To the New Winners

On March 25, as I was dreading preparing for my trip to Hollywood, I missed something. Something important. That was the day the first winners of the 2026 Writers of the Future contest were announced.

First Place went to Casey Phillips of Tennessee. Second Place to Sandra Siegienski of Oregon. Third to Caleb Bishop from Missouri. I haven’t read their stories yet, but I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t gotten to know them yet, but I hope I will.

In any event, it was a reminder that my time with Writers of the Future has ended. I know it isn’t really an ending. As the folks who run the contest are wont to remind us, they aren’t just going away. But for me, it still feels like an ending. The end of my time as a contestant. As a hopeful. The end of my invisible work, and the beginning of my life as a published author.

But while I’m moving up and on, for Casey, Sandra, Caleb, and the other nine as-yet unnamed Writers of the Future Vol. 43 winners, the journey is just beginning. So as I pen what will likely be my final WOTF-related post, I’d like to address the WOTF 43 winners directly.

To the winners of Writers of the Future, Vol. 43

Congratulations. Whether you’d barely begun submitting or you’re sitting on a mountain of honorable mentions, you’re probably still in shock. I know I was, when I got that first call from Joni last year. And the second, informing me I’d actually won.

So take a moment. Breathe. You did it. And your win will change your life. Perhaps not the way you expect, perhaps not quite as much. But it will.

You’re a published author now. Well…soon to be published, anyway. That means you have obligations. You’ll sign your contract, and from then on you’re a part of Writers of the Future. Before long you’ll be put in touch with Jody Lynn Nye, who will be your editor, as well as Meliva, who will do a lot of the nitty-gritty work in editing with you. They’re both incredible people. If you’ve never worked with an editor before, remember this simple guideline: try to accept around eighty to ninety percent of their suggestions. They’ve been doing this for a while. Consider their suggestions a learning opportunity, and apply them to your next story.

Carmen will line up interviews and podcast appearances. Your first will probably be the Author’s Quill. The host, Joe, is an…interesting guy. But he’s a kind person, and loves meeting all the winners. More importantly you’ll be on with John Goodwin, who will tell you what you’re in for when you get to Los Angeles. You’ll find it all hard to believe. Believe every word of it. If anything, he’s understating.

And you’ll also meet at least one of your fellow winners. For the first time, you’ll see a face, hear a voice, of someone else like you.

Next spring, you’ll board a plane for LAX, and the most incredible week of your life will begin. You’ll have a hard time believing it, even while it’s happening. The Author Services building is beautiful. The Roosevelt Hotel is nice…even if they do take the coffee urns away too early, and don’t keep the bar open late enough.

Before you go, you might want to check out my Winner’s Survival Guide. The workshop is intense. You’ll meet a lot of industry professionals and successful authors. Like you. They will welcome you into their ranks with open arms. I talked about the weather with Orson Scott Card. Larry Niven took me aside to shake my hand before the awards show. And afterward, when I was reunited with my friends in the lobby of the Roosevelt, Kevin J. Anderson handed me a beer.

Speaking of my friends: you and your fellow Vol. 43 winners will become friends. You’ll be amazed at how fast you all gel together. Perks of speaking the same language, sharing the same goals, the same dreams. You’ll go out of your way to spend all the time you can with them, and when you leave LA you’ll miss them dearly, but you’ll stay in touch.

On the awards night, don’t forget to breathe. Take sunscreen; it gets pretty toasty on the red carpet. And snag water whenever you can. Rehearse your speech the night before, and again the morning of.

When you return home with your trophy, it will feel like a letdown. But trust me, it’s not over. You still have your book release, signing events, interviews and podcasts. And of course you have your next story to write.

With all that in mind, never forget this one, very important thing:

You’ve earned this

If you’ve won the contest, odds are you’ve never been professionally published before. When you’re an aspiring writer, struggling to make it, it’s easy to feel pathetic. But always remember that publishing is not a charity. You didn’t win Writers of the Future because the judges felt sorry for you. You won because they saw something in you, something nobody else had seen before: the potential for greatness.

You got here by writing at least one really awesome story. You beat out thousands of other entrants. Now, you’re one of the twelve best emerging genre fiction writers of 2026. That means something. You’re not pathetic anymore. You’re not struggling. You’ve finally got your foot in the door. What you do with that is entirely up to you.

You wrote an awesome story. You can do it again. And again and again and again. You can make a career out of this. You can be the next Nnedi Okorafor, or Nina Kiriki Hoffman. You made it this far. Writing, I’ve found, is a constant cycle of looking at something you’ve written and thinking I’ll never write anything better than this, then looking at that same story a few weeks or months later and thinking, How did I ever think this was the best I could do?

The story that won Writers of the Future was the best story you’d ever written…until then. Until the next one.

So, on behalf of myself, all the Writers of the Future Vol. 42 winners, and all those that came before us, welcome. We’re going to do big things together, and make sure this is the best experience of your life…until the next one. – MK

Writers of the Future, Vol. 42 is now available, through Amazon and wherever fine literature is sold. It includes my winning story, “In Living Color’. And don’t miss Writers of the Future, Vol. 43, due out next spring.