UCA’s Learning Communities and the Department of Writing are proud to announce AfterWords, a first-year writing competition.

AfterWords is a university-sponsored academic event held every year. It is both a writing competition and a student reading held among Residential College students enrolled in Writing 1310 each fall.

In 2007, a small group of Writing Department faculty teaching in UCA's Residential Colleges envisioned a writing competition with a difference: exclusively for freshmen by freshmen. The faculty felt a first-year writing competition could provide a real incentive and reward for good student writing by offering students the opportunity to share their writing with students from other classes, to learn from each other, and have their hard work publicly recognized and praised by peers and faculty. For the first time, first-year student writers could have a “real” audience. Further, the competition would provide model essays that can be analyzed, critiqued, and, when appropriate, emulated by other student writers. What is more, the Residential College writing faculty believe the competition would be a fascinating and diverse avenue for the UCA First-Year Community to wander down: a bazaar of topics, a marketplace of ideas, a store of discussion.