December 16, 2025, Mountain View, CA -- The Cosmic Chronicles Literary Award is a new contest for emerging authors from the SETI Institute’s Artist in Residence (AIR) program. This summer, we launched an Open Call inviting writers and poets working in literature, speculative fiction/sci-fi, experimental poetry, and philosophy to submit original, unpublished creative work reflecting on the themes of intelligence, consciousness, and communication.
We received a remarkable number of submissions from 33 countries across six continents, including Peru, New Zealand, Ghana, India, Japan, throughout Europe, Canada, and the USA. Entries included visual poetry, flash fiction, short stories, and vignettes. Our jury, consisting of award-winning science fiction authors Peter Watts and Eric Choi, renowned poets Gregory Betts and Amy Catanzano, and SETI AIR program Director Bettina Forget, spent months reading through the entries, making increasingly difficult choices as they narrowed down the submissions to the final reading list.
"It was an immense pleasure to read stories and poems from across the world," said Forget. "We discovered unique points of view and writing styles informed by the many different cultural backgrounds. This is reflected in the list of winners and runners-up. We judged all entries blind, so it was a wonderful surprise when we matched the stories with their authors and realized the global spread of the finalists."
SETI AIR Program Advisor Gregory Betts added, “A brilliant, auspicious start to the Cosmic Chronicles Literary Award! The diversity of voices we heard from, and the overall quality, suggest that this award has tapped into an overflowing well of global talent. It bodes well for the future of the award!”
The winner of the Cosmic Chronicles Literary Award 2025 is awarded a $1,000 prize, while the finalists receive $100 each. Due to the many strong entries, the jury also included four honorable mentions.
Winner
The Listening Room (prose)
Cal Hunter, Northern Ireland, UK |
Finalists
Pebbles on the Windowpane (prose)
Arden Baker, Australia |
Confab the Entrainment Frequency (prose)
Tehnuka Ilanko, New Zealand |
Tonight I am the James Webb Telescope (poem)
Xabiso Vili, South Africa |
|
Honourable Mentions
Uncle Humunculous (prose)
Don Mark Baldridge, USA |
In Search of Category 3 (prose)
Randyn Bartholomew, USA |
Masquerage of Silence (poem)
GodwinDania, Nigeria |
The Language of a Billion Suns (prose)
Alistair Robinson, UK |
Congratulations to the winners and runners-up of the 2025 edition of the Cosmic Chronicles Award, and thank you to everyone who sent us a submission. This will be an annual award, so look out for the next Open Call in summer 2026.
About the SETI Institute
Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary research and education organization whose mission is to lead humanity's quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe and to share that knowledge with the world. Our research encompasses the physical and biological sciences and leverages expertise in data analytics, machine learning and advanced signal detection technologies. The SETI Institute is a distinguished research partner for industry, academia and government agencies, including NASA and NSF.
Contact information
Rebecca McDonald
Director of Communications
SETI Institute
[email protected]
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