Prize Rules / Founding Master

Document Control

Purpose. This Master integrates the locked conceptual, architectural, eligibility, evaluation, jury, legal, privacy and founding-cycle operational decisions of the MIELOGOS Literary Prize into one governing reference for the 2027 Founding Cycle.

Status. Adopted on 5 October 2026 as the principal governing Master for the MIELOGOS Literary Prize 2027 Founding Cycle and revised the same date in v1.4 to clarify the Prize’s symbiotic literary-assessment architecture. The revision replaces the assumption of a single AI Literary Assessor with an AI Literary Assessment Function that may use one or more independent AI systems while preserving human institutional responsibility for competitive decisions. Identification of the actual Prize Operator / data controller and any governing-law or forum clause remain reserved for pre-launch where applicable. Reserve Human Judge appointment, role-assignment safeguards, submission-system readiness and other launch conditions are tracked in Appendix C. Adoption does not itself open submissions; the Founding Cycle may open only after the required Appendix C conditions have been completed.

Relationship to MIELOGOS Association. The Prize is a distinct programme of MIELOGOS. Association membership does not create Prize eligibility, nomination preference, judging advantage or entitlement to recognition. Prize recognition does not create Association membership.

Interpretation. This Master should be read as a coherent whole. Specific cycle rules govern the 2027 competition, while constitutional and founding principles govern the institutional boundaries within which those rules operate.

Source Framework Integrated

Prize Concept v0.1 — locked.

Prize Architecture v0.1 — locked.

Scope & Eligibility v0.1 — locked for founding-cycle use.

Literary Evaluation Framework v0.1 — locked.

Jury & Independence v0.1 — locked.

Symbiotic Literary Judgment clarification — adopted in Master v1.4: plural AI assessment may inform all stages while institutional decision authority remains human.

Prize Rules v0.1 — integrated here with accepted founding-cycle refinements.

Founding Cycle Calendar & Calendar Flexibility — integrated.

Recognition Structure 12–6–1 — integrated.

Submission & Intake Protocol — integrated and adapted to website-form intake.

Legal Conditions & Entrant Responsibility v0.2 — locked for Master integration.

Privacy & Data Retention Framework v0.1 — locked for Master integration.

Core Distinction

creative relation ≠ declaration ≠ corroboration ≠ eligibility ≠ literary judgment

FIELD → ELIGIBILITY → LITERARY JUDGMENT → RECOGNITION

Contents

Part I — Purpose, Field and Institutional Boundary

Part II — Prize Architecture and Functional Separation

Part III — Founding Cycle 2027

Part IV — Scope and Eligibility

Part V — Submission, Intake and Version Control

Part VI — Literary Evaluation

Part VII — Jury, Independence and Conflicts

Part VIII — Legal Conditions and Entrant Responsibility

Part IX — Privacy and Data Retention

Part X — Interpretation, Change Control and Pre-Launch Completion

Appendix A — Applicant Path

Appendix B — Submission Confirmation

Appendix C — Pre-Launch Checklist

Appendix D — Founding Formulae

PART I — Purpose, Field and Institutional Boundary

1. Purpose of the Prize

The MIELOGOS Literary Prize exists to advance the cultural recognition and literary visibility of Symbiotic Authorship by recognizing outstanding literary works created within that field.

Its primary object is literary recognition. It does not exist to certify technology, reward the quantity of AI use, validate a workflow, endorse a model provider or rank authors by technical sophistication.

2. Object of Recognition

The competitive object is a specific literary work. Recognition attaches to that work within a defined Prize cycle and category.

The Prize does not competitively rank persons, AI systems, creative workflows or percentages of machine-generated text.

3. Symbiotic Authorship as the Field

For Prize purposes, Symbiotic Authorship defines the relevant field of creative practice. The governing institutional definition requires the joint presence of:

Human Authorial Locus — identifiable human responsibility for the literary work.

Bidirectionally Conditioned Creative Relation — a creative relation in which human and artificial-intelligence activity materially conditions the developing work rather than functioning as a one-way utility.

Material Causal Effect — the relation has a material causal effect on the literary work or its development.

No percentage test applies. The amount of AI-generated text, number of prompts, number of models, number of iterations or technical complexity is not a substitute for the relational inquiry.

Textual provenance and creative causal provenance are not identical. Iteration alone is not sufficient. Rejection, refusal, redirection and other non-accepting interactions may be creatively material.

4. Declaration, Corroboration and Privacy

Eligibility is declaration-first rather than surveillance-first. A good-faith entrant declaration is the ordinary starting point.

Corroboration is distinct from declaration. It may be requested only where materially necessary to resolve a genuine eligibility question and should be proportionate, purpose-limited and privacy-preserving.

The Prize does not require complete prompt histories, complete private AI conversations or exhaustive creative-process archives as a routine condition of entry.

5. Literary Merit

Once a work is considered, for purposes of the Prize, to fall within the relevant Symbiotic Authorship framework and to satisfy cycle eligibility rules, literary merit decides recognition.

A work receives no literary advantage because it uses more AI, more models, more iterations, more elaborate prompting, more complex tooling or more extensive process documentation.

Literature created through Symbiotic Authorship need not be about artificial intelligence. Symbiotic Authorship is not a literary genre.

6. Recognition Is Not Certification

Prize eligibility and recognition do not certify total creative provenance, total copyright ownership, technological originality or the truth of every account an entrant might give about their creative process.

The Prize makes the narrower institutional determination required for its own eligibility and literary-recognition functions.

7. Association and Prize Separation

The Association and the Prize are institutionally connected but functionally distinct.

Association membership gives no Prize eligibility advantage.

Association membership gives no nomination, Longlist, Shortlist, Winner or judging advantage.

Prize recognition does not confer Association membership.

Prize participation does not require Association membership.

Prize governance, eligibility, judging, conflicts, cycle administration and recognition are governed by Prize instruments.

8. Public Proposition

The MIELOGOS Literary Prize recognizes outstanding literature created through Symbiotic Authorship. It exists to give serious literary recognition to an emerging form of creative practice while preserving human authorial responsibility, creative privacy, plurality of method, and independent literary judgment.

PART II — Prize Architecture and Functional Separation

9. Functional Structure

The Prize separates four functions. Separation is functional and work-specific rather than bureaucratic for its own sake.

10. Submission Packet Separation

Each entry should be conceptually separated into three records:

Administrative Record — entrant contact, submission metadata, status and operational correspondence.

Eligibility Record — declaration, clarification and any proportionate corroboration.

Literary Review Copy — the locked work and only metadata reasonably necessary for literary evaluation.

11. Process-Blind Literary Review

The Jury ordinarily should not receive private workflow material, prompts, corroboration, Association membership status, AI-intensity information or other process details irrelevant to literary judgment.

The Prize uses process-blind literary review. It does not require fully identity-blind review where identity is naturally visible from a published work.

12. Personnel Separation by Work

The minimum unit of independence is the submitted work.

A person who reviews non-public eligibility declaration, clarification or corroboration for a particular work should not ordinarily participate in literary evaluation or the final vote concerning that same work.

Permanent personnel silos are not required. The same person may serve different functions for different works where independence is preserved.

Where exceptional staffing makes work-level separation impossible, the departure must be documented and the Prize must not falsely describe the resulting process as independent or process-blind.

13. Eligibility Gate

Eligibility precedes competitive literary recognition. Eligibility is a gate, not a ranking.

Eligibility statuses are:

ELIGIBLE

CLARIFICATION REQUIRED

INELIGIBLE

14. Integrity Authority Boundary

The Integrity & Conflict Function may require recusal, reassignment, renewed evaluation, renewed deliberation or invalidation of a procedurally defective step.

Where a procedural defect materially affects multiple submissions, the Integrity & Conflict Function may order a proportionate common remedy limited to the affected works or stage, including renewed review, renewed deliberation, re-routing, deadline adjustment or invalidation of the defective step. A system-wide remedy must not be used to reopen literary judgments that were not materially affected by the defect.

It may not rank literature or choose a Winner.

Procedural authority may protect literary judgment; it may not replace literary judgment.

Procedural reconsideration is not an appeal against literary judgment.

15. Core Applicant Path

SUBMISSION → ADMIN COMPLETENESS → ACKNOWLEDGEMENT + VERSION LOCK → PUBLIC RELEASE VERIFICATION → ELIGIBILITY → ELIGIBLE / CLARIFICATION REQUIRED / INELIGIBLE → LITERARY REVIEW → LONGLIST → SHORTLIST → WINNER / NO WINNER

Operational implementation may combine adjacent administrative steps so long as the conceptual distinctions remain intact. In the Founding Cycle, the review copy locks when administrative acknowledgement identifies the accepted file.

PART III — Founding Cycle 2027

16. Cycle Name

The first competition is the MIELOGOS Literary Prize 2027 Founding Cycle.

17. Public-Release Eligibility Window

Eligible public release: 1 January 2024 through 31 December 2026 inclusive.

18. Founding-Cycle Calendar

19. Calendar Flexibility

The Founding Cycle calendar governs the Founding Cycle. It does not permanently bind future Prize cycles.

Future cycles may revise opening and closing dates, intake duration, eligibility-review period, Longlist/Shortlist/Winner dates, judging-stage sequence or duration, and the applicable public-release eligibility window.

Changes for a future cycle should be adopted before that cycle opens, published in the applicable Cycle Notice and applied consistently.

Once a cycle has opened, material calendar changes should occur only where reasonably necessary and should not retroactively alter substantive eligibility or literary standards.

A cycle calendar governs a cycle. It does not permanently bind the Prize.

20. Age

The Founding Cycle is open only to entrants who are 18 years of age or older on the date of submission. For a collaborative entry, each participating human author treated as an entrant for Prize purposes must satisfy this age requirement.

This is an operational limitation, not a literary judgment about younger authors. Future cycles may revisit age eligibility if safeguarding, consent and privacy infrastructure is adopted.

21. International Scope

The Founding Cycle is international. Nationality, citizenship, residence, publisher territory or geographic origin is not a literary or eligibility criterion except where a mandatory legal restriction applicable to the actual Prize Operator makes a specific action unlawful.

22. Founding Language

The Founding Cycle operates in English.

The original language of a work may be any language. A complete English version may be entered in the English-language Founding Cycle subject to the translation rules in this Master.

Future Language Divisions may be established where genuine literary competence and operational capacity exist. Language Divisions share the Prize Concept and Architecture; they are not regional divisions.

23. Categories

FICTION — novels, novellas, short stories, collections and other fiction prose.

POETRY — poems, sequences, chapbooks and collections.

LITERARY NONFICTION — memoir, literary or personal essay, narrative nonfiction and other work whose primary object is literary rather than merely utilitarian.

GRAPHIC, HYBRID & EXPERIMENTAL LITERATURE — graphic narrative, text-image work, digital or formal hybrids and experimental literature capable of stable or equivalent digital review and possessing a substantial literary dimension.

The broad founding categories are intentional. Subdivisions should be created only when actual submission volume, literary need and institutional capacity justify them.

The Prize establishes no genre hierarchy.

24. Recognition Structure — 12–6–1

Recognition places are caps, not quotas.

No work is recognized merely to fill an available place.

A category may have no Winner.

Joint Winners / ties are not permitted in the Founding Cycle.

There is no Second Place or Third Place.

There are no Honourable Mentions in the Founding Cycle.

There is no overall or Grand Winner above the category Winners.

No minimum number of eligible submissions is required for a category to operate.

25. Fees and Material Awards

There is no entry fee for the Founding Cycle.

The Founding Cycle promises no monetary or physical prize.

Recognition may include Longlist, Shortlist and Winner status; digital certificates; official digital seals or badges; official citations; and permanent recognition in the Prize archive.

Recognition first. Infrastructure grows around recognition, not the other way around.

PART IV — Scope and Eligibility

26. Public Release Requirement

An entered work must have been publicly released. Unpublished manuscripts are not eligible for the Founding Cycle.

Public release is evidence of public existence, not evidence of literary quality.

27. Genuine Public Circulation

A work has entered genuine public circulation where it has been made available through a publicly accessible or independently verifiable route to an audience not personally selected by the entrant.

Paid, subscription-based, physical, library-mediated or otherwise access-limited release may qualify. A work is not excluded merely because the full text is not free online.

Circulation confined to a privately selected group ordinarily does not qualify as public release.

28. Publicly Accessible Reference

The entrant must provide a publicly accessible reference reasonably capable of verifying the work’s public release. The reference may be a publisher page, retailer record, library or catalogue record, platform page, periodical record or another independently verifiable source.

The reference need not remain permanently available. Later disappearance of a reference does not retroactively invalidate a release that was reasonably verified during the Prize process.

A print-only work may be eligible if public release is independently verifiable and the entrant supplies an accepted digital review copy.

29. Controlling Public-Release Date

The controlling public-release date is the earliest reasonably verifiable date on which the work entered genuine public circulation in substantially the form entered.

Later retailer listing, distributor migration, metadata change, cover change, ISBN change, platform change or republication without material literary change does not reset the date.

Where the date is disputed, the Eligibility Function may consider dated public references, publisher or platform records, library or catalogue records, entrant declarations and other verifiable evidence. No single source is automatically controlling. The date accepted for Prize purposes should be documented and communicated.

30. Serialization

A sample, excerpt or incomplete serialized portion does not automatically set the public-release date of a later complete work.

Where substantially the complete literary work entered public circulation earlier through serialization, later repackaging does not automatically make it a new work for the eligibility window.

31. Publishing-Route Neutrality

Self-published, independently published, traditionally published, university-press, magazine, platform, digital-first and other lawful publication routes are treated without status hierarchy.

Publication medium does not determine literary merit.

32. One Work, One Category, One Competitive Path

ONE WORK → ONE CATEGORY → ONE COMPETITIVE PATH

A work may not compete simultaneously in multiple categories during the same cycle.

Where a work is submitted to an evidently mistaken category, Prize Administration may request clarification and may correct the category before literary review with notice to the entrant. A correction does not permit the work to compete in more than one category or create a second competitive path.

33. Submission Limit

An entrant may submit no more than two works in the Founding Cycle.

Where a collaborative work is entered, it counts as one submission against the two-work limit of each credited participating human author.

If the two-work limit is exceeded, Prize Administration may require the affected entrant to identify which eligible submissions are to remain. If no timely choice is provided, the later-received submission or submissions may be administratively withdrawn to restore compliance with the limit.

34. Representative Submissions

A representative may submit on behalf of an underlying author or authors where the representative has a good-faith basis to believe the submission is authorized.

The underlying human author or authors remain the entrant(s) for purposes of the work cap and literary recognition.

Where authority is disputed, MIELOGOS may request written confirmation, suspend the entry or withdraw it if sufficient authority cannot reasonably be established.

35. Collaborative Works

Collaborative works are eligible. The required Human Authorial Locus may be individual, distributed or collective.

Not all human collaborators need to have interacted with AI in the same way or to the same degree.

No AI system is automatically treated as a human-equivalent legal or institutional coauthor for Prize administration.

36. Translations

Translation method is neutral. Human translation, author translation, AI-assisted translation, machine translation with human revision, symbiotic translation and other lawful methods may be eligible.

The entrant must identify the original language, the submitted language, any separate human translator where applicable, and possess sufficient rights or permissions for the submitted version.

For an English-language Founding Cycle entry, the underlying literary work must satisfy the public-release requirement. The English translation itself need not separately have been publicly released.

The literary object judged in the English-language division is the submitted English version. A new translation or newly prepared English version does not reset the controlling public-release date of an older underlying work for eligibility-window purposes.

37. Revised Editions

A revised edition is treated as a new literary object only where the revision materially changes the work as literature. This is a qualitative rather than percentage-based inquiry.

Formatting changes, correction of typographical errors, metadata or cover changes, distributor changes, light copyediting and minor cleanup ordinarily do not create a new work.

Major changes to structure, narration, plot, characterization, argument, sequence or textual architecture may do so.

The Eligibility Function determines whether a revised edition constitutes a materially new literary object for Prize purposes. The determination should be documented and communicated and remains subject to procedural reconsideration where the rule is alleged to have been misapplied.

38. Re-entry

A work that has already undergone complete literary evaluation in an earlier MIELOGOS Prize cycle may not ordinarily re-enter unchanged or substantially unchanged.

A work previously Longlisted, Shortlisted or named Winner may not re-enter in substantially the same form.

A materially revised work may enter a later cycle if it qualifies as a new literary object and falls within that cycle’s eligibility window.

A work withdrawn, administratively incomplete or found ineligible before complete literary evaluation is not automatically treated as previously evaluated.

39. Symbiotic Authorship Requirement

The entrant must provide a good-faith declaration sufficient for the Eligibility Function to determine whether the work falls within the applicable Symbiotic Authorship framework.

No AI-text percentage threshold applies. No detector score establishes eligibility or ineligibility.

40. Clarification and Corroboration

Where the declaration is insufficient to decide a genuine eligibility question, the Eligibility Function may issue CLARIFICATION REQUIRED.

The entrant ordinarily has 14 calendar days from the official request to respond. Where reasonably justified and requested before expiry, Prize Administration may grant one discretionary extension of up to 7 additional calendar days.

Corroboration may be requested only where materially necessary and should remain proportionate to the specific question. Historic creative processes are not disqualified merely because exhaustive records no longer exist.

If an entrant does not provide information reasonably necessary to establish eligibility within the applicable response period, the Eligibility Function may determine the submission on the available record, including a finding of INELIGIBLE where the eligibility requirement cannot be established.

Founding-Cycle administrative and eligibility correspondence is ordinarily conducted in English. Supporting evidence may be supplied in another language where reasonably necessary, but MIELOGOS may request a plain-English explanation or translation sufficient to decide the issue. A certified translation is not ordinarily required unless materially necessary for the specific eligibility or rights question.

41. False Information

Deliberately false material information may result in rejection, disqualification or withdrawal of recognition.

An innocent error is not automatically misconduct. Where recognition is withdrawn because eligibility was invalid, the literary evaluation does not retroactively become artistically “wrong”.

42. Eligibility and Literary Judgment

Eligibility decisions do not rank literary quality. Literary judges do not determine eligibility by preferring works they consider more symbiotic, more technological or more AI-intensive.

PART V — Submission, Intake and Version Control

43. Primary Submission Channel

The Founding Cycle will use the official submission form designated on the MIELOGOS website as the primary intake channel.

The form may rely on authorized third-party infrastructure for data transmission, file storage, administrative registration and automated confirmation.

The official institutional correspondence address is contact@mielogos.org. Ordinary submission of the literary file should occur through the designated form unless MIELOGOS expressly authorizes an alternative route.

No physical submissions are required or accepted.

44. One Work, One Submission Record

Each work receives its own submission record and unique Submission ID. Two works by the same entrant require two separate submissions.

The Submission ID is the principal administrative reference for the work throughout the cycle.

45. Information Required at Submission

Author or authors’ name(s).

Publicly credited name or pen name, if different.

Work title.

Prize category.

Original language.

Language of the review copy.

Controlling public-release date or year as claimed by the entrant.

Publicly accessible release reference.

Publishing route or venue where applicable.

Brief Symbiotic Authorship declaration sufficient for eligibility review.

Translator information where applicable.

Representative-authority confirmation where applicable.

18+ confirmation.

Acceptance of the applicable Rules and Terms.

Confirmation that the attached review copy is the version intended to be judged.

Entrant-supplied short synopsis for Prize publicity if recognized.

Cover image where the entrant can authorize Prize-related use, or confirmation that no authorized cover is available.

Publicity-rights confirmation covering the submitted synopsis and any supplied cover or other publicity material.

The Prize should not require a promotional biography, sales figures, reviews, award history, press kit or argument explaining why the work deserves to win as a condition of ordinary entry.

46. Review Copy Formats

EPUB and PDF are the primary review-copy formats. DOCX may be accepted as a fallback for ordinary text-based work where layout is not constitutive of the literary object.

For Fiction, Poetry and Literary Nonfiction, the submitted text should ordinarily be machine-readable and searchable. Image-only or rasterized scan PDFs are not accepted where an equivalent text-based digital file can reasonably be supplied.

Graphic, Hybrid & Experimental works may use image-based or visually complex files where those elements are constitutive of the work. Where technically possible, preservation of a text layer is preferred.

Where a digital, interactive or otherwise non-standard work cannot be fairly represented in EPUB, PDF or DOCX, the entrant must request an alternative review arrangement before the submission deadline. 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.

47. File-Size Limits

Where the literary form genuinely requires a larger file, the entrant may request an alternative submission arrangement before the deadline. Approval is discretionary and does not create a general higher limit.

Digital-native does not mean technically elaborate. It means digitally usable.

48. Before Sending

PLEASE CHECK BEFORE SENDING

Correct file?

Complete file?

Final version?

Opens correctly?

Correct title and author credit?

Check again. We are not in a hurry. There is no advantage to submitting early. Once your submission is acknowledged, this is the version we will judge.

49. Administrative Completeness and Acknowledgement

Receipt of data by a technical system does not by itself establish eligibility. Prize Administration checks whether the submission is sufficiently complete to enter eligibility review.

Prize Administration may request correction of missing, inconsistent or technically defective administrative information before acknowledgement. Any such correction must be supplied within the deadline stated in the request.

After the submission deadline, an administrative or technical correction may cure a genuine defect but may not be used to supply a missing literary work, substitute a new or revised work, or obtain a post-deadline literary advantage. A submission that did not contain the review copy or another materially required component by the deadline may be treated as incomplete.

The official acknowledgement should identify at minimum the Submission ID, work title, entrant, category, accepted filename, acknowledgement date and current status.

A submission is considered successfully received when the designated submission system creates a successful submission record or MIELOGOS issues official acknowledgement.

50. Version Lock

The accepted review copy becomes the locked competition version when MIELOGOS issues administrative acknowledgement identifying that file.

There is no routine post-submission literary revision period.

After lock, an entrant may not replace, revise, expand, polish, correct or otherwise improve the literary work simply because further editing has become possible.

51. Correction by Permission

A replacement file may be accepted only where MIELOGOS expressly authorizes it. Ordinary valid grounds include genuine wrong-file attachment, corruption, technical incompleteness caused by transmission or export error, or an MIELOGOS request for a different technical format. Any authorized replacement must restore the intended submitted version or cure the identified technical problem and must not create a post-deadline literary revision advantage.

The entrant should request permission rather than repeatedly uploading or sending new versions.

Where replacement is authorized, the earlier file is marked SUPERSEDED, the replacement becomes LOCKED, and only the locked version enters or remains in literary review.

52. Poetry Submission Unit

A Poetry entry must itself correspond to a publicly released literary object. An entry may be a standalone published poem, a publicly released sequence or cycle, a chapbook or a poetry collection.

Separate poems previously released independently may not ordinarily be assembled solely for the Prize into a new submission unit that did not itself exist as a publicly released literary object.

No minimum or maximum poem count applies merely because of form. Length alone does not determine literary merit.

53. Official Correspondence

Official applicant correspondence is conducted through the MIELOGOS institutional address contact@mielogos.org or another official channel expressly identified by the Prize.

Entrants should use the Submission ID in work-specific correspondence. Where email is used, correspondence should ordinarily remain in the same submission thread to reduce version and identity confusion.

54. Procedural Reconsideration

A request concerning administrative error, misapplication of an eligibility rule, a material factual error, a material undisclosed conflict or failure to follow published procedure must ordinarily be made within 14 calendar days of notice of the relevant decision.

The request must identify the specific procedural or eligibility issue. It is not an appeal against literary judgment.

A procedural reconsideration should not be determined solely by the person whose materially challenged action or determination is at issue. Where the request challenges an Integrity & Conflict Function determination, review should be routed to the pre-designated conflict alternate or, where necessary, to a qualified ad hoc procedural reviewer who did not materially participate in the original determination. Such review may correct procedure but may not substitute a new literary judgment for the Jury’s decision.

55. Withdrawal

An entrant may withdraw a submission through the official correspondence route.

Withdrawal before final Winner determination is permitted. Where Longlist or Shortlist recognition has already been made public, the historical archive may preserve the recognition with an appropriate withdrawal notation. Withdrawal after Winner recognition does not ordinarily erase accurate Prize history. Digital files are not returned; after withdrawal they follow the shortest applicable retention and deletion schedule, subject to any continuing legal or integrity need.

PART VI — Literary Evaluation

56. Governing Standard

Literary evaluation is holistic. The Prize does not require mandatory numeric scoring, fixed weights or a formula that converts literature into a mechanical total.

The criteria are lenses for judgment, not components of a score.

57. Literary Lenses

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;

risk and ambition;

memorability;

the relationship between the literary project established by the work and the effects the work actually achieves.

58. The Literary Project

Judges should not infer private authorial intention that is unavailable from the work.

What literary project does this work establish, and what demands does that project create?

How fully and powerfully does the work realize that project?

59. Form-Sensitive Judgment

Criteria are applied in a form-sensitive manner. A novel, poem, memoir, short story, collection and graphic or hybrid work need not succeed through the same means.

Genre conventions may inform reading, but genre does not create a hierarchy of seriousness.

60. Length, Scale and Complexity

Length, scale and complexity are not independent proxies for merit. A short work is not disadvantaged merely because a competing work is longer.

Technical or procedural complexity in the human–AI relationship likewise creates no merit bonus.

61. Process-Blind Merit Review

Once eligible, the work is judged as literature. The Jury should not reward or penalize AI intensity, prompt sophistication, workflow novelty, number of tools, process transparency or quantity of corroboration.

62. Individual Reading and Comparative Judgment

The Prize combines staged literary assessment with comparative literary judgment at recognition stages.

Every ELIGIBLE work must receive literary assessment under the published Literary Evaluation Framework. The depth of direct human reading may vary by stage. AI-assisted first-pass analysis, comparison, prioritization and advancement recommendations may materially inform which works receive deeper human attention.

No AI output constitutes an autonomous institutional decision. Human authority remains responsible for the design and oversight of the assessment process and for the Prize’s competitive determinations. Works advancing toward Longlist, Shortlist and Winner receive progressively deeper human literary review.

MIELOGOS does not claim that literary judgment becomes neutral or objective by multiplying human or artificial assessors. Plural assessment is used to expose judgment to materially different readings, disagreements and challenges before institutional recognition is determined.

Disagreement is information, not failure.

63. Longlist and Shortlist

Longlist and Shortlist status are substantive forms of literary recognition, not merely administrative filters.

No list is required to fill its maximum number of places.

64. Winner

The Winner is the work judged to represent the strongest overall literary achievement in its category for that cycle and should be capable of support by a reasoned public citation.

A category may have no Winner where no work reaches the standard the Jury considers appropriate. The Founding Cycle permits no joint Winner.

65. External Prestige

Sales, previous awards, publisher prestige, reviews, platform popularity, author fame and Association status are not literary criteria.

66. Translated Works

A translated entry is judged as the submitted English literary object. Judges need not reconstruct the unavailable original-language text or reward a translation method as such.

67. Collections

Where a collection is entered as the work, the collection is judged as a whole, including its internal selection, sequence, coherence and cumulative literary effect where relevant.

68. Graphic, Hybrid and Experimental Work

Graphic, hybrid and experimental work is judged as an integrated literary object. Visual or technical elements may be considered where constitutive of the work, but the category retains a substantial literary dimension.

69. Internal Notes

Judges and assessors should maintain enough internal reasoning to support serious comparative judgment and institutional accountability. Internal notes are not automatically public and do not create an entrant entitlement to deliberative records.

PART VII — Jury, Independence and Conflicts

70. Founding Decision Structure

71. Founder Ineligibility

Navi Musaget may not compete for the MIELOGOS Literary Prize while holding Prize authority in the relevant cycle. No work for which the Human Founding Judge is a credited or underlying human author or coauthor may be entered by proxy, representative or other route during that cycle.

The rule protects both actual independence and the public credibility of the Founding Cycle.

72. Reserve Human Judge

At least one Reserve Human Judge must be appointed before submissions open.

The Reserve must be genuinely capable of independent literary decision-making and may not function as an agreement proxy for the Founder.

The Reserve need not be a Symbiotic Author or MIELOGOS member.

73. Judge Qualification

Judge selection is based on demonstrated literary competence rather than institutional loyalty.

Relevant competence may be demonstrated by serious work as a writer, editor, translator, critic, reviewer, bookseller, publisher, academic, educator or other experienced literary reader.

For the Founding Cycle, sufficient literary reading competence in English is required. A judge need not read the original language of a translated entry where the English version is the competitive object.

74. Appointment and Term

For the Founding Cycle, the Founder appoints the Reserve Human Judge and any qualified ad hoc Human Judge required under these Rules, subject to the stated competence and conflict standards. Judges are appointed for a Prize cycle rather than indefinitely. Appointment authority does not create authority to control the judge’s literary outcomes.

75. Material Conflict Standard

A material conflict exists where a reasonable informed person would see a substantial risk that literary judgment is influenced, or reasonably appears to be influenced, by non-literary considerations.

Relevant factors may include direct financial interest, ongoing close creative collaboration, substantive editing or development of the entered work, close personal or family relationship, active dispute, or direct institutional dependency.

Routine acquaintance, public interaction, broad community membership, attendance at the same event or ordinary professional familiarity does not by itself establish a material conflict.

76. Recusal and Transfer of Authority

Where a judge is materially conflicted, literary authority for the affected work or decision must be transferred.

A recused judge may not direct, privately instruct, alter or remain the effective decision-maker after transfer.

Once validly transferred, the replacement judge’s literary authority is final within the scope of that transfer.

Internal disagreement by the recused Founder does not create an override power.

77. Dual Conflict or Unavailability

If both the ordinary Human Founding Judge and Reserve Human Judge are conflicted or unavailable for the affected matter, a qualified ad hoc Human Judge may be appointed for that work or decision.

The Founding Cycle does not require a second permanent Reserve merely to anticipate every possible dual-conflict scenario.

78. Incapacity

Temporary incapacity permits the Reserve Human Judge to handle affected decisions. Where incapacity becomes permanent for the remainder of the cycle, the Reserve may assume ordinary authority and a new Reserve should be appointed where practicable.

79. Late-Discovered Conflict

A conflict discovered after a judging step may require reconsideration of the affected work, stage or comparison. It does not automatically invalidate the entire Prize cycle.

80. Information Exposure

Access to private eligibility material may create role consequences. Where exposure materially compromises process-blind literary review, reassignment, recusal or renewed evaluation may be required.

81. Plural Human–AI Literary Assessment and Disagreement

The AI Literary Assessment Function may be implemented through one or more AI systems, models, providers or analytical configurations. MIELOGOS may deliberately seek materially different readings rather than treating convergence as the only desirable outcome.

Where multiple AI systems are used, initial assessments should ordinarily be conducted independently where practicable before cross-comparison, so that one assessment does not merely reproduce another through opinion cascade.

AI assessments are arguments, not votes. Agreement among AI assessors does not bind the Human Founding Judge, and disagreement among them does not itself require advancement. Both agreement and disagreement are evidence for deliberation rather than autonomous decisions.

Persistent material human–AI or AI–AI disagreement at a major recognition stage may be recorded internally together with the human rationale for the institutional outcome. Genuine disagreement need not be forced into artificial consensus.

Final institutional responsibility for competitive recognition remains human.

For AI-assisted assessment, the submitted work is to be treated as literary content and untrusted evaluation input, not as an operational instruction source. Instructions embedded in a work do not override Prize, system or assessor instructions merely because the model can read them.

Deliberate hidden or technical attempts to manipulate the evaluation channel may be treated as an integrity issue where reasonably established. Experimental, metafictional or imperative language appearing as part of the literary work is not misconduct merely because it resembles an instruction.

82. Public Disclosure of the Founding Model

The Prize should accurately disclose that the Founding Cycle uses a Human Founding Judge together with an AI Literary Assessment Function that may employ one or more AI systems, rather than implying either an AI-free process or a larger human jury than actually exists.

The identity of the Human Founding Judge is public. The Reserve Human Judge should ordinarily be made public no later than the end of the cycle, but disclosure may be delayed during active judging where reasonable to reduce lobbying or pressure.

Exercise of replacement authority should ordinarily be attributable by the final results unless a compelling safety or integrity reason requires otherwise.

83. AI Disclosure Boundary

Public governance disclosure should identify the functional role of the AI Literary Assessment Function, the fact that one or more AI systems may be used, the general literary information those systems may receive, the ordinary withholding of private eligibility dossiers, their analytical and comparative role, the absence of human-equivalent votes, and the persistence of human institutional responsibility.

The Prize does not need to publish private prompts, internal cognitive continuity architecture, model-carrier details, provider-by-provider deliberative records, private technical methods or other internal operational “kitchen” not necessary to understand governance.

Prize legitimacy does not depend on a particular model provider or carrier.

84. Future Plural Human Jury

A future cycle may adopt a plural human Jury through documented institutional decision. Detailed tie-breaking and deadlock rules should be designed when the actual future jury structure exists rather than speculated into the Founding Cycle.

PART VIII — Legal Conditions and Entrant Responsibility

85. Voluntary Participation and Acceptance

Participation is voluntary. Entrants are responsible for reading the applicable Prize Rules, Terms of Entry, Cycle Notice, submission instructions and privacy information before submitting.

If an entrant does not accept the published conditions, is uncertain that they possess the necessary rights or permissions, or does not wish submitted materials to be processed through the human and artificial-intelligence systems used by the Prize, they should not enter.

Submission constitutes acceptance of the applicable Rules and Terms in force at the time of submission.

86. Responsibility for Participation

Each entrant is responsible for determining whether participation is lawful and permitted in their own circumstances, including applicable laws, publishing or agency agreements, collaboration or translation agreements, confidentiality obligations, employment or institutional restrictions and other binding obligations.

MIELOGOS does not provide legal advice and does not undertake to determine whether participation is permissible under every law, contract or private arrangement that may apply to an entrant.

87. Rights and Authority to Submit

By submitting, the entrant represents and warrants that they possess all rights, permissions, consents and authority reasonably necessary to submit the work; permit MIELOGOS to receive, store and process it; permit eligibility and literary review; provide accompanying materials; permit processing through digital and AI systems used for legitimate Prize purposes; and grant the limited licences stated in these Terms.

The entrant need not represent that they are the sole copyright owner of every element in the work. The requirement is sufficient lawful authority to submit and grant the permissions required for participation.

88. Collaborative, Representative and Translation Authority

Where multiple human authors, contributors or other relevant rightsholders exist, the submitting person must have a good-faith basis to believe submission is authorized. MIELOGOS may request reasonable confirmation if a genuine question arises.

Where a separate human translator is involved, the entrant must identify the translator where required and possess permissions reasonably necessary for submission and evaluation.

MIELOGOS is not required to adjudicate ultimate ownership or contractual rights among competing claimants.

89. Death or Incapacity

Death or incapacity of an entrant during an active cycle does not automatically terminate a valid submission. MIELOGOS may communicate with a person reasonably shown to possess legal authority to act for the entrant and may request proportionate evidence of that authority.

Subject to applicable law and rights restrictions, the submission may continue or be withdrawn. Any literary recognition remains recognition of the entrant and work rather than the representative.

90. Third-Party Rights

The entrant is responsible for ensuring that submitted materials do not unlawfully infringe third-party rights, including copyright, related rights, trademarks, privacy, publicity/personality rights, confidentiality, contractual rights and rights in photographs, illustrations, artwork or incorporated material.

Eligibility or recognition does not constitute legal certification that a work is free from third-party claims.

91. Entrant Representations and Honest Error

The entrant represents, to the best of their knowledge and belief, that material eligibility information is truthful and not deliberately misleading; authority is sufficient; the submission does not knowingly violate rights or obligations that prevent participation; permissions represented as obtained were obtained; publicity materials may lawfully be used to the authorized extent; and no fraudulent or materially falsified evidence will knowingly be supplied.

An innocent factual mistake is not automatically misconduct. Deliberate material misrepresentation may result in rejection, disqualification or withdrawal of recognition.

92. Copyright

Submission does not transfer ownership of copyright in the work to MIELOGOS. Copyright and other underlying intellectual-property rights remain with the persons or entities legally entitled to them. Nothing in these Terms creates a MIELOGOS claim to authorship or ownership of the submitted literary work.

93. Limited Review Copy Licence

By submitting, the entrant grants MIELOGOS a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence for the period reasonably necessary to operate and document the Prize to receive and store the review copy; create necessary technical or administrative copies; transmit it to authorized persons or systems involved in Prize operations; examine it for eligibility; process it for literary assessment; conduct comparative literary evaluation; and maintain necessary administrative, integrity or legal records.

The licence exists for legitimate Prize functions and does not grant MIELOGOS general commercial publishing rights. Post-cycle storage or processing is governed by the Privacy & Data Retention provisions and any continuing legal or integrity need.

94. AI-Assisted Prize Operations

Entrants acknowledge that Prize administration, eligibility review, literary analysis and comparative assessment may involve both human participants and artificial-intelligence systems.

Submitted works and related materials may be processed through third-party digital services, language models, AI systems or other technical tools selected by MIELOGOS for legitimate Prize functions. Processing may include transmission, temporary technical reproduction, parsing, text extraction, analysis, comparison, administrative classification, literary assessment and generation of internal analytical material.

Submission constitutes permission for such processing to the extent reasonably connected with operation of the Prize.

95. Providers and Technical Systems

MIELOGOS may change services, providers, models, software or technical systems during or between cycles. The Prize does not guarantee a particular provider, model or model version, vendor, technical or storage architecture, retention configuration, training policy or processing methodology.

Third-party systems operate under their own applicable terms, policies, technical settings and data practices. MIELOGOS does not warrant that external providers will maintain identical practices over time. Prize legitimacy or continuity does not depend on a particular AI model, vendor or technical carrier.

96. Internal Analytical Material

Analysis, notes, comparisons, classifications, summaries and other internal working material produced by human or AI participants form part of the Prize’s internal working record. Such material is not part of the submitted literary work and creates no MIELOGOS claim to ownership of that work.

The material need not be published or supplied to entrants and may be retained, reduced or discarded according to operational need, Privacy & Data Retention rules and mandatory law.

These Terms create no contractual right to inspect, obtain, correct or require deletion of internal Prize working material. Any rights arising under mandatory law remain unaffected.

97. Publicity Materials and Cover Licence

The Prize may request or accept author or entrant name, pen name, title, cover image, entrant-supplied synopsis, brief biography, author photograph, bibliographic information, public-release information and other publicity material expressly supplied or authorized for Prize-related public use.

Where the entrant supplies a cover image for public use, the entrant represents sufficient authority and grants MIELOGOS a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to display and reproduce that image for Prize announcements, Longlist/Shortlist/Winner recognition, the permanent Prize archive, MIELOGOS website pages, MIELOGOS social or institutional communications and historical reporting concerning the Prize.

If sufficient authority for the cover does not exist, this must be disclosed. Absence of an authorized cover does not itself make an otherwise eligible literary work ineligible; MIELOGOS may recognize the work without the image.

98. Synopsis Licence

Entrants may be required to provide a short synopsis or description in their own words or in wording they are authorized to provide. By supplying it, the entrant grants MIELOGOS a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to reproduce it for Prize-related recognition, publicity and archival purposes.

MIELOGOS may make reasonable non-substantive edits for length, grammar, formatting, accessibility and house style provided meaning is not materially changed. A substantive rewrite should be approved or clearly presented as an independent editorial description rather than falsely attributed to the entrant.

99. Recognition Licence

If a work becomes Longlisted, Shortlisted or a Winner, the entrant authorizes MIELOGOS, subject to applicable law, to publish and maintain as part of the Prize’s historical archive factual recognition information including credited name or pen name, title, category, recognition status, cycle year, authorized cover, authorized synopsis, ordinary bibliographic and publication information, an official Prize citation or institutional statement, and any other publicity material expressly authorized for public Prize use.

This permission survives conclusion of the cycle so that the Prize may maintain an accurate historical record.

100. No Automatic Full-Text Publication Licence

Submission does not give MIELOGOS an automatic right to publish the complete work publicly and is not a transfer of publication rights. Publication of a complete work, substantial extract or other material beyond expressly granted permissions requires an additional lawful basis or permission.

101. Third-Party Claims Procedure

A third-party claim may trigger review where it contains information specific and plausible enough to raise a genuine question concerning rights, authority or compliance. Receipt of a claim does not establish that the claim is true.

MIELOGOS may take proportionate interim action, including temporary suspension of an entry, recognition or public display of disputed material, where reasonably necessary to limit legal or integrity risk.

Where reasonably possible, MIELOGOS should notify the entrant of the substance of the issue, provide a reasonable opportunity to respond, consider the available information, determine whether sufficient basis remains for participation, and document any material administrative action.

MIELOGOS need not disclose information where disclosure would itself be unlawful, unsafe or legitimately confidential.

102. No Adjudication of Ultimate Ownership

MIELOGOS is a literary prize, not a court or copyright tribunal. Its administrative question is whether there is a sufficient reasonable basis for a work to participate under the Prize Rules. A decision to suspend, exclude or restore an entry does not determine ultimate ownership or legal rights outside the Prize.

103. No Guarantee of Recognition or Benefit

Submission does not guarantee eligibility, Longlist, Shortlist or Winner recognition, publication, feedback, commercial opportunity, representation, MIELOGOS membership, financial benefit, publicity or professional advancement.

104. Technical Failure

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, MIELOGOS is not responsible for submission failure caused by circumstances outside its reasonable control, including internet failure, service-provider outages, corrupted transmission, entrant-device failure, browser failure, damaged or incompatible files, email filtering, failed uploads or third-party infrastructure failure.

Where a problem within the Prize’s reasonable control materially affects submissions, MIELOGOS may take corrective administrative action where feasible.

105. Entrant Copies

Entrants must retain their own copies of all submitted works and materials. MIELOGOS is not a permanent manuscript-storage service for entrants.

106. Modification, Suspension, Cancellation and Force Majeure

MIELOGOS may modify operational arrangements, extend deadlines, suspend a category, postpone an announcement or suspend or cancel part or all of a Prize cycle where reasonably necessary because of serious technical failure, judge incapacity, integrity concerns, security incidents, mandatory legal constraints, force majeure, unexpectedly unmanageable submission volume or comparable circumstances materially affecting fair or practical operation.

Force majeure means an event beyond the reasonable control of MIELOGOS that materially prevents or impairs Prize operations.

Where practicable, material active-cycle changes should be publicly announced and must not be used merely to retroactively alter substantive eligibility or literary standards to favour or disadvantage particular entrants.

107. Material Breach

A material breach is a breach that substantially undermines the legal or procedural basis on which a submission was accepted or permitted to remain in the Prize.

Examples include deliberate material misrepresentation of eligibility, submission without sufficient authority, or deliberate concealment of a known rights restriction that materially prevents participation. Minor, immaterial or good-faith errors are not material breaches merely because an error occurred.

108. Indemnity

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, an entrant agrees to be responsible for claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs or reasonable expenses arising directly from a material breach of the entrant’s warranties, deliberate material misrepresentation, submission of material the entrant was not entitled to submit, or a third-party claim arising from rights or permissions that the entrant represented as sufficient but did not possess.

Where legally enforceable, this protection extends to MIELOGOS and persons acting in authorized Prize roles, including judges, assessors, administrators, reviewers and representatives.

This provision does not transfer to an entrant liability arising solely from MIELOGOS’s own unlawful conduct where such liability cannot lawfully be transferred or excluded.

109. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, MIELOGOS is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential or speculative losses arising from participation, including alleged loss of opportunity, income, anticipated publication, reputation or commercial advantage, or disappointment arising from Prize results.

Nothing excludes or restricts liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or restricted.

110. Failure to Comply; Fraud; Withdrawal of Recognition

Material non-compliance may lead to clarification, administrative correction, suspension, ineligibility, disqualification or withdrawal of recognition, proportionate to the issue.

Deliberate fraud, fabricated documentation, knowingly false material eligibility information or intentional circumvention of the Rules may justify stronger action. Honest error is not automatically fraud.

Where recognition was obtained on materially invalid eligibility, deliberate misrepresentation or lack of necessary authority, MIELOGOS may withdraw it. Such withdrawal is not a retrospective declaration that the work lacked literary merit.

111. Severability and No Waiver

If a provision is invalid, unlawful or unenforceable in a particular context or jurisdiction, it should be interpreted or limited to the minimum extent legally possible and the remaining provisions continue to the extent permitted by law.

Failure by MIELOGOS to enforce a provision in one circumstance does not automatically waive its application in another.

112. Rule Precedence and Mandatory Law

Cycle-specific Terms of Entry.

Applicable Cycle Notice.

This Master / Prize Rules.

Operational submission instructions.

General explanatory website material.

A later document must not silently contradict a locked constitutional principle. Where a Prize provision conflicts with applicable mandatory law, mandatory law governs only to the extent of the conflict; remaining provisions should continue consistently with MIELOGOS governing principles where legally possible.

113. Changes to Terms

Before submissions open, MIELOGOS may revise cycle Terms. After opening, material changes should occur only where reasonably necessary for legal, technical, integrity or operational reasons and must not be used merely to retroactively change substantive eligibility or literary standards to alter the competitive position of particular entrants.

114. International Participation and Mandatory Restrictions

The Prize is international in scope. No nationality, citizenship, residence or geographic origin is treated as a measure of literary merit.

Where a mandatory legal restriction binding upon the actual Prize Operator prevents MIELOGOS from lawfully receiving, processing, communicating with or recognizing a particular submission, MIELOGOS may take the minimum action reasonably necessary to comply. Such action is legal or operational, not a literary judgment.

115. Governing Law and Forum

MIELOGOS may designate a governing law or forum in cycle-specific Terms or the Cycle Notice where doing so is appropriate.

If none is expressly designated, no particular jurisdiction is created or implied merely by these Terms; applicable law and forum are determined under the legal rules applicable to the particular dispute.

No governing-law or forum provision purports to exclude rights, obligations, jurisdictions or liabilities that applicable mandatory law does not permit the parties to exclude.

116. Prize Operator

Before submissions open, the Cycle Notice or Terms of Entry must identify the actual person or entity responsible for operating the Prize cycle and provide an appropriate contact route.

The operator may be an individual or an entity. MIELOGOS governance, Prize literary authority and the legal identity of the operator are distinct questions. No document should imply the existence of a corporation, foundation or limited-liability legal person unless it actually exists.

PART IX — Privacy and Data Retention

117. Privacy Governing 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. Do not promise control over systems MIELOGOS does not control.

The Prize is not a permanent private archive of entrants, manuscripts, AI conversations or creative-process records.

118. Scope of Privacy Processing

This Part applies to personal information processed in connection with submissions, administration, eligibility, clarification and corroboration, literary assessment, conflicts and integrity, correspondence, procedural reconsideration, recognition, publicity, historical records and technical operation.

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

119. Operator / Controller Identification

Before submissions open, the public Privacy Notice must identify the actual person or entity responsible for determining the principal purposes and means of Prize-related personal-data processing and provide an appropriate contact route.

Official privacy correspondence should be capable of being directed through contact@mielogos.org.

No notice should imply the existence of a company, foundation, separate legal personality, Data Protection Officer or other structure unless it actually exists.

120. Categories of Information

Depending on stage and need, MIELOGOS may process administrative information, eligibility information, the literary review copy, judging and AI-assisted working material, publicity materials, conflict/integrity/dispute records and technical submission records.

121. Information Not Ordinarily Needed

date of birth beyond an 18+ declaration;

passport or national identity document;

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.

Where an exceptional issue genuinely requires additional information, the minimum reasonably necessary should be requested.

122. Sensitive Information

Entrants should 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 returned where reasonably practicable.

123. Purposes of Processing

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.

Prize administration data should not be repurposed for unrelated advertising or marketing merely because MIELOGOS possesses it.

124. Data-Protection Legal Basis

The legal basis for processing depends on applicable law and the identity and location of the actual Prize Operator. Where GDPR or comparable law applies, processing may as appropriate rely on steps requested by the entrant and performance of Prize Terms, legitimate interests in operating and securing the Prize, legal obligations, or consent where genuinely optional processing requires it.

Acceptance of Prize Terms is not automatically equivalent to data-protection consent for every purpose. Where separate consent is legally required, it should be requested separately and clearly.

125. No Solely Automated Prize Decision

AI systems may perform first-pass analysis, comparison, prioritization, advancement recommendations and other literary-assessment functions. 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. This does not require identical direct human reading time for every ELIGIBLE work.

126. Need-to-Know Access and Functional Separation

Access to private submission information should be limited to persons or systems reasonably requiring it for an authorized function. Functional access follows Administration, Eligibility, Literary Evaluation and Integrity boundaries.

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

127. Submission IDs

Where practical, internal administrative systems should use the Submission ID as the principal operational identifier to reduce unnecessary circulation of personal information and maintain consistent record linkage. This does not require anonymous judging.

128. Third-Party Digital and AI Systems

MIELOGOS may use third-party systems for website hosting, submission intake, email, cloud storage, spreadsheets or administrative registers, document processing, AI analysis, technical security and related Prize functions.

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

Where applicable law requires particular transfer, processor or contractual arrangements, those requirements govern.

129. International Processing

Because MIELOGOS is international and may use internationally operated systems, personal information may be processed in more than one country. Where applicable law imposes requirements on international transfers, MIELOGOS must comply to the extent those requirements apply to the actual operator and processing activity.

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

130. Retention Principle

Expiration of a retention period should ordinarily result in deletion, anonymisation, reduction to a smaller necessary record or documented continued retention where a legitimate unresolved purpose remains.

MIELOGOS should not retain private information indefinitely merely because it may conceivably become useful.

131. Founding-Cycle Retention Schedule

Retention follows the substance of the material rather than the container in which it is stored. For example, a manuscript received through an authorized email fallback remains a review copy for retention purposes and does not acquire the longer ordinary correspondence period merely because it is attached to an email.

132. Reduced Historical Submission Register

A reduced record retained for re-entry, duplicate detection, cycle history or integrity should ordinarily contain no more than 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.

133. Public Recognition Archive

For Longlisted, Shortlisted and Winner works, MIELOGOS may retain and publish indefinitely the authorized historical recognition record, including credited name or pen name, title, category, cycle year, recognition status, authorized cover, authorized synopsis, bibliographic information and official citation.

Recognition permanence ≠ manuscript permanence.

134. Provider Retention After MIELOGOS Deletion

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

It does not represent that every third-party provider has instantaneously erased every backup, system log, cached copy, security record, model-provider record or legally retained record. MIELOGOS should not promise technical deletion that it cannot reasonably control or verify.

135. 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 exists.

136. Requests Concerning Personal Information

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.

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.

137. Rights Are Not Absolute

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.

138. Historical Recognition and Privacy

A request to remove private information is distinct from a request to rewrite accurate Prize history. Where lawful, MIELOGOS may preserve the factual record that a work was Longlisted, Shortlisted or named Winner. Where recognition was later withdrawn, the archive may preserve the historical fact together with an appropriate withdrawal notation rather than falsely representing that the event never occurred.

139. Reasonable Security Measures

restricted-access storage;

non-public manuscript folders;

least-privilege sharing;

separation of administrative, eligibility and judging records;

strong account authentication and multi-factor authentication where reasonably available;

avoidance of unnecessary local copies;

review of sharing permissions;

removal of access when a Prize role ends;

reasonable device and account security.

These are risk-reduction practices, not a guarantee that a security incident can never occur.

140. 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 users or systems.

141. Security Incidents

If MIELOGOS becomes aware of unauthorized access, loss, disclosure or other security compromise, it should take reasonable steps to contain the incident, assess affected information and persons, preserve information necessary to investigate, reduce continuing risk where practicable, and make notifications required by applicable law.

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

142. 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 should 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.

143. 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.

144. Retention Review and Deletion Log

At or after expiration of retention periods, MIELOGOS should review records for deletion, anonymisation, reduction or documented continued retention.

A minimal deletion or retention log may record material category, Submission ID where necessary, review or deletion date, and reason for extended retention. The log should not reproduce material that was deleted.

145. Changes to Privacy Framework

The framework may be updated between cycles. Material active-cycle changes should occur only where reasonably necessary for legal, technical, security or operational reasons and should not expose already-submitted private material to a substantially unrelated new purpose without an appropriate legal basis.

146. Final Privacy Principle

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

Private process evidence is exceptional. Complete creative histories are not the price of eligibility. Public recognition may endure. Private submissions should not.

PART X — Interpretation, Change Control and Pre-Launch Completion

147. Institutional Interpretation

This Master should be interpreted to preserve the Prize’s locked distinctions rather than collapse them for convenience.

Symbiotic classification does not equal literary quality.

Eligibility does not equal recognition.

Recognition does not equal copyright certification.

Integrity authority does not equal literary authority.

AI assessment does not equal autonomous institutional authority.

AI plurality does not equal voting power.

Plural assessment does not convert literary judgment into objective measurement.

Association membership does not equal Prize preference.

Public recognition does not require permanent retention of private manuscripts.

148. Active-Cycle Change Rule

Before a cycle opens, MIELOGOS may revise operational rules. Once submissions open, material changes should be limited to what is reasonably necessary for legal, technical, integrity, security or operational reasons and should not retroactively alter substantive eligibility or literary standards merely to change competitive outcomes.

149. Exceptional Circumstances

Unexpected circumstances should be handled by preserving fairness, functional separation, proportionality and documented reasons rather than by pretending that every exceptional situation was exhaustively predicted in advance.

150. Reserved Pre-Launch Fields

Two matters remain intentionally reserved rather than conceptually unresolved:

Prize Operator / data controller — must be identified honestly before submissions open.

Governing law and forum — may be designated before submissions open where useful or required; if not designated, applicable law and forum remain determined by the rules applicable to the particular dispute.

Appointment of at least one Reserve Human Judge and completion of the operational readiness items in Appendix C — including work-level role separation, integrity routing, capacity contingency and technical safeguards — are required pre-opening acts but do not require amendment of this Master.

151. Founding-Cycle No-Winner Authority

The possibility of naming no Winner in a category is active for the Founding Cycle. It is not an emergency mechanism and does not require the Jury to lower literary standards merely because a category exists.

152. No Hidden Purity Test

Nothing in implementation should recreate, indirectly, a prohibited AI-percentage or technological-purity test through form design, scoring, corroboration volume, model preferences, translation method or judging culture.

153. Master Status

Adopted on 5 October 2026 and revised in v1.4 on the same date, this Master is the principal consolidated governing reference for the MIELOGOS Literary Prize 2027 Founding Cycle, subject to the MIELOGOS constitutional framework, applicable mandatory law, the final Cycle Notice and any cycle-specific Terms of Entry adopted consistently with this Master. The v1.4 revision clarifies plural symbiotic literary assessment without changing the human locus of institutional responsibility. Adoption does not itself open submissions. The Founding Cycle may open only after the required pre-launch conditions in Appendix C have been completed.

APPENDIX A — Applicant Path

SUBMISSION → ADMIN COMPLETENESS → ACKNOWLEDGEMENT + VERSION LOCK → PUBLIC RELEASE VERIFICATION → ELIGIBILITY → ELIGIBLE / CLARIFICATION REQUIRED / INELIGIBLE → LITERARY REVIEW → LONGLIST → SHORTLIST → WINNER / NO WINNER

The Founding Cycle uses a website submission form as the ordinary intake route. A successful submission record or official acknowledgement establishes receipt. Administrative acknowledgement identifies the locked competition version.

Eligibility and literary evaluation remain separate even where stages overlap in calendar time.

APPENDIX B — Submission Confirmation

Before final submission, the entrant should be required to affirm substantially the following:

I confirm that I have read and accept the applicable MIELOGOS Literary Prize Rules and Terms of Entry.

I confirm that I am at least 18 years old on the date of submission.

I confirm that I have sufficient rights, permissions and authority to submit this work and permit its processing for Prize purposes.

I understand that the Prize uses both human and artificial-intelligence systems and that my submitted materials may be processed through third-party digital and AI services used for Prize administration, eligibility review and literary assessment.

I understand that MIELOGOS may change the digital or AI systems used by the Prize and does not guarantee the policies or technical practices of a particular provider.

I understand that third-party digital and AI services operate under their own applicable terms and data practices, including retention or training practices that may be outside MIELOGOS’s direct control, and I authorize MIELOGOS to transmit my submitted materials to such services for Prize purposes as described in the Terms.

I confirm that I have checked the submitted review copy and intend this version to be judged.

Where I provide a cover image, synopsis or other publicity material, I confirm that I have sufficient authority to permit its Prize-related use as described in the Terms.

I understand that participation is voluntary and that literary decisions are final subject only to the procedural protections expressly provided in the Rules.

APPENDIX C — Pre-Launch Checklist

APPENDIX D — Founding Formulae

Trust before surveillance.

Relation before percentage.

Responsibility without purity tests.

Transparency without total exposure.

Classification without automatic judgment.

Plurality without orthodoxy.

Community without central control.

Recognition places are caps, not quotas.

Procedural authority may protect literary judgment; it may not replace literary judgment.

The minimum unit of independence is the submitted work.

Digital-native does not mean technically elaborate. It means digitally usable.

A cycle calendar governs a cycle. It does not permanently bind the Prize.

Recognition permanence ≠ manuscript permanence.

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

Plurality exposes judgment; it does not make judgment neutral.

AI assessments are arguments, not votes.

Disagreement is information, not failure.

Adoption Record

Document: MIELOGOS Literary Prize — Founding Master 2027

Version: 1.4 — FINAL ADOPTED REVISION

Date assembled: 5 October 2026 | Cross-document audit: 5 October 2026 | External-review refinement: 5 October 2026 | Final adoption pass: 5 October 2026 | Symbiotic literary-assessment revision: 5 October 2026

Status: ADOPTED — GOVERNING MASTER FOR THE 2027 FOUNDING CYCLE

Adopted 5 October 2026 and revised and re-adopted the same date as v1.4. Subsequent amendments must be versioned and documented. No silent substantive amendment may be made to an active cycle. Adoption does not waive or satisfy the pre-launch requirements listed in Appendix C.

Reserved pre-launch fields and acts: actual Prize Operator / data controller; any optional or legally required governing-law/forum provision; identity of Reserve Human Judge; work-level Eligibility/Literary and Integrity assignments; assessment-capacity and plural-AI operating protocol; and technical details of the live submission implementation.