We’re looking for anything that you’re creating to express yourself in our current political climate. All submissions should fit under at least one of our six categories: Identity, Mental Health, Race Politics, Environment, Gender Politics, and/or Gun Reform.
Some examples of what you might submit include (but are not limited to): Articles, Prose, Poetry, Rants, Paintings, Photography, 3D work, Collage, Drawings, Video, Music, Playlists, Comics, Interviews, or Podcasts.
Please include your name, age, pronouns, and the issue you’re tackling. If you would like your social media to be published alongside your work, include it in your email.
You must be at least 13 years old and no older than 19 years old to submit to DearAdultWorld.com
If you are submitting a visual art piece or series, we require some form of artist’s statement or rationale (to be published alongside the work). Tell us about your artistic process and how the object came to be. Any visual art sent without this will not be considered for publication.
If you are submitting some form of writing and have images that correspond, we would be grateful if you include these in your email. Not all images sent to DearAdultWorld will be published, but we may use said images to inform what type of imagery to match with your writing.
In the summer of 2019, we offered a $1,000 scholarship competition. Over two hundred applications were received and the winner was announced in mid-August.
SCHOLARSHIP UPDATE #2:
We have completed our second scholarship competition, and we encourage you to check out the winner’s pieces!
Our scholarship funding is provided through grant money, so while we can not formally announce another competition at this time, should we receive more funding, all pieces submitted after September 1, 2020, will be considered for the award. In short, please continue to submit your pieces!
Send any questions regarding the competition to diana@dearadultworld.com
Please be tasteful and artful in your use of mature themes such as drugs, sex, nudity, violence, or language. We are a website created by teens for teens, and we want your authentic voice to be heard. With that said, please do not incriminate yourself when submitting content to DearAdultWorld.
If you are submitting work in the category of Mental Illness, please keep in mind that work depicting self-harm or suicidal ideations is not likely to be published. Please be sensitive and hyper-aware when creating content regarding these themes and include any necessary trigger warnings when submitting.
Moreover, with the recent BLM protests, we want to remind everyone to please not submit images with protestor’s faces. For the safety and privacy of those involved, we will not be publishing these images. We also want to discourage you from submitting pieces that speak for movements that are not your own. If you are white and would like to speak on BLM, please address those tensions in your submission. We are guests in each others’ fights for liberation and true allyship includes decentering practice.
