The Creative Arts Competition

As part of a collaboration between the New Zealand Medical Students’ Association (NZMSA) and the NZMSJ that started in 2017, we publish 2 creative writing pieces and 1 photo/artwork produced by medical students in each issue of the NZMSJ and on the NZMSA website. The main purpose is to showcase the talent that we have hidden amongst our medical classes and encourage more students to come forward and exhibit their work.
​These creative pieces can include poems, short stories, photography and artwork.

​Please email reviews_editor@nzmsj.com to submit an entry.

Guidelines

1. Medical students can submit an entry any time of the year. The deadline is about 2-3 months from when we expect to publish the upcoming issue to allow for reviewers to mark all entries.
2. Two reviewers are then asked to review all the anonymised written pieces and give them a score from the rubric. The reason why we ask the same reviewers to mark all entries is for consistency in scoring.
3. The scores are averaged and the top two written pieces are selected for publication in the upcoming NZMSJ.
4. The rubric sheets from both reviewers are sent to the authors, and the authors may choose to edit their pieces before publication.
5. If there is more than one photo/art submission for the issue/competition round, the NZMSJ executive + reviewers and NZMSA executive will vote for their favourite submission.
6. For the unsuccessful entries, we will keep them in for another competition round. The authors are also allowed to modify their entry based on comments from the reviewers, should they wish to in this period.
7. The unsuccessful entries and any new entries are scored by new reviewers in the next competition round, and the process repeats as before.
8. If after two rounds the submission is not a winner, it can be given to NZMSA to publish on their website only (i.e. not published in the NZMSJ).