Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists will judge the submissions, which are to be no more than two pages. (Reuters File Photo)
Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly attacked by terrorist in January 2015, announced an annual essay contest on Monday for 12-to-22-year-olds.
"We want madness, originality, irreverence," said Russian-born novelist Iegor Gran, a contributor to Charlie Hebdo who is spearheading the contest.
"We can't let the dreary have the monopoly over French literature," he told French radio.
Charlie Hebdo editor Laurent Sourisseau told Monday's Le Parisien daily that after the magazine was attacked on January 7, 2015, leaving 12 dead, "we received a lot of drawings from young people, many of them spontaneous, with a very free spirit."
He said the Charlie Hebdo Literary Prize would be a way "to continue the dialogue between this generation and 'Charlie', a newspaper that many people discovered at the time of the attacks.
"'Charlie' is a paper that dares. We want... to help youths to let go of their inhibitions at an age when everything is still possible," he added.
The contest, whose inaugural theme is "What if the baccalaureate was replaced by..." is open to all French speakers aged 12 to 22 in any country.
The baccalaureate is the exam taken at the end of secondary school.
Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists will judge the submissions, which are to be no more than two pages, with prizes of 1,000 euros ($1,100) for each of three winners.
Charlie Hebdo had been a target of terrorists since publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed cartoons in 2006 and its offices were firebombed in 2011.