To each of you personally, we at the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers are deeply sorry for the confusion and frustrations caused by the technical issues during our transition to a new submission portal for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. We also extend our sincerest apologies to our hardworking regional partners whose programs have been impacted by the portal’s technical issues.

The Alliance remains steadfast in our commitment to providing access to as many teens as possible to the Awards and the opportunities it presents young creatives—from recognition to scholarships. This will never waiver and is the same reason we sought to build a new portal in the first place, and that determined our path forward this year.

To help us provide a better user experience and to ensure access for as many 2024 Award participants as possible, we have asked all our regional partners that have the flexibility to extend—or reopen—their deadlines to the new year, up through February 29. We understand that this is not a viable possibility for some of our committed partners, and that each partner needs to make the decisions that are best and most realistic for its community. For those regions, our hope is that our current action plan decreases the traffic flow on the portal substantially enough to create a better experience where deadlines must remain. For your most recent regional deadline, please visit our website.

For students with deadlines between January 15 and February 29, we request that you pause on accessing the portal until the new year. For students whose deadlines have already passed and were prevented from entering due to technology this season, we are currently exploring options to provide you with access to participate in this year’s Awards. This may not ultimately be viable, but it is a top consideration, and we will share more as we explore these options further. For answers to specific questions related to your entry, please visit our blog post on troubleshooting tips.

To accommodate these regional extensions, the national office will be either reimagining or postponing the national celebrations that were originally scheduled for June 2024. This allows us to put our full focus on ensuring that all entries received are judged and conferred, and ultimately every Award recorded to open the many doors of opportunities that this program presents to students and their educators.

Given the experiences of the past several weeks, we expect this year to continue to present challenges for us all, but the goal of these steps is to smooth the path ahead as much as possible. All of us—the staff at the Alliance, our valued regional partners throughout the country, educators, parents, jurors, alumni, and students alike—care deeply about the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and through your help the Awards will emerge from this transition as the vital and beloved American institution they have been for a century. Thank you so much for your patience and understanding.