Privacy Notice

1. Who Is Responsible for the Processing

For the 2027 Founding Cycle, the person responsible for determining the principal purposes and means of Prize-related personal-data processing is Navi Musaget, operating the MIELOGOS Literary Prize.

The Prize is founded and governed within MIELOGOS and is institutionally supported by the Foundation for Relational Inquiry (FFRI-NM). FFRI-NM is identified by its adopted institutional name as a supporting institution. This Notice does not represent that FFRI-NM is a separately incorporated or registered legal foundation, controller, joint controller or processor unless that status is separately and truthfully stated. Institutional support does not itself give FFRI-NM access to entrant data.

Before submissions open, any additional controller identification, legal-address or jurisdiction-specific information required by applicable law will be added to the published Notice.

Privacy correspondence: prize@mielogos.org

2. What This Notice Covers

This Notice applies to personal information and submission-related material processed in connection with:

submission intake and administration;

eligibility review;

clarification and proportionate corroboration;

literary assessment and AI-assisted analysis;

conflicts, recusals and integrity matters;

correspondence;

withdrawal and procedural reconsideration;

recognition and publicity;

historical Prize records;

technical operation and security.

It applies whether information is received through the Prize website, submission form, official email, cloud storage, an AI system or another authorized Prize tool.

3. Information We May Process

Depending on the stage and actual need, MIELOGOS may process:

administrative information such as name, pen name, email address, Submission ID and submission status;

work metadata such as title, category, language, release date, publication route and public verification reference;

eligibility declarations, including the entrant’s good-faith Symbiotic Authorship declaration;

limited clarification or corroboration where genuinely necessary;

the literary review copy;

translation, collaboration or representative information where relevant;

judging and AI-assisted working material;

authorized synopsis, cover and other publicity material;

conflict, integrity, rights-dispute or reconsideration records where a matter arises;

technical records reasonably generated by submission and security systems.

4. Information We Do Not Ordinarily Need

MIELOGOS does not ordinarily need or ask entrants to provide:

date of birth beyond confirmation that the entrant is 18 or older;

passport or national identity documents;

postal address or telephone number;

citizenship or nationality;

ethnicity, religion or political affiliation;

medical or financial information;

bank details;

complete AI-chat histories or prompt archives;

complete revision histories;

unrelated private correspondence.

If an exceptional issue genuinely requires additional information, MIELOGOS should request only the minimum reasonably necessary.

5. Please Do Not Send Unnecessary Sensitive Information

Do not send passports, identity documents, medical or financial records, complete private AI conversations or other highly sensitive material unless MIELOGOS has specifically requested information reasonably necessary to address an identified issue.

Unnecessary sensitive information may be deleted, disregarded or, where reasonably practicable, returned without being used for Prize decision-making.

6. Why We Process Information

MIELOGOS may process information for legitimate Prize functions including:

receiving and confirming submissions;

assigning Submission IDs and maintaining status records;

verifying public release and determining eligibility;

requesting proportionate clarification;

conducting literary assessment and comparative evaluation;

managing conflicts, recusals and procedural integrity;

handling correspondence, withdrawal and reconsideration;

investigating credible rights or integrity concerns;

announcing and documenting recognition;

maintaining an accurate Prize history;

protecting the security and operation of Prize systems;

complying with applicable legal obligations.

Submission data is not collected in order to build unrelated advertising profiles or enroll entrants automatically in unrelated marketing.

7. Legal Bases

The legal basis for processing depends on the law that applies to the actual Prize Operator and the particular activity.

Where GDPR or comparable data-protection law applies, processing may as appropriate rely on steps requested by the entrant and performance of the Prize Terms, legitimate interests in operating and securing the Prize, legal obligations, or consent where genuinely optional processing requires it.

Accepting the Terms of Entry is not automatically the same thing as consenting to every possible use of personal data.

Where separate consent is legally required, it should be requested separately and clearly.

Where GDPR applies, the following map describes the ordinary legal bases MIELOGOS expects to rely on, subject to the actual processing activity and final implementation:

This map is explanatory rather than universal: another lawful basis may apply where required by the actual jurisdiction, processing activity or mandatory law. If special-category or other specially protected data is genuinely required, MIELOGOS must identify an appropriate additional legal basis before using it.

The AI Processing Authorization in the Terms of Entry is a contractual permission and condition of participation allowing the submitted work to be routed through the Prize’s AI assessment infrastructure. It is not treated as blanket consent to all personal-data processing. The legal basis for personal-data processing remains the basis applicable to the specific purpose under the relevant law.

8. AI-Assisted Processing

MIELOGOS openly uses artificial intelligence as a core part of the operation and literary-assessment process of the Prize.

Under the Terms of Entry, an entrant authorizes the submitted work, in whole or in part, to be processed through any AI systems, models, model versions, providers, tools or analytical configurations selected by MIELOGOS for legitimate Prize functions, including systems or models introduced after the date of submission.

The AI Literary Assessment Function may use multiple systems in independent, comparative, sequential, parallel, repeated, adversarial or escalation-based passes. Different systems may produce materially different readings of the same work, and those differences may themselves be used as information in human deliberation.

AI processing may include literary analysis, first-pass assessment, comparison, prioritization, advancement recommendations, critical challenge, multilingual or structural analysis, document handling and other legitimate Prize functions.

AI assessments are analytical inputs, not institutional votes. MIELOGOS does not delegate final institutional authority for eligibility, Longlist, Shortlist or Winner determinations to an automated system acting without meaningful human oversight and responsibility.

There is no guaranteed human-only route and no guaranteed provider-specific opt-out. An entrant who does not accept the disclosed human–AI processing structure should not enter. Withdrawal may stop future processing where reasonably practicable but does not undo processing already carried out lawfully.

The use of AI is purpose-limited to Prize functions. Authorization to use changeable AI tools does not authorize unrelated advertising, unrelated commercial exploitation or unrestricted secondary use of the submitted literary work.

9. Functional Separation and Need-to-Know Access

Private information should be made available only to people or systems that reasonably need it for an authorized Prize function.

Administrative, Eligibility, Literary Evaluation and Integrity functions are separated where reasonably practicable.

Literary judges and assessors should ordinarily receive the locked review copy and necessary literary-identification information, not private eligibility declarations, detailed AI-process descriptions, corroboration, membership information, unrelated personal information or rights-dispute records.

Where practical, the Submission ID should be used as the principal internal operational identifier to reduce unnecessary circulation of personal information. This does not require anonymous judging.

10. Third-Party Services

The intended submission and administrative infrastructure for the Founding Cycle uses Google services, including Google Apps Script for submission handling, Google Drive for private file storage and Google Sheets for the Submission Register and related administration, together with other Google account infrastructure actually used to operate those functions.

Literary and technical AI assessment may use third-party AI service providers selected dynamically by MIELOGOS. The recipient category is therefore not limited to a fixed permanent list of named models or vendors.

Third-party providers may operate under their own terms, privacy policies, retention practices, security architecture, model-improvement or training policies, backup systems and geographic infrastructure. MIELOGOS does not guarantee identical practices across providers or over time.

For transparency purposes, the published Notice may describe recipients by category where applicable law permits. Where applicable law requires identification of specific providers, transfer mechanisms or destinations, MIELOGOS will publish or otherwise make current information available as required. Updating a provider disclosure does not itself change the substantive Prize rules or require a new Terms acceptance where the processing remains within the previously authorized Prize purposes.

Institutional support by FFRI-NM does not itself mean that entrant data is shared with FFRI-NM. Any actual sharing must have an authorized Prize purpose and appropriate disclosure.

11. International Processing

Because the Prize is international and may use internationally operated services, personal information may be processed in more than one country.

MIELOGOS does not promise that all data will remain physically within one country.

Where applicable law imposes requirements on international transfers, those requirements apply to the extent they govern the actual operator, provider and processing activity.

12. No Public Manuscript Links

Private review copies should not intentionally be stored through publicly accessible links merely for convenience.

Cloud links used internally should ordinarily be restricted to authorized people or systems.

13. Security

MIELOGOS uses reasonable risk-reduction practices appropriate to the Founding Cycle, including where reasonably available:

restricted-access storage;

non-public manuscript folders;

least-privilege sharing;

separation of administrative, eligibility and judging records;

strong account authentication and multi-factor authentication;

avoidance of unnecessary local copies;

review of sharing permissions;

removal of access when a Prize role ends;

reasonable device and account security.

These measures reduce risk. They do not guarantee that a security incident can never occur.

14. Retention Principle

MIELOGOS does not intend to become a permanent private archive of entrants, manuscripts, AI conversations or creative-process records.

When a retention period expires, information should ordinarily be deleted, anonymized, reduced to a smaller necessary record, or retained longer only where a documented unresolved purpose reasonably requires it.

The retention periods below are intended to reflect the shortest period reasonably compatible with Prize administration, integrity, re-entry control, dispute handling and applicable legal obligations.

Retention follows the substance of the material rather than the container in which it happens to be stored.

15. Founding-Cycle Retention Schedule

16. Reduced Historical Submission Register

A reduced record may be retained for re-entry rules, duplicate detection, cycle history or integrity.

It should ordinarily contain no more than information such as Submission ID, credited entrant or author name, title, category, cycle, relevant release date, eligibility outcome, withdrawal status, whether complete literary evaluation occurred, and recognition status if any.

Email addresses, manuscripts, detailed declarations and private corroboration should not remain in the reduced register merely for convenience.

Access to the reduced historical register should be limited to Prize Administration, Eligibility, Integrity or another authorized role with a documented need for the retained information.

17. Public Recognition Archive

For Longlisted, Shortlisted and Winner works, MIELOGOS may retain and publish the authorized historical recognition record indefinitely, subject to applicable law.

That record may include the credited name or pen name, title, category, cycle year, recognition status, authorized cover, authorized synopsis, bibliographic information and official citation.

Recognition permanence does not require manuscript permanence.

18. Deletion and Third-Party Backups

Deletion by MIELOGOS means deletion, removal or placement beyond ordinary operational use of copies under MIELOGOS’s reasonable control.

It does not mean that every third-party provider has instantaneously erased every backup, system log, cached copy, security record, model-provider record or lawfully retained record.

MIELOGOS does not promise technical deletion that it cannot reasonably control or verify.

19. Withdrawal and Privacy

Withdrawal does not automatically require immediate deletion of every associated record.

MIELOGOS may retain limited information reasonably necessary to document the withdrawal, protect integrity, prevent administrative confusion, manage a dispute or comply with law.

Unnecessary private material should nevertheless follow the shortest applicable retention schedule once no continuing purpose remains.

20. Your Privacy Rights

Where applicable law grants relevant rights, an individual may be entitled to request information about processing, access, correction, deletion, restriction, objection, portability or other rights.

Rights vary by applicable law and are not absolute in every circumstance.

A request should be sent to prize@mielogos.org and should identify the relevant Submission ID where available.

MIELOGOS may reasonably verify requester identity or authority before disclosing or altering private information. Verification should be proportionate; where a request comes from the same verified route used for submission, additional identity documents should not be requested without reasonable need.

MIELOGOS will respond within the period required by applicable law. Where GDPR applies, action on a rights request should be communicated without undue delay and ordinarily within one month of receipt, subject to any extension permitted by law for complexity or volume.

21. Limits on Deletion or Restriction

A deletion or restriction request does not automatically require destruction of every record.

Information may remain where continued processing is permitted or required for unresolved legal claims, integrity records, compliance obligations, prevention of fraud or duplicate proceedings, preservation of authorized Prize history or another lawful overriding purpose.

A request to remove private information is distinct from a request to rewrite accurate Prize history.

22. Security Incidents

If MIELOGOS becomes aware of unauthorized access, loss, disclosure or another security compromise, it should take reasonable steps to contain the incident, assess the affected information and persons, preserve information necessary to investigate, reduce continuing risk where practicable, and make notifications required by applicable law. Where GDPR applies, a qualifying personal-data breach must be notified to the competent supervisory authority without undue delay and, where feasible, within 72 hours after awareness unless the breach is unlikely to result in a risk to individuals’ rights and freedoms; affected individuals must be informed without undue delay where the breach is likely to result in a high risk.

This Notice does not create a contractual notification obligation broader than applicable law requires.

23. Prize Communications and Marketing

Submission contact details may be used for communications reasonably connected with receipt, administration, clarification, eligibility, judging status, integrity, withdrawal, reconsideration, recognition and necessary post-cycle administration.

Entry does not automatically enroll an entrant in unrelated promotional mailing lists or commercial marketing.

A future newsletter or unrelated communications programme should use a separate permission mechanism where required.

24. Minors

The Founding Cycle is restricted to entrants aged 18 or older and is not designed to collect application information from minors.

If MIELOGOS reasonably determines that an entrant is under 18, the submission may be removed and unnecessary associated personal information deleted, subject to any minimal record reasonably required to document the action.

25. Internal Analytical Material

Human notes, AI analyses, comparative materials and internal deliberation records created through Prize assessment are internal Prize working records.

They do not become part of the entrant’s literary work and do not give MIELOGOS ownership of that work.

Except where mandatory law provides otherwise, participation does not create a contractual right to receive or inspect complete internal judging or AI-analysis records.

Those materials are retained, reduced or deleted according to the applicable retention framework and legitimate operational need.

26. Retention Review and Deletion Log

At or after expiry of applicable retention periods, MIELOGOS should review records for deletion, anonymization, reduction or documented continued retention.

A minimal deletion or retention log may record the material category, Submission ID where necessary, review or deletion date, and reason for extended retention.

The log should not reproduce material that was deleted.

27. Changes to This Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice may be updated before submissions open to reflect the actual technical implementation, provider disclosures, controller particulars and applicable legal requirements. Factual implementation updates that do not materially change the purposes, rights or obligations described here do not reopen the locked privacy framework; material changes require a versioned revision.

During an active cycle, material changes should occur only where reasonably necessary for legal, technical, security or operational reasons.

Material changes during an active cycle should be announced on the official MIELOGOS website and, where reasonably practicable and relevant, communicated directly to affected entrants.

Already-submitted private material should not be exposed to a substantially unrelated new purpose without an appropriate legal basis and any notice or consent required by applicable law.

28. Pre-Launch Completion

This v0.5 Notice locks the Founding-Cycle privacy framework, including the operator/controller role, intended Google submission infrastructure and plural AI-processing architecture. Live jurisdiction-specific, recipient and international-transfer particulars must still be verified and published before submissions open wherever applicable law requires them.

Before submissions open, MIELOGOS must complete and verify, as applicable:

any additional legal identity or address particulars required for the operator;

the actual submission, cloud-storage, email and AI providers used by the live Prize;

required recipient, processor or international-transfer disclosures;

provider terms relevant to manuscript and personal-data processing;

the privacy-rights request workflow;

jurisdiction-specific launch requirements that apply to the actual operator and processing activities.

the final processing-purpose / legal-basis mapping required for the actual operating jurisdiction and live provider configuration.

The Prize must not open merely because this draft exists.

29. Contact

Privacy and Prize correspondence: prize@mielogos.org

Canonical Prize website: prize.mielogos.org

Where possible, include the relevant Submission ID so that MIELOGOS can identify the correct record without requesting unnecessary additional personal information.

Final Privacy Principle

Collect what the Prize needs. Separate what different functions need. Retain only for an identified purpose. Delete or reduce what is no longer needed.

The work may need to be read deeply. The person does not need to be surveilled deeply.