Partner schools · Bukmuk Inter-School Short Story Writing Championship 2026
The coordinator’s guide
You are the person at your school who holds the code and answers the questions. This is the whole job, with pictures of every screen you will meet.
Need to pass it on? Download this guide as a PDF.
The whole job, in five lines
- Send your school code to your parents.
- They enter at bukmukpublishing.com/competition. Free with your code, ₹490 without it.
- Sign in at bukmukpublishing.com/competition/school to watch the entries arrive.
- Tell us if a name appears that is not one of your students.
- Entries close 30 September 2026, 11:59 pm IST. Results are announced in October.
01 What your school gets
- ·A complimentary creative writing workshop, run by our mentors in person or online.
- ·Free entry for every student at your school, through your code.
- ·Your school’s name printed beside each of its published authors.
- ·A participating schools page inside the anthology.
- ·The Bukmuk Shield for the school with the most published authors.
New Delhi World Book Fair 2027
The anthology goes on display at the fair, with the name of every participating school printed in it.
There is nothing for the school to pay, and no minimum number of entries. One story from your school is welcome. So are two hundred.
02 Your school code
Your code looks like BKMK-2026-XXXXXX. We email it to you when your school joins. It is the one thing that makes entry free for your families, so it is worth understanding what it does.
A parent types it into the first box of the entry form. The form checks it while they type, names your school back to them, and the payment step disappears.
Share it the way you would share any circular: on your school app, in a class group, in a newsletter, on a notice board. Keep it inside your school community rather than on a public social media post, because it removes a ₹490 fee for anyone who has it.
Worth knowing
The code is not a password. Every parent in your school has it, so it cannot on its own let anyone see the list of entries. Signing in to your school page needs the code and your coordinator email. That is section 04.
Lost the code, or want it changed? Write to [email protected] and we will send it again.
03 What a parent does
You will be asked this more than anything else, so here is the whole thing. It takes about five minutes at bukmukpublishing.com/competition.
Your school
They type your school code. Entry becomes free.
The young writer
Child’s name, age, school and class. Anyone aged 6 to 17 can enter.
The story
They pick a theme, give the title and rough word count, and attach the story as a Word file or a PDF, up to 10 MB. The story needs to be written before they start the form.
Parent or guardian
A grown-up gives their name, email and phone. We email a six digit code to confirm the address, because that is where the certificate goes.
Before you send it
They confirm the story is the child’s own work, written without AI tools.
Send
With your code there is no payment screen. A confirmation email arrives with an entry reference. Ask parents to keep it, because it lets us find a story straight away.
Ready to send to parents
Copy this, put your own code in place of the Xs, and send it on WhatsApp or email.
Our school is taking part in the Bukmuk Inter-School Short Story Writing Championship 2026. Your child writes one short story on the theme for their age group. A jury reads every entry, and the thirty best stories are printed in a real book with an ISBN, sold on Amazon in India and worldwide. Because we are a partner school, entry is free for our students. Use our school code: BKMK-2026-XXXXXX Enter here: bukmukpublishing.com/competition It takes about five minutes. Have the story ready as a Word file or a PDF. Entries close 30 September 2026, 11:59 pm IST.
A child may enter more than one story, as long as each is in a different theme. A parent who stops halfway does not lose anything, because what they typed is kept on their own device.
04 Signing in to your school page
Your school page lives at bukmukpublishing.com/competition/school. Bookmark it. There is nothing to install and no password to remember.
Type your code and your coordinator email
It must be the email address we have on record for you. If a colleague tries their own address it will not work, and the page will not say why.
We email you a six digit code
It arrives from [email protected] and works for ten minutes. If it is not in your inbox, look in spam and in your school mail filter.
Type the code in
You are in, for two hours
After two hours the page asks for a fresh code. That is deliberate: the list holds children’s names, and a page left open on a staffroom computer should not stay open all week.
If sign in does not work, the page will not tell you whether it was the code or the email that was wrong. That is on purpose, so that nobody can use it to test codes. WhatsApp us on +91 81302 86286 and we will sort it out in a minute.
05 What you can see, and what you cannot
You can see
- ·How many stories your school has entered so far.
- ·Each child’s name, age and class.
- ·The theme they chose and the title of their story.
- ·The date the entry came in.
You cannot see
- ·Parent email addresses, phone numbers or home addresses. Those belong to the family, not to us to hand on.
- ·The story files themselves.
- ·Anything about judging. No shortlist, no scores, no status, until results are announced.
The list updates as entries arrive, so refreshing during the last week is the point of the page. It shows only stories that were actually submitted, so a parent who started the form and stopped will not appear.
06 The weekly email, and what to check
Once a week we email you the same list, so you do not have to sign in to keep an eye on it. The email only goes out when your school has at least one entry.
When it arrives, read the names. You are the only person in the world who knows whether “Aarav, class 4” is really a child at your school. If a name is not one of your students, write to [email protected] and we will remove the entry and, if it keeps happening, issue you a fresh code.
Why we ask
Your code makes entry free. If it travels outside your school, families with no connection to you enter without paying, and your school’s own count stops meaning anything. A quick read of the list each week is the only check that works.
07 The questions parents ask you
The code is not being accepted.
Ask them to check for a stray space, and that it is the letter O against the digit zero. Our codes never use the letters I and O or the digits 0 and 1, exactly so this cannot happen. If it still fails, send them to WhatsApp +91 81302 86286.
I already paid ₹490 before I knew about the code.
Tell them to write to [email protected] with their payment reference. We refund in full as long as the story has not yet gone to the jury.
My child is between two age groups.
A story is always judged against others by children of the same age. The theme defaults to their age group, but a child close to a boundary may write to the neighbouring theme if the idea suits it better. The word count then follows the theme they picked.
Can my child enter twice?
Yes, as long as each story is in a different theme.
Does every child get something?
Every child who enters receives an eCertificate. The thirty published authors receive a physical certificate of international publication, two author copies, literary gifts, an author page on our site, and a share of the ₹15,000 in cash prizes.
We live outside India.
Children abroad are welcome, and receive their certificates digitally.
Can a teacher help with the story?
The story must be written entirely by the child, and without AI tools. We may ask to see drafts. Encouragement is welcome. Writing is not.
08 The dates
30 September 2026, 11:59 pm IST
Entries close. A hard cut off, not a soft one.
October 2026
Results announced. Thirty stories selected.
New Delhi World Book Fair 2027
The anthology on display, with your school named in it.
Most entries arrive in the last ten days. If you plan one reminder to parents, send it in the third week of September.
09 About the championship
The Bukmuk Inter-School Short Story Writing Championship 2026 is open to children aged 6 to 17. Each child writes one short story on the theme for their age group and sends it in. A jury reads every entry. There is no audition and no shortlist to get through first, so a child who has never entered anything before starts level with everyone else.
The ten best stories in each age group, thirty in all, are printed in an anthology with a real ISBN and sold on Amazon in India and worldwide. Selected stories are lightly copy-edited and never rewritten, because the point of the book is the child’s own voice.
Entry is ₹490 per story for the public, and free for students of partner schools. Read the full terms, refund and privacy policy.
What the published authors get
- ·The story printed in an anthology with a real ISBN
- ·A physical certificate of international publication
- ·Two author copies of the book
- ·A share of ₹15,000 in cash prizes
- ·An author page on bukmukpublishing.com
- ·A book launch event
Ages 6 to 8
Whispers of the Wild
300 to 600 words
A story where nature holds the magic. Forests, oceans, animals, wild places.
Ages 9 to 11
Twisted Fairytales
600 to 1,000 words
Take a fairytale everyone knows and turn it upside down. The villain might be the hero.
Ages 12 to 17
Dystopia Hopepunk
1,000 to 1,500 words
A world that has gone wrong, and a young person who finds the light in it anyway.
10 About Bukmuk
Bukmuk is a children’s library and a publishing house for young writers. We run writing studios and workshops, and we publish children’s books properly: an ISBN, a printed edition, distribution on Amazon in India and overseas, an author page for every child, and a royalty on every copy sold.
The championship is how a school-sized group of children reaches that same shelf in one season, without a family paying for a book of their own.
Bukmuk Library and Bukmuk Publishing are brands of iKitaab Web, BW31A, Shalimar Bagh, Delhi.
Founder and curriculum lead
Shefali Malhotra
A storyteller with over eleven years of experience, and the founder of Bukmuk. She reads the entries herself.
Co-founder and programme curator
Abhinav Girotra
Twenty five years in industry, now curriculum designer and mentor to the children in the programme.
11 When you need a person
Ask us anything.
A code that will not work, a parent stuck on the upload, a name on your list you do not recognise, or a date you want to move for your school. We would rather sort it out than have a child miss the deadline over something small.
Shefali Malhotra
Founder, and the person who reads the entries.
WhatsApp or call
Not a partner school yet? Ask for your code.