Current Thoreau's Rooster Submission Information

If you are an undergraduate student please submit your creative nonfiction for the seventh annual edition of Thoreau's Rooster.

Thoreau's Rooster is a national web review for undergraduate writers of creative nonfiction. The review is edited by students at Assumption College in Worcester, MA, about 40 miles from Thoreau's old haunts at Walden's Pond. Selections for the publication are made by a team of student editors, plus the advisor (nature writing teacher Mike Land) and English professor Jim Lang (founder of Assumption's creative nonfiction writing class.) The 2002-2003 contests were judged by essayist David Gessner, author of three books of creative nonfiction. The 2004-2005 contests were judged by fiction writer Trudy Lewis, and the 2006-2007 contests were judged by nature writer Bill Roorbach. The prize includes a $200 check.

The review reflects the commitment of Assumption College and the English Department to promoting the growth of the student in every dimension: Creative nonfiction challenges writers to connect their lives to a broader history of experiences and ideas, and to make those connections in a way that intrigues an audience of strangers.

The genre thus helps the writers meet an essential goal of higher education: The evolution of student as meaning-makers.

As undergraduates aren't the publication-mongers the rest of us can be in academics, we encourage teachers to remind students repeatedly of this opportunity, and even award credit to those who submit to the review. Otherwise, we find that many students lack the confidence to submit work. We will be happy to provide teachers with confirmation that the student has submitted work, and we'll be glad to collaborate with writing teachers in other ways as well.

"I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbours up."

– Henry David Thoreau