The Winterhouse Writing Awards are here! The Winterhouse Writing Awards are here!

Every March, we brush off the files and scour through the archives, hoping against hope that we’ll find three experimental works, fiction pieces, works of journalism, essays, reviews, bits of history and theory, poems, plays, screenplays, or proposals for any kinds of projects in which writing about design comes into play that might be good enough to knock our judges’ (Pentagram-designed?) socks off. This year is no different. Except that we’re here. Sharing the prospects of glory and all.

Previous winners include 2008’s David Barringer, whose I.D. story called “Raining on Evolution’s Parade” sent us reeling all over the image-saturated continuum, West Coast Metropolis legend—all three of her submissions were first published there, making it just as much a win for the magazine—Jade Chang, and inaugural winner Thomas de Monchaux, an official Edificial Top-Five-to-Seven and eerily on-target all-rounder, the kind of Renaissance writer as at home with Mr. St. Laurent as he is with Frank.

Judges have included twitterer Kurt Andersen, change-happy Julie Lasky, worker poet Meghan O’Rourke, reader Allison Arieff, apertured Melissa Harris, visionary Bruce Sterling (!!), short essayist Michael Bierut, PAP publisher Kevin Lippert, and New Yorker Judith Thurman. People to buy this year’s gift baskets for are: typographist Rick Poynor, object teacher Alice Rawsthorn, The Sorkin, and chair William Drenttel, co-founder of both the necessary Design Observer and competition-running and world-of-design-changing outfit Winterhouse.

Competition opens today, with a deadline of June 2 and an award amount of $10K. So don’t mind us for the next few months. We might be a little distracted by the reformatting of our every last keyword into 8.5-layout Courier 10. Because it’s on.

Winterhouse Writing Awards [AIGA]