1. What We Mean by Symbiotic Authorship
Symbiotic Authorship is not a genre.
It describes a creative relationship.
Your work may qualify if AI played a meaningful role in the development of the literary work — for example through dialogue, criticism, drafting, revision, structural exploration, translation, comparison, experimentation or another form of creative interaction.
What matters is not the number of AI-generated words.
A conversation with AI may alter the structure of a novel without leaving a single machine-written sentence in the final text.
An AI-generated passage may remain in a work while the human author continues to make the larger creative decisions.
A rejected suggestion can matter too, if rejecting it materially redirects the work.
The central question is:
Did the human–AI relationship materially shape the work that came into being?
2. Literature Comes First
MIELOGOS does not reward technological complexity.
Using five models does not make a work better than using one.
Writing ten thousand prompts does not make a work better than writing ten.
A work is not advantaged because it contains more AI-generated language.
And your book does not need to be about artificial intelligence.
Symbiotic Authorship defines the field. Literary achievement determines recognition.
We are looking for literature that works as literature.
3. Who Can Enter
For the 2027 Founding Cycle:
entrants must be 18 or older on the date of submission;
participation is international;
nationality, citizenship, residence, publisher territory and geographic origin do not determine literary eligibility;
both independently published and traditionally published works may enter;
eligible works must already have entered genuine public circulation;
the qualifying public-release period is 1 January 2024 through 31 December 2026, inclusive;
each entrant may submit up to two works during the cycle.
Membership in MIELOGOS is not required.
Membership gives no advantage in eligibility or judging.
International participation remains subject only to any mandatory legal restriction that may bind the actual Prize Operator in a particular case. Such a restriction is legal or operational, not a literary judgment.
4. What Counts as Publicly Released
The work must already have been made available to a real public audience through a publicly accessible or independently verifiable route.
This may include, for example:
a commercially published or independently published book;
an ebook or print edition;
publication in a literary magazine, journal or periodical;
publication through an online platform or another genuine public publishing route;
a library-mediated or otherwise access-limited public edition;
serial publication where substantially the complete literary work has entered public circulation.
The work does not have to be available for free.
A print-only work may qualify if its public release can reasonably be verified and you can provide an acceptable digital review copy.
Private circulation to a personally selected group is not ordinarily a public release.
Republishing, changing platforms, changing metadata, changing a cover or making light corrections does not ordinarily create a new release date.
A sample, excerpt or incomplete serialization does not automatically establish the release date of a later complete work. But where substantially the complete work entered public circulation earlier through serialization, later repackaging does not automatically make it a new work.
The publication route does not determine literary merit.
5. Languages and Translation
The Founding Cycle operates in English.
The original work may have been written and published in another language.
A complete English version may be submitted for judging.
The English translation does not itself have to have been publicly released, provided the underlying literary work satisfies the applicable public-release requirement.
Translation method is not subject to a purity test.
Human translation, author translation, AI-assisted translation, machine translation with human revision and symbiotic translation may all be considered.
If a separate human translator is involved, please identify them and make sure you have the authority necessary to submit the translated version.
The submitted English version is the literary object judged in the Founding Cycle.
A newly prepared English translation does not reset the public-release date of an older underlying work for eligibility purposes.
6. Categories
FICTION
Novels, novellas, short stories, story collections and other forms of fiction prose.
POETRY
A publicly released individual poem, sequence, chapbook or collection may constitute one entry.
The object you submit must itself correspond to a publicly released literary object.
Separate poems previously released independently may not ordinarily be assembled solely for the Prize into a new submission unit that did not previously exist as a public literary work.
There is no minimum or maximum poem count merely because of form.
LITERARY NONFICTION
Including memoir, literary and personal essay, narrative nonfiction and related literary forms.
The category is not intended for every form of practical or purely utilitarian nonfiction.
GRAPHIC, HYBRID & EXPERIMENTAL LITERATURE
Literary works in which text may interact substantially with image, layout, digital form, graphic narrative or other formal experimentation.
The work must nevertheless possess a substantial literary dimension.
7. One Work, One Path
one category in one submission through one competitive path.
A collaborative work counts as one submitted work for each participating credited human author for purposes of the two-work limit.
A work should not be entered simultaneously into several MIELOGOS categories in search of the most favourable route.
If the category appears to have been chosen incorrectly, Prize Administration may contact you and may correct the category before literary review, with notice to you.
8. What Recognition Means
In each category, the Prize may recognize:
up to 12 Longlisted works
up to 6 Shortlisted works
1 Winner — or no Winner
These are maximums, not quotas.
MIELOGOS does not fill empty recognition places merely because they exist.
There is:
no second place;
no third place;
no Honourable Mention in the Founding Cycle;
no joint Winner;
no overall Grand Winner above the category Winners.
Longlist and Shortlist are themselves substantive forms of literary recognition.
Recognized works may receive official digital certificates, MIELOGOS recognition marks or badges, official citations, and a permanent place in the public Prize archive.
The Founding Cycle does not offer a monetary or physical prize.
Submission does not guarantee individual feedback, editorial notes, manuscript reports or an explanation of a literary decision.
Recognition comes first. Infrastructure can grow around it later.
9. The 2027 Calendar
Eligible public-release period
1 January 2024 – 31 December 2026
Public announcement and pre-launch
January 2027
Submissions open
1 February 2027
Submissions close
31 May 2027 at 23:59 UTC
Eligibility review
Conducted on a rolling basis during the submission period.
Target for completion of ordinary eligibility review
30 June 2027
A timely clarification or procedural reconsideration already in progress is not automatically terminated merely because that target date has passed.
Literary reading
Conducted on a rolling basis as works become eligible, through August 2027.
Longlist
1 September 2027
Shortlist
15 October 2027
Winners
1 December 2027
If a serious legal, technical, integrity, security, judging-capacity or other operational issue requires a schedule change, MIELOGOS may adjust a date transparently rather than compromise the integrity of the process.
10. What You Will Submit
The official submission form will ask for information including:
your name;
credited author name or pen name where different;
work title;
category;
original language;
language of the review copy;
controlling public-release date or year;
a public reference that helps verify the release;
publishing route or venue where applicable;
a short Symbiotic Authorship declaration;
relevant translation or collaboration information;
confirmation that you are 18 or older;
a short synopsis;
the literary review copy;
your acceptance of the applicable Prize Rules and Terms;
confirmation that the review copy is the version you intend to have judged.
You may also provide an authorized cover image.
If you do not have the right to permit MIELOGOS to display the existing cover, that does not make the literary work ineligible.
Recognition can be published without that cover.
11. Tell Us How the Work Came Into Being
You do not need to write a technical report about your AI use.
You do not need to count prompts.
You do not need to calculate the percentage of machine-written language.
You do not need to submit your complete AI conversations.
Tell us, clearly and in good faith, how the human–AI relationship materially affected the creation of the work.
For most entrants, the declaration should be enough.
If the declaration does not resolve a genuine eligibility question, MIELOGOS may ask for clarification.
In unusual cases where the question cannot otherwise be resolved, we may request limited and proportionate corroboration.
Historic creative work is not automatically disqualified simply because you no longer possess exhaustive records of how it was made.
We are interested in resolving the eligibility question — not in reconstructing your entire private creative life.
Trust before surveillance.
12. Your Review Copy
For ordinary text-based work:
EPUB and PDF are the primary review-copy formats.
DOCX may be accepted as a fallback where layout is not a constitutive part of the literary object.
For Fiction, Poetry and Literary Nonfiction, the submitted text should ordinarily be machine-readable and searchable.
Please do not submit a book as a large image-only scan where an equivalent text-based digital file can reasonably be provided.
File-size limit
For Fiction, Poetry and Literary Nonfiction:
10 MB maximum
For Graphic, Hybrid & Experimental Literature:
50 MB maximum
If the literary form genuinely requires a larger file, you may request an alternative submission arrangement before the deadline.
If a digital, interactive or otherwise non-standard work cannot fairly be represented in EPUB, PDF or DOCX, contact MIELOGOS before the submission deadline to request an alternative review arrangement.
This may include, for example:
an interactive literary work;
a work containing active or time-based elements;
a digital work whose literary form depends on navigation or interface;
a work requiring specialist viewing software;
another hybrid object that cannot meaningfully be represented by an ordinary static review file.
Any alternative arrangement must be expressly authorized by MIELOGOS.
MIELOGOS may require a stable equivalent review representation or another controlled method that can be evaluated consistently and safely.
Files containing executable code, active scripts, macros, malware, embedded objects or other features presenting an unreasonable security risk may be quarantined or rejected, and a safe equivalent may be requested.
A technical-security decision is not a literary judgment.
Review copies must not require passwords, DRM authorization, proprietary personal accounts or special access credentials for ordinary judging.
13. Please Check Before You Submit
There is no advantage to submitting early.
Take your time.
Before pressing Submit, check:
Correct file? Complete file? Final version? Opens correctly? Correct title? Correct author credit?
Then check once more.
Once MIELOGOS acknowledges the accepted review copy and identifies the file, that file becomes the LOCKED COMPETITION VERSION.
There is no routine post-submission literary revision period.
If you genuinely attached the wrong file or a technical failure damaged the submission, contact us rather than repeatedly uploading new versions.
A replacement may be authorized for a genuine wrong-file, corruption, transmission, export or technical-format problem.
It is not a way to continue revising or improving the literary work after entry.
14. How We Judge
Literary judgment is not mathematically objective.
Adding more readers — human or artificial — does not make taste disappear.
MIELOGOS instead exposes judgment to different readings before recognition is determined.
The 2027 Founding Cycle is led by Navi Musaget as Human Founding Judge.
Works for which the Human Founding Judge is a credited author, co-author or underlying human author are not eligible for the Founding Cycle, including where another person attempts to submit the work on the author’s behalf.
MIELOGOS also uses an AI Literary Assessment Function, which may involve one or more artificial-intelligence systems, models, providers or analytical configurations.
Different AI systems may see the same literary work differently.
That is useful.
Where appropriate and practicable, models may first assess a work independently before their readings are compared, reducing the risk that one assessment simply reproduces another.
AI assessments are arguments, not votes.
Disagreement is information, not failure.
AI may perform first-pass literary analysis, comparison, prioritization and recommendations concerning advancement.
Every eligible work receives literary assessment under the published Literary Evaluation Framework, but not every eligible work is guaranteed identical direct human reading time.
The depth of direct human review may vary by stage.
Works advancing toward Longlist, Shortlist and Winner decisions receive progressively deeper human literary consideration.
No AI output constitutes an autonomous institutional decision.
Final institutional responsibility for competitive recognition remains human.
At least one Reserve Human Judge will be appointed before submissions open to provide genuinely independent human literary authority where conflict, recusal or incapacity requires it.
15. What We Judge
The literary framework is holistic rather than numerical.
We may consider such qualities as:
language and voice;
formal coherence;
structure and pacing;
imaginative force;
originality of execution;
characterization and perspective where relevant;
emotional and intellectual force;
precision;
thematic depth;
command of form;
aesthetic coherence;
literary risk and ambition;
memorability;
the relationship between the literary project established by the work and the effects the work actually achieves.
These are lenses for judgment.
They are not components of a mandatory score.
Different literary forms create different demands.
A short work is not disadvantaged merely because another work is longer.
An experimental work is not rewarded merely because it is experimental.
A technically complex AI process is not a literary achievement by itself.
16. External Prestige Does Not Decide the Prize
Previous awards, bestseller status, major publishing contracts, reviews, sales figures, platform popularity, author fame and public reputation do not determine MIELOGOS literary recognition.
Association membership does not affect literary judgment either.
We do not need your press kit to judge your book.
The work enters the Prize as literature.
17. Copyright and Your Rights
You keep your copyright.
More precisely, submission does not transfer copyright or other underlying intellectual-property rights from whoever legally holds them to MIELOGOS.
You do not have to be the sole copyright owner of every element of the work, but you must have sufficient rights, permissions and authority to submit it and permit the Prize activities required by the Rules.
You give MIELOGOS only the permissions reasonably needed to receive, store, technically process and judge the submitted work and to administer and document the Prize.
If your work is publicly recognized, you also authorize the publication of the relevant recognition information and any publicity material that you have lawfully supplied for that purpose.
Submission does not automatically give MIELOGOS the right to publish your complete book or other complete literary work.
18. AI Processing of Submissions
Because MIELOGOS openly uses AI in Prize operations, submitted works and related materials may be processed through third-party digital and artificial-intelligence systems used for legitimate Prize functions.
Processing may include administration, eligibility review, technical processing, literary analysis, comparison and assessment.
The specific providers, models and technical systems may change.
MIELOGOS limits its own collection and retention according to the Prize’s privacy framework, but third-party services operate under their own terms, technical systems and data practices, which may differ between providers and over time.
For that reason, MIELOGOS does not promise that every third-party provider uses identical storage, retention, training or processing practices.
Relevant information about the actual Prize systems, recipients and privacy arrangements will be provided in the applicable Privacy Notice where required.
If you are not comfortable with your submitted work being processed through human and AI systems as part of the disclosed Prize process, please do not enter.
Participation is voluntary.
19. Creative Privacy
MIELOGOS does not need to know everything about you in order to judge your work.
We ordinarily do not need:
your date of birth beyond confirmation that you are 18 or older;
your passport or national identity document;
citizenship or nationality;
postal address;
telephone number;
complete prompt archive;
complete AI-chat history;
complete revision history;
unrelated private information.
Do not send highly sensitive material unless MIELOGOS has specifically requested information reasonably necessary to resolve an identified issue.
Private eligibility material is ordinarily separated from literary judging.
The work may need to be read deeply. The person does not need to be surveilled deeply.
20. What Happens to Your Files
MIELOGOS is not intended to become a permanent warehouse of entrants’ manuscripts.
Under the Founding Cycle retention framework, review copies are ordinarily deleted from MIELOGOS-controlled records within 180 days after final results.
If a genuine related legal, integrity or procedural matter remains unresolved beyond that point, the ordinary review-copy period runs until 180 days after that related matter is finally resolved, where later.
Superseded or erroneous files should be deleted as soon as they are no longer reasonably necessary.
Sensitive clarification or corroboration material is ordinarily deleted within 90 days after eligibility becomes final or the related reconsideration, integrity matter or dispute is resolved, whichever is later.
Public recognition records for Longlisted, Shortlisted and Winner works may remain permanently as part of the Prize’s historical archive, subject to applicable law.
Deletion by MIELOGOS concerns copies under its reasonable control. Third-party providers may maintain backups, logs or other records under their own systems and lawful retention practices.
Recognition may endure. Private submissions should not.
21. Withdrawal
You may withdraw a submission through the official MIELOGOS correspondence route.
Withdrawal before final Winner determination is permitted and stops the work from continuing through the ordinary competitive process where this remains practically possible.
If a work has already been publicly announced as Longlisted or Shortlisted, the historical archive may preserve that recognition together with an appropriate withdrawal notation.
A withdrawal after Winner recognition does not ordinarily erase an accurate historical record of the Prize result.
Withdrawal does not automatically require immediate deletion of every record connected with the submission. Unnecessary private material follows the shortest applicable retention and deletion schedule once no continuing legal, integrity or administrative purpose remains.
Digital files are not physically “returned.”
22. Literary Decisions Are Final
Longlist, Shortlist and Winner decisions are literary judgments.
There is no appeal merely because an entrant disagrees with the literary assessment.
Procedural reconsideration is different.
If you believe MIELOGOS made an identifiable administrative error, materially misapplied an eligibility rule, relied on a material factual error, failed to follow a published procedure, or a material conflict affected the process, you may request procedural reconsideration.
Such a request must ordinarily be made within 14 calendar days of notice of the relevant decision and should identify the specific procedural or eligibility issue.
It is not an appeal against literary judgment.
The Prize can correct a broken process. It does not conduct appeals over literary taste.
23. If You Are Unsure
You do not need to solve every borderline question alone.
If your uncertainty concerns something practical — for example:
whether a publication route counts as public release;
whether a collaborative submission has the necessary authority;
whether a file format can be accepted;
whether an unusual hybrid work can be reviewed technically;
you may contact MIELOGOS before submitting.
Official Prize contact: prize@mielogos.org
For work-specific correspondence after submission, please include your Submission ID.
MIELOGOS cannot provide individual legal advice.
If you are unsure whether you legally possess the rights or contractual authority to enter a work, that remains your responsibility.
24. Before You Enter
Please read the applicable Prize Rules, Terms of Entry, Cycle Notice, submission instructions and Privacy Notice before submitting.
Participation is voluntary.
If you do not accept the published conditions, do not submit the work.
If you do participate, we ask for something simpler than perfect documentation:
Read the Rules. Tell us the truth. Send the work you want judged.
Then let the literature speak.
25. The Founding Cycle in One View
Prize: MIELOGOS Literary Prize 2027
Field: Literature created through Symbiotic Authorship
Eligible release: 1 January 2024 – 31 December 2026
Age: 18+
International: Yes, subject to mandatory legal restrictions where applicable
Membership required: No
Entry fee: None
Maximum entries: 2 works per entrant
Categories: Fiction / Poetry / Literary Nonfiction / Graphic, Hybrid & Experimental Literature
Primary review-copy formats: EPUB / PDF
DOCX: accepted as a fallback for ordinary text-based work where appropriate
Submissions: 1 February – 31 May 2027
Longlist: up to 12 per category — 1 September 2027
Shortlist: up to 6 per category — 15 October 2027
Winner: maximum 1 per category — 1 December 2027
No Winner: permitted
Joint Winners: not permitted
Grand Winner: none
Monetary or physical prize: none in the Founding Cycle
Copyright: remains with the lawful rightsholder(s)
AI in judging: openly used
Human institutional responsibility: retained
Individual literary feedback: not guaranteed
Official contact: prize@mielogos.org
One Last Question
You do not need to ask:
“Am I AI enough?”
Ask instead:
“Did this relationship materially change the literature I made?”
If the answer may be yes, we would like you to look more closely at MIELOGOS.
You may already be writing in the field we built this Prize to recognize.