Register for the 2025 Sokol H.S. Literary Awards Contest

After you register you will be prompted to submit your work via e-mail. (entry deadline: Friday, January 31, 2025).

Winners will be contacted in the Spring.

The Awards Ceremony and Reception will be held on Thursday, April 24, 2025 from 4pm-5:30pm in the Kate Gleason Auditorium at Central Library, 115 South Avenue.

View the 2025 flyer for contest details and instructions.

About the Sokol Awards

Since 1958, the Friends & Foundation of the Rochester Public Library has sponsored a creative writing contest for Monroe County high school students. Entries from public, private, charter schools and Home Schools are welcomed.

In 1985, Eli & Mildred Sokol established an endowment through the Community Foundation, which makes it possible for FFRPL to award monetary prizes to the winners, and honoraria to the judges. The Sokols’ foresight and generosity ensures that FFRPL will be able to maintain this legacy program for young writers in perpetuity.

Cash Prizes

$1,500 in cash prizes are awarded: $300 for first prize (Prose and Poetry); $200 for second prize (Prose and Poetry); $100 for third prize (Prose and Poetry); and one $300 prize for Performance. If a group wins the performance prize, the prize is equally divided by the number of people in the group.

Sokol programs (including student entries and judges’ commentary)

View the 2024 Sokol Program.

View the 2023 Sokol Program.

View the 2022 Sokol Program.

Sokol Award Winners posted to SUNY Brockport’s Open Access Repository

Thanks to our partners at The College at Brockport, the complete collection of Sokol award winning entries from 2015 can be viewed and downloaded.

Cumulatively, winning entries have been viewed 2,387 times, from 63 countries!