Open Letters: Our Opinion-Writing Contest

What’s bothering you? Who could do something about it? What could you say to them that would persuade them to care, or to make change?

And … what if we all read your letter? How could you make us care too?

These are some of the questions we’re asking you to ponder for our Open Letter Contest. An open letter is a published letter of protest or appeal usually addressed to an individual, group or institution but intended for the general public.

For some examples, take a look at the excellent work of the teen winners of this contest from 2024 and 2025. Whether they were writing to senators about better health care; to their teachers about redefining what class participation means; to ChatGPT about its seductive dangers; or to their classmates about being more accepting of people with autism, these students all wrote passionately and persuasively about issues that mattered deeply to them.

Now we’re inviting you to try it yourself. Write your own open letter, to anyone you like on any issue you care about, as long as it is also appropriate and meaningful for a general Times audience.

Whom should you write to? What should you say? How do open letters work?

The rules and FAQ below, along with our Student Opinion forum and related how-to guide, can answer all these questions and help you get started.

Please post any questions you have in the comments and we’ll answer you there, or write to us at [email protected]. And, consider hanging this PDF one-page announcement on your class bulletin board.

The Challenge

Write an open letter, in 500 words or fewer, to a specific audience that calls attention to an issue or problem and prompts reflection or action on it. Here are some things to consider:

• What do you care about?

  Your letter can be lighthearted or serious, but it should focus on an issue you care about and with which you have some experience. For examples, take a look at the topics of some of our past winners, such as this one about improving access to hearing aids or this one on ordering from the kids menu.

• Who can make changes, big or small, local or global, to address that issue or problem?

  Your letter should be addressed to a specific audience, whether that’s your parents, teachers, school board members or mayor; a member of Congress; the head of a corporation; an artist or entertainer; a metonym like “Silicon Valley” or “The Kremlin”; or anyone else.

• What specifically do you want your audience to understand or do?

  Make a call for action, whether that is something tangible, like asking Congress to enact a law or demanding a company stop a harmful practice, or something more abstract, like inviting your audience to consider a particular perspective or issue they may not have thought about before.

  As you might already know if you’ve read Martin Luther King’s famous Letter From Birmingham Jail, an open letter is a literary device. Though it seems on the surface to be intended for just one individual or group, and therefore usually reads like a personal letter (and can make readers feel they are somehow “listening in” on private thoughts), it is really a persuasive essay addressed to the public. This letter signed by over 1,000 tech leaders about the dangers of A.I., this funny 2020 letter addressed to Harry and Meghan, and this video letter from young Asian Americans to their families about Black Lives Matter are all examples of the tradition.

  So remember: Though you’re writing in the form of a letter, this is an opinion piece. You should try to persuade your intended audience and readers to pay attention to and take action on your issue. As the authors of the above examples did, draw on rhetorical strategies to make your case and support your points with evidence from reliable sources. You must cite at least two sources, including one from The New York Times and one from outside The Times.

• How can I write this as an “open letter,” compelling not just to me and the recipient, but to the general audience who will be reading my words?

  An open letter simultaneously addresses an explicit recipient — whether the president or your gym teacher — as well as an implicit audience — us, your readers. Make sure you write your letter in such a way that it is relevant, understandable, appropriate and meaningful for anyone who might come across it in The New York Times.

  And keep in mind that this should be written as a letter, not a formal essay. Your topic and your audience will influence the shape and tone of your piece, whether that’s funny, cheeky, sincere, demanding or something else.

A Few Rules

In addition to the guidelines above, here are a few more details:

• Your piece must be, in total, 500 words or fewer, not including the title.

• You must include evidence from at least two sources, including one from The New York Times and one from outside The Times. The submission form will have a Works Cited section to cite all your sources, which you may format however you like. In-text citations are not necessary, but be careful to put quotations around any direct quotes you use, and cite the source of anything you paraphrase in the Works Cited. (See this resource on quoting and paraphrasing for more guidance.)

• You must be a student ages 13 to 19 in middle school or high school to participate, and all students must have parent or guardian permission to enter. Please see the F.A.Q. section for additional eligibility details.

• The writing you submit should be fundamentally your own — it should not be plagiarized, created by someone else or generated by artificial intelligence. You may, however, use spelling and grammar check tools and get feedback on your writing.

• Your open letter should be original for this contest. That means it should not already have been published at the time of submission, whether in a school newspaper, for another contest or anywhere else. Work that has been posted on your own social media is OK to submit, however.

• Please also keep in mind that The New York Times has a global audience, including many families, so your submission should be appropriate for a broad audience. (For instance, please avoid cursing.)

• You may work alone or in groups, but students should submit only one entry each.

• You must also submit a short, informal “artist’s statement” as part of your submission, that describes your writing and research process. These statements, which will not be used to choose finalists, help us to design and refine our contests. See the F.A.Q. to learn more.

• All entries must be submitted by April 8, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time using the electronic form at the bottom of this page.

Resources for Students and Teachers

Use these resources to help you write your open letter:

• Our step-by-step guide, which can be used by students or teachers, walks you through the process of writing an open letter.

• A list of free examples of open letters published both in and outside The New York Times, which you can find in our step-by-step guide.

• The 19 winning letters from our 2024 and 2025 contests.

• An edition of our Conversations With Journalists series in which students are invited to pose questions for Margaret Renkl, a contributing writer for the Times Opinion section, who often uses the open letter format in her work. For example, here she answers a student question about why she likes writing them.

• A librarian explains how she helped educators at her school teach with this contest — and create their own mini version.

• A writing prompt: To Whom Would You Write an Open Letter? This prompt offers students a “rehearsal space” for thinking about to whom they’d like to write, the reason they’re writing and why they think that issue is important — not only for the recipient but also for a wider audience.

• Many, many more argumentative writing prompts: We publish new argumentative writing prompts for students each week in our Student Opinion and Picture Prompt columns. You can find them all, as they publish, here, or many of them, organized by topic, in our collection of over 300 prompts.

• Argumentative writing unit: This unit includes writing prompts, lesson plans, webinars and mentor texts. While it was originally written to support our Student Editorial Contest, the resources can help students make compelling arguments, cite reliable evidence and use rhetorical strategies for their open letters as well.

• Our contest rubric: This is the rubric judges will use as they read submissions to this contest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below are answers to your questions about writing, judging, the rules and teaching with this contest. Please read these thoroughly and, if you still can’t find what you’re looking for, post your query in the comments or write to us at [email protected].

Questions About Writing

How is this contest different from your long-running Editorial Contest? Can we still use those materials?

For a decade we ran an editorial contest, and the students who participated wrote passionately about all kinds of things — A.I., fast fashion, race, trans rights, college admissions, parental incarceration, fan fiction, snow days, memes, being messy and so much more. You can still write about the issues and ideas that fire you up — it’s just that this time around you’ll be framing your work as a letter to a person who has the power to make change on or bring understanding to that issue.

Our related guide has more about the differences between a traditional opinion essay and an open letter, but the many materials we developed for that earlier contest are also woven into the guide, as concepts like ethos, logos and pathos are still very much relevant to this challenge.

I have no idea what to write about. Where should I start?

Our Student Opinion forum can help via its many questions that encourage you to brainstorm both the audience you might write to and the topics you’d like to address.

Can I actually send my open letter?

You can! Just wait until after you have submitted your work to us to do so. (As always for our contests, you retain the copyright to the piece you submit, and can do whatever you like with it.)

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Questions About Judging

How will my open letter be judged?

Your work will be read by New York Times journalists, as well as by Learning Network staff members and educators from around the United States. We will use this rubric to judge entries.

What’s the “prize”?

Having your work published on The Learning Network.

When will the winners be announced?

About three months after the contest has closed.

My piece wasn’t selected as a winner. Can you tell me why?

We typically receive thousands of entries for our contests, so unfortunately, our team does not have the capacity to provide individual feedback on each student’s work.

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QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RULES

Who is eligible to participate in this contest?

This contest is open to students ages 13 to 19 who are in middle school or high school around the world. College students cannot submit an entry. However, high school students (including high school postgraduate students) who are taking one or more college classes can participate. Students attending their first year of a two-year CEGEP in Quebec Province can also participate. In addition, students ages 19 or under who are not enrolled in college, either because they are taking a gap year or because they are no longer attending school for any reason, can participate.

The children and stepchildren of New York Times employees are not eligible to enter this contest. Nor are students who live in the same household as those employees.

Can I have someone else check my work?

We understand that students will often revise their work based on feedback from teachers and peers. That is allowed for this contest. However, be sure that the final submission reflects the ideas, voice and writing ability of the student, not someone else.

Do I need a Works Cited page?

Yes. We provide you with a separate field to list the sources you used to inform or write your open letter. You’re allowed to format your list however you want; we will not judge your entry based on formatting in this section. Internal citations in your letter are not necessary.

Why are you asking for an Artist’s Statement about our process? What will you do with it?

All of us who work on The Learning Network are former teachers. One of the many things we miss, now that we work in a newsroom rather than a classroom, is being able to see how students are reacting to our “assignments” in real time — and to offer help, or tweaks, to make those assignments better. We’re asking you to reflect on what you did and why, and what was hard or easy about it, in large part so that we can improve our contests and the curriculum we create to support them.

Another reason? We have heard from many teachers that writing these statements is immensely helpful to students. Stepping back from a piece and trying to put into words what you wanted to express, and why and how you made artistic choices to do that, can help you see your piece anew and figure out how to make it stronger. For our staff, they offer important context that help us understand individual students and submissions, and learn more about the conditions under which students around the world create.

Whom can I contact if I have questions about this contest or am having issues submitting my entry?

Leave a comment on this post or write to us at [email protected].

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QUESTIONS ABOUT TEACHING WITH THIS CONTEST

Do my students need a New York Times subscription to access these resources?

No. All of the resources on The Learning Network are free.

If your students don’t have a subscription to The New York Times, they can also get access to Times pieces through The Learning Network. All the activities for students on our site, including mentor texts and writing prompts, plus the Times articles they link to, are free. Students can search for articles using the search tool on our home page.

How do my students prove to me that they entered this contest?

After they press “Submit” on the form below, they will see a “Thank you for your submission.” line appear. They can take a screenshot of this message.

Submission Form

We will post the submission form here on the day the contest opens, Feb. 25, 2026.

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