new york times modern love college essay contest 2022

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Peoplehop: modern love college essay contest winner layla faraj.

By Elizabeth Walker on May 15, 2022 2 Comments

Daily Editor Elizabeth Walker interviews Layla Faraj about her experience writing and publishing her winning essay, “My Plea for a Second Love Language.”

When Layla Faraj (BC ‘25) wrote her essay on the intimate dynamics of her family’s WhatsApp group chat, submitting it to the New York Times 2022 Modern Love College Essay Contest was an act of courage for her. After exploring the idea during an assignment in her creative writing class, she expanded the paragraph into the essay that became “ My Plea for a Second Love Language ”—a piece that explores how her extended family turned to a WhatsApp group chat to share their lives with one another after being split apart by the Syrian war.

On Friday, May 6, the New York Times announced that Layla won the Modern Love College Essay Contest, and her work was published both on the newspaper’s website and in their Sunday, May 8 print issue. As someone who has never submitted her work before, it’s been a shock for Layla—but in the best way possible. 

When I spoke to Layla last Monday, it was such a genuine pleasure to get a window into how she sees the world. I came away from our interview with new insights about her writing process, her experience publishing her Modern Love essay, how she’s been documenting her first year at Barnard, and her writing influences.

Note: This conversation has been edited for clarity.

How did you learn about the Modern Love essay writing contest for college students, and what made you decide to submit a piece?

I had never read Modern Love before I got to college. My best friend, Kayla, is the one who sent me this one podcast episode they had, which was about a Syrian doctor and this really fun love story. I was like, oh my god, this is so specific, and yet so wonderful to listen to. I really wanted to get to know the column more, so I started reading it. And then my friend was the one who sent me the essay and was like, “they’re having a contest, you should totally submit something.” 

I’ve actually never submitted anything before to any kind of outlet. I don’t share my writing very often, so this has been super weird knowing that a bunch of people have read my piece. But yeah, I guess my main thought process was that I had something that I knew I wanted to write about anyway, which was WhatsApp, and I was like, this can encourage me to actually get that piece going, and then I’ll just submit it and whatever happens happens. I remember sitting and editing it with one of my friends, and I was like, I don’t really expect anything to happen out of this, but I just want to know that I had the courage to submit. That’s kind of how that happened.

That’s really cool. You said that this is your first time really submitting a piece anywhere. What has your experience been writing growing up, in high school, and in college? 

I never started to think about writing until I was in the sixth grade, or so I had this one teacher who was like, “Hey, you’re not so bad at this writing thing. Try writing.” I was like, okay, so I would do a lot of journaling. I never would follow a prompt and write—it was always like, I just thought of something, and then I would write. 

When I became a freshman in high school, my high school didn’t have a writing club, and so I was like, I kind of want to start a writing club, so I did. I would host open mic/assemblies for Black History Month, and Women’s History Month where people could read their pieces. For the first few years, even though I was head of the Writing Club, I didn’t perform anything. I would just MC, introduce people, and help other people with their pieces, but I’ve never actually performed anything myself. By then, COVID happened, and I never really did get to perform anything, which was crazy. 

I guess the biggest, most formative moment for me in terms of writing more seriously was this semester when I took a creative writing class. I was forced to write things outside of journaling, or like little poems or short stories that I thought to write but never considered editing or fully forming because they were not going anywhere, and I was like, “oh, it’s fine, this is for me.” But being forced to write, like 15-page pieces this semester, illustrated to me the stories that I have hidden in my brain… I think I’ve stumbled upon a lot of ideas that I really want to develop further after this class. The WhatsApp one was one of the things that came out of a prompt that we did for my creative writing class.

Do you remember what the prompt was?

My professor was telling us about the three ways in which to develop a plot for your piece, and it was 1) Things get better, 2) Things get worse, and 3) Things get weird, and I was like, “oh, things get weird.” I had the idea again that WhatsApp is an interesting thing that I would like to talk about, and I was really interested in the “things get weird” aspect. I wrote the paragraph about my family sending me pictures of their bloody noses and bruises in class, and then I was like, “oh, I actually kind of really like this. Let me take this time to use this paragraph in a bigger piece.”

What is your writing process like in general, and then what was it like for this piece?

I think a lot of the fully formed pieces that I’ve written start with me thinking about a moment in my life that I felt was particularly poignant or could be used to illustrate a broader message. For instance, the first piece that I wrote for my [creative writing] class this semester was about my process of learning Turkish. I have a lot of family that lives in Turkey, and I wanted to explore language learning as a means of shedding light on my American privilege. There’s a lot of different elements that went into the piece, but that was more broadly my experience of learning Turkish as opposed to my cousin’s or family’s experience learning Turkish, considering they live in Turkey. 

I had this one specific moment that I’ll never forget in Turkey, where I was in a cafe, and I ordered decaf tea, and they looked at me all funky, and they were like, we don’t have decaf tea. That’s not a thing here. Actually what they did is they were like, huh, we’ll ask, and then I heard him walk back, and he starts laughing in the back. Then he comes back and he’s like, yeah, no decaf tea, sorry. I was like, oh, okay, and that was just a moment [where] I felt super outed. 

I guess when I write, I like to think of moments that I feel like could convey a deeper message. Like in that instance, that outed feeling that I felt I was like, “oh my god, my family that lives in Turkey must have felt this like a million times when they came and they were refugees here.” I wanted to use that personal detail to write an essay about the refugee experience and language learning as a refugee. 

That’s what I’ll do even for the WhatsApp piece that I wrote. I think the first inciting moment was thinking about all the weird things that my family group chat sends, and then thinking “okay, why the heck are they even sending me pictures of their bloody nose? Like what’s the message to that?”, and then forming a piece around that one moment and then maybe even thinking about other moments in my life that when I put them side by side with this, it could get my message across. For Whatsapp Love, it was thinking about the Skype moment, for instance, where I was playing a board game with my cousin [over a Skype call].  

I like to do vignettes and think of moments that when strung together can create a fully formed necklace that looks really pretty and conveys a message.

I honestly really loved that about your piece. I’m personally a fan of the vignette form of writing—I kind of love the way that your piece strung those together. As I was reading it, I was like, “oh, how are all these connected?”, but by the end, it felt like all the strands just wove together, and that was really cool to see.

Thank you—that’s the goal. There’s so many separate moments that happen in that piece, like my mom and I looking through the photo albums, me and my mom in the grocery store getting salsa. There’s so many moments where it’s not necessarily fully fledged like, “this is a story, and this is the beginning and the middle and the end of the story.” But there are very, very tiny scenes to a story that you kind of have to piece together as a reader. I think that’s what I like to get done when I write.

This one line in the piece kind of stood out to me. If I can, I’ll just read it now: 

“I have fulfilled others’ needs, far distant, by thinking of them as I go about my days — in what I experience and feel and create. In documenting my life for them.” 

What has documenting your life looked like during your first year of college?

Oh, that’s a fun question. I’m a big fan of taking little videos of things, even if it’s something that could totally just be a picture, like my coffee cup for instance. I really like to take videos because looking back at them, I get the sense of, “what did it sound like when I took that specific video?” You get more of an atmosphere with videos, so I really like to do that—take videos and put them all together into a little collage. That’s a big thing that I’ve done. 

Another thing that I really like to do is, I’m a big fan of voice memos. I’ll be walking on College Walk, and if I have an idea, I’ll voice memo it. Even if I see something, and it makes me think of someone, I’ll immediately whip out my phone and send them a voice message and be like, “I’m walking right now, but I saw this tree in full bloom, and it just made me think of you. I think you’d really like it.” 

Now that I’m piecing them together, I really like auditory experiences, considering the videos, and also the voice memos. I just think that it’s really personal to hear someone’s voice and hear what’s going on around you. I think it offers a really personal connection. 

Is there like, like one video or one image that you think of when you think of your freshman year?

It’s hard because I feel like I’ve lived so many lives in my freshman year. I look back at the year and I’m like, “oh, my god, like, so many things have happened. It feels like three years in one.” For that reason, it feels a little like, hard to pinpoint, like a specific picture. 

Oh, my gosh, of course. I was thinking of [the question], and I was coming to the same conclusion. I feel like I’ve been so many different people throughout the year. Do you feel the same?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, obviously, “high school me” is going to be completely different from “college me,” but I think that “college me” semester to semester, even month to month is super different too. I don’t know if that’s like a specifically freshman experience because it’s my first time living away from home, and I’m meeting so many people and you’re settling into so many different aspects of your life. 

I definitely feel like if “me now” met “me three months ago”, we’d be using different slang and talking differently and having different views about things, which is, I guess what college is all about.

So true. This is my last “longer” question, but what emotions did writing this piece bring up for you?

I think it was a lot of like, if I’m gonna be honest, jealousy. As I was writing it, and comparing it to the pandemic, I think I just felt super jealous because I was like, “this is a reality that I’ve lived for, like 11 years, and will continue to live for I don’t know how many [years] ”. There’s like, just this open-endedness to it of like, “when will this end?”, and there’s no real answer. When I compared it to the pandemic—obviously, the pandemic was super hard for everyone and not to invalidate that experience, because it’s incredibly difficult to be away from people you love—but I think I was a little jealous. I was talking about quarantine and quarantine has kind of ended, as opposed to this situation of diaspora and it’s been so long and it hasn’t ended. I think that was a big emotion for me. 

Another thing that I felt was definitely thinking about all the moments that have happened in my group chat, and thinking about the people who are no longer in the group chat because they passed away or for whatever other circumstances. I guess I was thinking back on the things that they used to send or say. That was obviously super emotional and made me just kind of miss—in the same way that we’re talking about how you become a different person, month to month—the group chat, in and of itself, becomes different month to month. I guess thinking back to all of its iterations, I missed certain phases of the group chat as opposed to what it is now—not to say that it doesn’t have amazing things to it now, but it’s just different.

I think that makes sense—like any web of social connections, it’s just natural that it’s going to change. Sometimes you like the way it changes, sometimes you miss past iterations like you were saying, but I think that totally makes sense. 

I have a couple of quick questions that I’m wondering. So first, what was your reaction when you found out that you won the essay contest?

I was actually having a really bad day that day, and I was on the way to the Brooks 3 bathrooms to have a silly little cry, and I’m holding my phone and I get an email. I’m like, heck, let me open this, it’s from the New York Times. Then I open it and immediately just like, fall to the floor and I’m just shocked. I was completely, completely shocked. 

So the way that it kind of worked—and I don’t know if this was just my experience, or if it’s everyone who gets published via Modern Love—but they emailed me two weeks before I actually knew that I won, and they were like, “Hi, we’re interested in publishing your piece, but we’re not 100% sure yet. Can you call me?” I was at an open mic at the time, and I remember being like “they’re interested, oh, my god.” I didn’t think anything was gonna come of this. Like, I was just like, super, super in shock. Then I talked to them, and they talked me through a lot of [stuff] like, “if we want to publish it, would you consider editing this part?”, or like, “Could you maybe see, like, adding a paragraph about this in here?”, which was super interesting. The editing process was not what I expected it to be, but in the best way possible. 

I don’t know, it was just a lot of shock because when I submitted it, I didn’t really think anything was going to come of it at all, I was submitting to submit. So yeah, just like shock and disbelief. I think even now when people message me, and they’re like, “oh, my god, like, I read your piece, and it’s so cool”. I’m like, wow, and I feel like there’s some weird disconnect. It’s like, “the me that’s published is not like me,” and it’s like, this imposter syndrome kind of going crazy…

It’s my first time having something published, so like connecting the dots that the thing that I’ve been writing for like a month—it was like a document in Google Docs—is now in print. It’s kind of hard to grasp. Like hearing people say that they’ve read it is also an out-of-body experience because no one’s really read my stuff before.

I don’t know if you told your family, like the WhatsApp group chat, but if so, what were their reactions?

I was so excited about this because I didn’t tell any of my extended family members until the day that it was published online. I wanted to do this very meta thing where I would send the link about the WhatsApp family group chat article to the group chat and have it be this very full-circle moment, which is what I did. I think if I were to take the average of all the reactions, it would be like, “you made us laugh, but you also made us cry, and you kind of brought us back to a lot of different phases of our lives.” 

Even at the beginning, I mentioned it briefly, but a lot of my family members haven’t been back to Syria for like 11 years or so. So they were like, “I was reading this, and emotions of, I used to live there like I used to go there very often came up for me,” and I think there was a lot of like, “Is this really how you see us? Like you really think we’re this funny, like, like we do such stupid things. Do we really do this?”

I think it was a lot of making fun of themselves like, “No way, one of us actually sent a picture of our spilled juice. Did that really happen?” like disbelief almost at seeing themselves in print. They were just in shock, because it’s almost like you’re writing people into characters, and they’re seeing themselves as a character in a story. You know, we do a lot of things that we don’t realize that we do or say a lot of things that we don’t realize that we say. I think having that for them was very funny, but also surprising. Yeah, like a nice reception. They were very, like, “so proud of you.”

Yeah. That’s really cool . I mean, sending the link in the WhatsApp group chat. That’s like perfect…

Do you have a favorite line in this essay or a favorite part?

I think my favorite part is, the two paragraphs that talk about once more of my family members started moving abroad and the way I talk about how the group chat was transformed into a venue of sorts. I really liked that part, because I think up until then, it was kind of light-hearted. Like I was talking about, like, “they’re sending pictures of a brown circle of dirt on my brother’s foot or like, a perfectly mashed up avocado or spilled juice.” But then this [section] is, I think when it kind of gets to be a little more real. 

I like these two paragraphs a lot because I think they illustrate the bulk of what I want to say—even though there’s so many difficult times, the majority of what we talk about [in the group chat] is silly and goofy. I think that’s also kind of made clear by the fact that there’s only two paragraphs that are really focusing on the sad parts. The rest of them are kind of focusing on the silly or like the more hopeful parts. But yeah, I don’t know. I guess I like these two paragraphs because I think they—and I don’t want to sound like I’m tooting my own horn or anything—but I think they’re poignant, and I don’t [even] really like that word, but I think that’s the only way that I could think of describing.

No, I think that’s completely fair. I think they definitely do stand apart in a good way.

In terms of a line that I really like, it’s what I would consider my thesis of the piece:

“We knew that staying connected was less about itching to find something to say to others than it was about carrying them with you as you lived your life, searching for them in your spilled juice and spider veins.”

I think that’s my favorite line because if I had to summarize my piece to anyone, that’s the line that I would choose to summarize it with.

Yeah, I definitely felt like that line was like my takeaway that gave me something really new to think about and that I know I’ll carry with me. 

Who are your writing influences if you have any?

For a really long time, it was Elif Batuman, who wrote The Idiot . I really, really enjoyed [that book], and I think it was really formative in my experience as someone who likes to write because it’s so boring, but in the best way possible. You’re reading this coming-of-age story, and it kind of is almost like nothing is happening. I really like stories where nothing is happening because I think when nothing’s happening, there’s so much room to talk about the little things that everyone does every day. Boring stories just really interest me, because I think they kind of show the most. They’re not trying to be anything—they’re just talking about someone’s day or they’re like character studies in a way, and I just like to really get into someone’s mind and see the way that they’re thinking about things. That’s what I loved most about The Idiot was that the main character is very introspective, and so you’re going throughout her first year in college, and you’re just like, getting to see what she thinks. 

I remember this one line, which I think about all the time, in which the main character asked, “What are people supposed to be thinking about? I have no idea what people are supposed to be thinking about.” That line to me is what I find most interesting when I’m reading or when I’m writing—what are people thinking about? I think the less intense the story is, the more room you have to just hear a person’s thoughts about the silliest things, or the most mundane things, which is what I enjoy. So, I really like Elif Batuman. 

There’s this [other] book called The Magical Language of Others [by E.J. Koh] that I really enjoyed too. It’s a memoir, but it’s structured through these letters that her mom has written to her, and then she translates the letters, and the memoir is like a story of her growing up. I really like that as well, because I think it talks about mother-daughter relationships in a way that I really, really enjoy. That’s something that I like to talk about a lot in my writing. It’s actually really funny— for this WhatsApp Love, I had all of them be references to like my aunt and like my cousin and my cousin’s daughter’s and this and that. Then the editor was like, “can we throw in like an uncle in there?” Ok, ok, I’ll change one of them to an uncle for you. 

I really like to talk about female relationships, and I think that that book does it really well. The mom is not a good mom in the story, and yet, there’s so much love, and so much care and tenderness that I think reading it made me really emotional. I’m also super interested in translation and the process of like, how you can convey the same meaning in different languages, and if that’s even possible? I like the translation element that was added into the book, that was really interesting. 

Do you have a book that you think should be required reading?

What a fun question. There’s an essay that I think would just make so much sense for the fact that we’re at Columbia, which is, Here is New York by E.B. White. I think that I get really shocked when I meet people, and they’re like, I haven’t read that essay, because I think it was so amazing. It also really made me excited about living in New York and just made me think of New York differently. So that would be like—it’s not a book—but I would recommend that it be something that every Columbia student reads or anyone who lives in / studies in the city reads.

Are you working on anything right now?

Because of my class, I think I’ve developed a lot of different ideas for essays that I want to write over the summer. The thing that I’ve officially started writing is an essay that talks about using humor as a way to illustrate belonging. And I want to title it “Inside Jokes”. 

For me growing up—obviously, Arabic is my second language—as a kid, my dad would always tell me, “Oh, I’ll know that you’ve really mastered Arabic when you’re able to tell me jokes in Arabic.” So I want to write an essay exploring humor and language learning. I’m a big fan of language learning/language as a means of communication and language as a means of illustrating something broader, but yeah, humor as a way to feel like you belong is like, what I want to talk about.

My last question is, what are you looking forward to doing when school is over?

This sounds so lame, but I’m actually really excited to just get to read and write personal things—that’s my biggest thing. I think over the course of the year, I’ve been recommended so many good books, and I’ve had so many ideas that I would quickly jot down, but have had no time or space to think about. I guess I’m just ready to have time to read the things I want to read and write the things I want to write. 

I guess a more funny, silly, goofy response is I’m really excited to enjoy the good weather and just be out with people that I like. I’m not a summer baby, but I’m a big summer person and I feel like I should have been a summer baby. [Editor’s Note: Layla is an Aries.] And so yeah, I’m just excited to be out and get to, like watch people. 

I’m a big people watcher, and I don’t do a lot of it, surprisingly, in the city, because I get sucked into the [Columbia] bubble quite often. So I’m excited to have free time where I can devote it to just observing and watching people. It’s like that quote that goes “you can’t sit down to write until you’ve stood up to live.” I want to go out and see people, and I like to turn strangers into characters and write about them. So I’m excited for that too.

header by Elizabeth Walker

headshot via Layla Faraj

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Submissions are currently open for the New York Times Modern Love College Essay Contest . The prize is awarded to a current U.S. college student for an essay that “illustrates the current state of love and relationships.” The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in the New York Times Sunday Styles section and on nytimes.com . Four runners-up will also receive publication in the Times Sunday Styles section and on nytimes.com.

The New York Times Modern Love column has sponsored its college essay contest two previous times—in 2008 and 2011—and received thousands of submissions each year from students representing hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the country. Caitlin Dewey won the 2011 prize for her essay “Even in Real Life, There Were Screens Between us,” and Marguerite Fields won the inaugural prize in 2008 for her essay “Want to Be My Boyfriend? Please Define.” The essays of previous finalists can also be read on the New York Times website.

For more information about the Modern Love column, read Jones’s article “How We Write About Love.”

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The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister Hardcover – March 15, 2022

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“Shines a light on the stigma surrounding mental health and schizophrenia. This deeply personal memoir will give readers greater empathy and understanding in supporting those who are oftentimes misunderstood.” —Sheryl Sandberg

As a child, all Kait Leddy had ever wanted was a little sister. When Kyleigh was born, she and Kait were inseparable; Kait would protect her, include her, cuddle, and comfort her. To Kyleigh, her big sister was her whole world.

But as Kait entered adolescence, her personality changed. She began lashing out emotionally and physically and sometimes lost touch with reality, behavior that worsened after a traumatic head injury. The family struggled to keep this terrifying, often violent, side of Kait private—at school and in her social life, she was still the gorgeous, effervescent life of the party. Powerless to help, Kyleigh watched in horror as her perfect sibling’s world began to collapse and Kait was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Then, in January 2014, twenty-two-year-old Kait disappeared. Though her body was never found, security footage showed her walking to the peak of Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge, where it is presumed that she jumped. In this extraordinary memoir— a story of hope, grief, mental illness, and enduring love—a grieving Kyleigh reflects on her sister and their life together, honoring their bond and searching for answers and a way to find meaning in this devastating loss.

• Print length 304 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Harper
• Publication date March 15, 2022
• Dimensions 6 x 1.01 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0358469341
• ISBN-13 978-0358469346
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

One of PopSugar 's "Best New Books of 2022" — No Source

“Leddy seeks courageously to “break the stigma” and silence that still surround schizophrenia and similar disorders while paying tribute to the woman whose life so profoundly transformed her own. A moving and deeply felt memoir about family and mental illness." — Kirkus Reviews

“Exceptionally thoughtful and insightful.” — Booklist Online

"Deep, everlasting love, grief and the mysteries of mental illness are undercurrents that propel The Perfect Other , a chilling, moving memoir by Kyleigh Leddy. Leddy's raw search for understanding, meaning and peace grants readers a rare personal glimpse into the universal mysteries of mental illness and the long-lasting traumatic effects it has on those afflicted, as well as those in its orbit. A hauntingly reflective memoir details the intricacies of mental illness and the bonds of sisterly love and loyalty in this life--and beyond." — Shelf Awareness

“Heartrending… Leddy offers a humanist portrait of the nuances of loving someone with mental illness… Gutting in its intensity… but well worth the effort.”  — Publishers Weekly

"The Perfect Other" by Kyleigh Leddy is an emotional memoir about the bond between sisters, and breaking the stigma surrounding discussions of mental health." — Popsugar

About the Author

Kyleigh Leddy received her bachelor’s degree from Boston College and her MSW from Columbia University in advanced clinical practice and public policy. In 2019, she won the New York Times “Modern Love” college essay contest for a piece she wrote about grieving her sister, Kait. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the New York Times, Parents, and The Cut . She is based in New York City, and The Perfect Other  is her first book.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper; Advance Reader Copy edition (March 15, 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0358469341
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0358469346
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.01 x 9 inches
• #276 in Sibling Relationships (Books)
• #1,870 in Popular Psychology Pathologies
• #20,502 in Memoirs (Books)

About the author

Kyleigh leddy.

Kyleigh Leddy holds a bachelor's degree from Boston College and an MSW from Columbia University. In 2019, she won the New York Times Modern Love college essay contest for an essay about grieving her sister, Kait. Her work has since appeared in the New York Times, Parents, The Cut, as well as other publications. She was recently named Forbes 30 Under 30 for Media. She is based in New York City, and "The Perfect Other" is her first book.

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Malcolm Conner of Trinity University Wins Modern Love College Essay Contest

Malcolm Conner’s essay “ The Physics of Forbidden Love ” won the 2017 Modern Love College Essay Contest .

The winning essay was chosen from nearly 2,000 entries from about 500 colleges and universities nationwide. Mr. Conner, a student at Trinity University, will receive $1000.

In addition to publishing the winning essay ( online now and in print on April 30), The Times will publish the essays of the four finalists each week in May.

On the contest and winning essay, Daniel Jones , editor of Modern Love , says:

“Every time we hold this contest I’m impressed by the depth of understanding students have about the complexities of their relationships, and also by the depth of problems some are dealing with. This year our current political climate showed up in many of these stories. Fittingly, that was an element of our winning essay too, the story of a relationship between a transgender man and an immigrant Indian woman in San Antonio, Texas.”

The New York Times 2017 Modern Love College Essay Contest Results

Malcolm Conner, Trinity University

Emily DeMaioNewton, Elon University

Clara Dollar, New York University

Ellis Jeter, Columbia University

Lauren Petersen, University of Chicago

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Nick Rowan Bassman, Oberlin College

Sadie McEniry, Johnson County Community College

Caroline Tan, Penn State University

Kai Williams, Wesleyan University

Audrey Zheng, Dartmouth College

OTHER NOTABLE ESSAYS

Rebecca Asoulin, Dartmouth College

Zoe Butler, Brown University

Michael Fischer, Northeastern Illinois University

Caroline Grand, Trinity University

Danya Issawi, University of Kansas

Srishti Kapur, University of Chicago

Minahil Khan, Harvard University

Danny Kelleher, Northwestern University

Amelia Nierenberg, Yale University

Elizabeth Shackney, Wesleyan University

Joy Shen, Dartmouth College

Natalie Tsay, Cornell University

Sophia Tulp, Ithaca College

Alina Utrata, Stanford University

Haley Wade, Barnard College

Learn more about this year’s Modern Love College Essay Contest here .

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Our 15th Annual Summer Reading Contest

Students are invited to tell us what they’re reading in The Times and why, this year in writing OR via a 90-second video. Contest dates: June 7 to Aug. 16.

By The Learning Network

The illustrations for this post were originally created by Adolfo Redaño for “ Summer Books 2023 .”

Our Summer Reading Contest is our longest-running challenge — and our simplest.

All you have to do to participate is tell us what you’re reading, watching or listening to in The New York Times and why.

Don’t have a subscription? No problem! We’ll be providing dozens of free links to teen-friendly articles, essays, videos, podcasts and graphics every week from June through August.

And this summer, both to celebrate the contest’s 15th year and to shake things up a bit, we’ll be trying something new: Students can enter as they always have by submitting a short written response — or they can make a video up to 90 seconds long.

Got questions? We have answers. Everything you need is detailed below.

But if you’re a teacher who would like to have your students practice for this now, before the contest begins, note that the only rule around content is that a piece must have been published in 2024. Beyond that, we don’t care if your students pick something on cats , chatbots , the cost of college or the crisis in the Middle East ; Beyoncé , book bans , basketball or banana bread . We just want to hear what they think. To help, we’ve created a special practice forum . Join us!

Have fun, and, as always, post your questions here or write to [email protected].

This announcement is available as a one-page PDF to hang on your class bulletin board.

Here’s what you need to know:

The challenge, rules and guidelines, resources for teachers, students and parents, frequently asked questions, how to submit.

Choose something in The New York Times that got your attention and tell us why — via a short written or video response.

Here’s how the contest works:

Every Friday for 10 weeks beginning on June 7, we will publish a post asking the same question: “What got your attention in The Times this week?” That’s where you should submit your response any time until the following Friday at 9 a.m. Eastern, when we will close that post and open a new one that asks the same question. On Aug. 9 we’ll post our final question of the summer, open until 9 a.m. on Aug. 16.

You can enter every week, or any week, all summer long, but you may only submit once each week.

You can always find the proper link to the place to submit at the top of this page, updated each week. Once the contest begins, you can also find it on our home page . Please see the How to Submit section below for more details.

You can choose anything you like that was published in the print paper or on nytimes.com in 2024, including articles, Opinion and guest essays , videos , graphics, photos and podcasts . To see the variety of topics winners have responded to over the years, read this column .

Then tell us what Times piece you chose and why it got your attention via a 250-word essay OR a 90-second video. See the full Rules and Guidelines for each type of response below. We have a contest rubric , as well as a guide for students that details four simple ways to make your response stand out.

We’ll choose winners each week, and every Tuesday during the contest, starting June 25, we’ll publish them in a separate post, which you can find here . All written and video entries will be judged together. We will also celebrate the winners on Facebook.

Please read these rules and guidelines carefully before you make your submissions.

Guidelines for written responses

Your written response should tell us what you read, watched or listened to in The Times and why it got your attention. You can find many examples in this column , which spotlights the work of our previous winners.

This guide walks you through some of the key elements of a great reader response, including making a personal connection to the piece, thinking critically about it, referencing specific details or quotes, and writing in your own unique voice.

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:

Written responses must be no more than 1,500 characters, or about 250 words.

Make sure to i nclude the complete URL or headline of the Times piece you have chosen. For example, “The Joys and Challenges of Caring for Terrance the Octopus” or https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/us/tiktok-octopus-pet-oklahoma.html. Yes, this is included in the word count.

Guidelines for video responses

Just as with written responses, video responses should explain what Times piece you chose and why you chose it. The advice in this guide , while originally created with written responses in mind, can apply to video, as well.

We hope you’ll be creative, but that doesn’t mean your video has to be complicated or use special effects; sometimes simple is best. All you need is yourself and the camera on your phone to make a great video response.

Here are the guidelines:

Use a phone to shoot your video vertically (so it looks like the videos you might see on TikTok or Instagram Reels ).

Your video must be 90 seconds or fewer .

Please be sure to say or show the headline of the Times piece you are discussing.

Your video MAY NOT use any images, video clips, music or sound effects, other than those that appear in the Times piece you are discussing or what you create yourself. We cannot publish your video if it uses any copyrighted images or sounds — including TikTok sounds.

Make sure we can see and hear your video clearly. Pay attention to lighting and try to limit background noise as much as possible if it’s not an intentional part of your video.

Please do not include anyone else in your video. For the most part, we recommend filming only yourself, inanimate objects, animals, or your Times piece. You may film crowds of people in public places, but, to protect people’s privacy, try to avoid any close-ups.

A few additional rules

These rules apply to both written and video responses:

You can participate as often as every week, but we allow only ONE submission per person per week.

Any teenager 13 to 19 years old anywhere in the world is invited to join us , as long as you are in middle or high school, or have graduated from high school in 2024 and haven’t started college yet. See below, How to Submit , for more details.

The children and stepchildren of New York Times employees are not eligible to enter this contest. Teenagers who live in the same household as a Times employee are also ineligible.

The work you submit should be fundamentally your own — it should not be plagiarized, created by someone else or generated by artificial intelligence.

Your work must be original for this contest. That means it should not already have been published at the time of submission, whether in your school newspaper, for another contest, or anywhere else.

Keep in mind that the work you send in should be appropriate for a Times audience — that is, something that could be published in a family newspaper (so, please, no curse words).

For this contest, you must work alone , not in pairs or a group.

Entries must be received by the deadline at 9 a.m. Eastern time each Friday to be considered.

We have created many resources to help students practice for and participate in this contest over the years. Although they were written with the goal of helping students create written responses, many of them can work for video, too.

Writing Resources and Lesson Plans: Our full unit on independent reading and writing has lesson plans, writing prompts and mentor texts that can support students in the kind of thinking we’re asking them to do for this contest.

But, to see how easy this contest is, you might start with “ A Simple Exercise for Encouraging Independent Reading .” We invited four teachers across the country to try a short experiment in which they challenged their students to read a Times article on a topic within their comfort zone, and one article on a topic outside it. In this piece, they and their students reflect on the successful results.

We also have a Student Opinion question that challenges any student to do the same.

Student Mentors: “ Writing Rich Reading Responses: Participating in Our Summer Contest ” showcases a series of student-written mentor texts that demonstrate the four key elements that can make a short response — whether in a written or video format — sing.

You can also read all of the winning student entries from 2017 to the present , including reflections from many participants and judges.

And, check out a video version of our “Annotated by the Author” series (embedded above) in which two student winners of our 2020 contest discuss the “writer’s moves” they made.

Webinars: Teachers, to learn more about this contest and how you can teach with it, watch this free on-demand webinar from 2020 . And, to get ideas for supporting your students’ independent reading and writing, watch this on-demand webinar from 2021 .

Our Rubric: This is the rubric our judges will use to judge this contest. We’re looking for written and video responses that include personal connections, critical thinking, references to the source material, and voice and style.

Q. What kinds of responses are you looking for?

A. The subject matter isn’t important; neither is whether you loved or hated it. What we care about is what you have to say about why you picked it.

If you don’t believe us, scroll through the work of previous winners . They have written on weighty topics like abortion , racism , the war in Ukraine , Alzheimer’s disease , climate change and the dangers of vaping , but they have also covered handbags , hummingbirds , the Minions , text messaging , staycations , power naps, junk food , Wordle , Disney shows, running and bagels.

Whatever the subject, you’ll see that the best responses year after year make personal connections to the news and discuss the broader questions and ideas that the topic raises. We have even created a guide that outlines four simple things you can do to make your responses more powerful. We will use this rubric to judge entries.

So whether you were moved by an article , irked by an essay , bowled over by a photo , or inspired by a video , simply find something in The Times that genuinely interests you and tell us why, as honestly and originally as you can.

Q. Since you now offer the option to respond in video, are you looking for something different in that format?

Short answer: No. Longer answer: We’re excited to see what you come up with! We’ve purposely not put a lot of guidelines around what you can create since a) it’s summer, and we want this to be casual and b) we hope you’ll surprise us and show us what’s possible.

Though at the beginning all our contests focused on writing, in recent years we’ve been trying to encourage other forms of composition and expression. We hope you’ll take a risk and submit in video at least once this summer.

Q. Who will be judging my work?

A. The Learning Network staff, a team of New York Times journalists, along with educators from across the country.

Q. What is the “prize”?

A. The prize for winning any of our contests is having your work published on The Learning Network.

Q. When should I check to see if my submission won?

A. Every Tuesday from June 25 until Aug. 27, we will publish the previous week’s winner or winners in a separate article that you can find here . We will also celebrate the winners on Facebook.

Q. How do I participate in this contest if I don’t have a digital subscription to The Times?

A. All Learning Network posts for students, as well as all Times articles linked from them, are accessible without a digital subscription . So if you use any of the articles we have linked to on our site, they will not be blocked.

Each time we pose our question — “What got your attention in The Times this week?” — we will link to dozens of recent, teen-friendly pieces that you can choose from if you don’t have your own subscription.

You can also find copies of The New York Times at most public libraries, and some even allow you to access NYTimes.com with your library card.

And remember: You can use anything published anytime in 2024.

Q. How do I prove to my teacher that I participated?

A. If you are 13 to 19 in the United States and Britain — or 16 to 19 elsewhere in the world — and are submitting your written response by posting a comment, make sure to check the box that asks if you would like to be emailed when your comment is published. If you do so, the system will send you a link to your comment, which you can use to show your teacher, your parents, your friends or anyone else you’d like to impress. (Please note that you will not get an email until the comment has been approved, which may take longer over weekends.)

If you are submitting a video response or an adult is submitting a written response on behalf of an eligible student via the embedded form at the bottom of the post, please take a screenshot if a student needs proof that they are participating in the contest. You will not receive a confirmation email.

Another method? Some teachers ask students to keep a Google Doc of all their submissions, while others instruct students to take screenshots of their responses before they hit “submit.”

Q. How can teachers, librarians and parents use this challenge?

A. Our goals for this contest include some that appear on many educators’ lists. We want to help students become more aware of the world and their place in it; learn how to navigate sophisticated nonfiction; and create for a real audience, beyond the classroom. But more than anything else, we just want students to realize that reading the newspaper can be fun.

Through the years, adults have told us over and over that participating in this contest has made their students both more aware of and more interested in what’s going on in the world. Many see it as a low-stakes way to help teenagers start building a news-reading habit.

And, too, at a time when some educators are alarmed by the ability of chatbots to do students’ work for them, this is a contest that rewards the human touch. As our step-by-step guide to participating shows, what we’re looking for are genuine personal connections to the news, explored with voice, style and personality — something A.I. can’t (yet?) do with anywhere near the verve of the teenagers we hear from.

Another reason? For some teachers, assigning the contest over the summer helps them to quickly get to know their new students when school starts. In our related webinar , Karen Gold, English department chair at The Governor’s Academy in Byfield, Mass., details how she uses the contest in this way.

But maybe the most compelling reason to assign this contest is what students themselves say about it. In 2017, Emma Weber, a student from London, posted that, thanks to the contest, “I feel grounded in my views and understand what’s going on in the world. It’s amazing what a change 1,500 characters a week make.” In 2020 we invited Emma to help judge the entries, and here is what she had to say after Week 10:

I know firsthand that the Summer Reading Contest has the ability to change the way one engages in the news — I went from passively reading to actively thinking and questioning. The more you reflect on what is going on in the world and what interests you about it, the more you will understand your place within it. I urge all those who enjoyed participating this summer to continue reading, reflecting and writing.

Thank you for making this contest a hit year after year, and please spread the word that it’s back for its 15th season.

Any 13- to 19-year-old anywhere in the world is invited to join us, if you are in middle or high school, or if you graduated from high school and haven’t yet started college.

Every Friday starting on June 7, we’ll post a fresh version of this question: “What got your attention in The Times this week?” We will link to each week’s version at the top of this post. Here is an example from last summer. How you respond to this question will depend on your age and whether you are choosing to respond via writing or video, but all responses will be judged together.

For written responses:

Students ages 13 to 19 in the United States and Britain — and ages 16 to 19 elsewhere in the world — can submit by posting a comment on the post itself. See the GIF below to see how to do that.

If you are a teacher, parent or guardian of a student or child who is ages 13 to 15 anywhere in the world besides the United States and Britain, then you should submit an entry on the student’s behalf using the form embedded at the bottom of each week’s post.

For video responses:

All students should use the form at the bottom of each week’s post to submit video responses. Students ages 13 to 19 in the United States and Britain — and ages 16 to 19 elsewhere in the world — can submit their own entries. Students ages 13 to 15 anywhere else in the world must have a parent, teacher or guardian submit on their behalf.