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Something wicked this way comes, and it’s 5-7-5.
Our annual Halloween haiku contest is back, and we’re once again summoning readers to turn the horrors of healthcare into three tiny lines of poetry. Surprise us with a verse about medical bills, insurance, hospitals, health policy, or whatever else keeps you up at night.
Whether you’re inspired by a botched surgery, a ghastly charge, or insurance-induced existential dread, we want to read about it.
Our newsroom’s panel of judges will choose their favorites, which we’ll share on our social channels. Winning haikus will be announced on Friday, Oct. 30.
Rules:
- Submit your haiku to https://kffhealthnews.org/contact-haiku/, along with the link to the related KFF Health News article.
- “Like” KFF Health News on Facebook, and follow @KFFHealthNews on X, @kffhealthnews.org on Bluesky, and @kffhealthnews on Instagram.
- (Optional) Include your X, Bluesky, or Instagram handle in the submission and let us know if it’s OK to give you a shoutout on social media.
- Submit your haiku by the witching hour, 11:59 p.m. ET, on Monday, Oct. 19.
- To win, the haiku should meet the following criteria:
Follow the format of a haiku (a three-line poem with 17 syllables, written in a 5/7/5-syllable count).
Contain information related to healthcare and/or health policy that follows the scary/Halloween theme.
Reference a KFF Health News story in the haiku — as a bonus.
No use of artificial intelligence is allowed. Entries created or modified by AI will not be considered.
Submissions may be lightly edited for style and clarity before publication.
Prizes:
The top three haikus will rise again with a custom comic illustration drawn by staff illustrator Oona Zenda. The grand-prize-winning haiku will be featured in the KFF Health News Morning Briefing on Friday, Oct. 30, and we will give the author a shoutout — or hair-raising scream — on our social media pages, using the hashtag #HealthcareScare.
2025 Halloween Haiku Contest Winners
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
