The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival has long served as a vital nexus for writers and theater artists, honoring the legacy of its namesake while championing new work. The TWFest One-Act Play Contest is a central component of that mission, offering a rare platform for short-form dramatic writing within a festival context that attracts national and international attention. The contest is open to all disciplines, though the focus is necessarily on plays, and it welcomes emerging voices alongside more established practitioners. The judge for the 2026–2027 cycle is Justin Maxwell, a playwright and professor at the University of New Orleans whose own work spans publication, production, and adaptation. His involvement signals a curatorial interest in plays that are formally inventive, intellectually rigorous, and theatrically alive. The grand prize of $1,500 is accompanied by a professional staged reading at the next Festival, an opportunity that provides not only financial support but also the irreplaceable experience of seeing one's work interpreted by professional actors and directors in front of an audience. This is not a publication prize alone; it is a developmental opportunity that can help a script evolve toward full production. The Festival's location in New Orleans—a city steeped in theatrical history and home to Tennessee Williams himself—adds a layer of cultural resonance. Plays that engage with the complexities of place, memory, and human frailty, in the spirit of Williams, may find a particularly sympathetic jury. While the contest does not prescribe a theme, the judge's background suggests an openness to a wide range of styles, from the poetic to the political, the realist to the experimental. The one-act form demands economy and precision, and the best submissions will demonstrate a command of dramatic structure, character, and language. The Festival's commitment to fostering new work is evident in its ongoing support of playwrights at various stages of their careers. This contest is an invitation to contribute to the living tradition of American theater, and to have that contribution considered by a discerning peer.