Rejection Competition is open to writers of all levels, all genres, all ages, all over the world.

Every year, Reneé Bibby runs a friendly competition to see who can acquire the most literary rejections in a calendar year. Inspired by Kim Liao’s Lit Hub article “Why you Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year,” the competition reframes rejections as “wins.”

Read about the perks of Rejection Competition in Janelle Drumwright’s Lit Mag Lounge Substack article “Turn Your Lit Mag Rejections into ‘Wins’ This Year.”

What counts as rejections?

• The competition is for literary magazine publication rejections of poetry, essays, creative non fiction, micro fiction, flash, and short stories. Currently this does not support rejections for novels, agent representation, residencies, or writing positions.

• It’s the rejection date that counts, not the submission date. If you submit the piece in the previous year but receive the rejection in the current competition it counts towards that year’s competition.

• Each rejection of a piece counts even if it is submitted in a bundle. For example, if you submit three flash pieces together and all three are rejected, you add three to your total count. There is always the chance that one of your three submissions is accepted (huzzah!), which makes the situation more clear that all of your pieces have their own publication journey.

• It’s purely rejections, not publication ratio. Part of the competition includes celebration of acceptances but winners claim their division solely on the number of rejections.

What are the timelines?

• The competition runs January 1st–December 31st every year.

• It’s more fun to join earlier in the year to take advantage of the motivating power of competition, but as people find their way to to the competition in a variety of ways, writers are allowed to join January - November of a given year. November or December requests to join will be rolled into the upcoming year.

How does it work?

Divisions

Writers compete in Divisions. The goal is for writers to be appropriately matched to other writers. Based only on their rejection count from the previous year, writers are sorted into a division at the start of the competition.

The 2026 Divisions

1. The Full Stops (300+) 

2. The Curly Brackets (201 - 300)

3. The Ampersands (126 - 200)

4. The Semicolons (51 - 125)

5. The Quotation Marks (26 - 50)

6. The Em Dashes (11 - 25)

7. The Exclamation Points (1 - 10)

In the spring and the fall, Reneé does a recalibration of the divisions, moving writers, as needed, to a division that matches their current count and pace.

Tracking Rejections

We use a custom built Google Sheet to track rejections in a shared space, with live leaderboard updating.

• Every month, writers enter their rejection tallies into a shared Google Sheet.

• Throughout the year, writers just keep writing, keep submitting, tallying rejections, and reporting them in the spreadsheet.

• Writers can also report their acceptances and awards in the shared Google Sheet.

• Writers can also bow out at any time by unsubscribing from the emails and asking Reneé to archive their data.

What do writers win?

• There are no prizes attached to winning. When Reneé launched the competition in 2017 all of the participating writers were in Tucson and at that time it was possible for everybody to gather in a year-end celebration to hand off the Wings of Triumph, a ridiculously oversized trophy.. Since then, the pandemic and the prohibitive costs of shipping Wings of Glory to people outside of Tucson has made this a bragging rights competition only.

• Winners will be honored with publication on this site with a link to their website and announcements on Reneé’s public social media.

Sounds great, how do I get involved?

• First step it so to sign up, below.

• Reneé will then add you to the Rejection Competition newsletter, which kicks off a welcome email that includes a link to the shared spreadsheet. (Because this process is manual and not automatic, there is sometimes a gap between when you submit and when you get the official welcome email; Reneé greatly appreciates your patience!)

Can I invite others to join in?

Absolutely! This competition is open to all writers! To invite others, please share this page with any interested people as it will answer most of their questions and provides the easiest way to register.

2026 Sign Up Now Open!

Your email will not be shared with other participants.