, and any fees that push past the cost of running this contest will be put forth to pay true writers in 2025. Finalists will be announced in advance. Winners will be announced in January, the day of publication. 

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About our judges: 

Maggie Messitt (literary journalism) is the author of The Rainy Season, a work of narrative and immersion journalism, long-listed for the 2016 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award in South Africa, where she lived and worked as an independent journalist for 8 years. A dual-citizen, she was the founder of Amazwi, a rural non-profit media organization that trained women journalists, and publisher of its award-winning newspaper, The Villager. She would later become the founding national director of Report for America, a national service program that places emerging journalists in newsrooms across the country, addressing critical coverage gaps and the changing landscape of local news. 

Messitt is currently the Norman Eberly professor of practice in journalism, director of the News Lab, and affiliate faculty in the School of International Affairs at Penn State University. Her second book Newspaper, part of the Object Lessons series published by Bloomsbury, was published in May 2024. 

Daniel M. Lavery (personal essay) is a former “Dear Prudence” advice columnist atSlate, the cofounder ofThe Toast, and theNew York Times-bestselling author ofTexts from Jane Eyre, The Merry Spinster, andSomething That May Shock and Discredit You. His new novel is Women's Hotel. He also writes the popular newsletterThe Chatner. 

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Thank you for considering Proximity for the publication of your true stories. We encourage the submission of original work from everyone---especially women, writers of color, and marginalized individuals, including gender-nonconforming and LGBTQ writers. We are committed to intersectionality and our founding mission.

Submissions must be previously unpublished and submitted to Proximity for publication in one of the following categories: long-form (6,000 words maximum), mid-range (2,000 words maximum), flash (500 words maximum), or photo essay/multimedia. 

Please Note: We do not accept previously published work and we also do not accept work made with the assistance of ChatBots or AI (in addition to stealing the intellectual property of artists, AI-created documents and images are incredibly bad for the environment).