Writopia Lab's Youth Essay Conference

The submission deadline for our 2025 conference has passed.

We will open up submissions to our 2026 conference towards the end of the year.

For the last eight years, the essay conference has brought together a group of thoughtful young essayists to share their ideas with each other and the community.

Over the course of a day, essayists are broken up into small panels, arranged by topic. They read an excerpt of their essay, answer questions about their writing, and engage in a robust discussion with their peers. We celebrate their thoughtfulness and bravery in asserting their ideas.

We are especially excited to read essays that take some sort of risk. What does that mean? After all, academic essays often have a set of rules. Essay writing is usually synonymous with structure. Should we just break all of the rules? Not exactly. We still want you to think critically about structure and use the form that helps you express your thoughts effectively. More, what we’re looking for are essays that show you have some skin in the game. This is a topic that excites and challenges you. How do you do this? Here’s our simple checklist that we ask you to consider.

• Does my essay explore a theme, topic, or idea that’s important to me?
• Do I dig deep? Do I offer fresh, new insights?
• Am I taking at least one risk of some kind? In content, structure, and research?
• Does my essay include a real-world connection?