After considering almost 300 applications Nature’s Careers editors have chosen six young scientists as winners of the 2011 Careers columnist competition.

The successful entries cover a diverse range of topics, including how to cope with setbacks in the first year of your PhD, the struggles of postdocs in Canada and selling yourself to prospective employers. The six scientists — three PhD students and three postdocs — will each write at least two columns for the Careers section of Nature over the next year. Their columns will also be published on naturejobs.com.

The six winners are:

• Adam James, a PhD student in synthetic chemistry at the University of Tasmania in Australia
• Lucie Low, a postdoc in neuroscience at McGill University in Canada
• Mariano A. Loza-Coll, a postdoc in genetics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the United States
• Lydia Soraya Murray, a PhD student in molecular genetics and cell biology at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom
• Andrew Peterman, a PhD student in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University in the United States
• Gaston Small, a postdoc in ecology at the University of Minnesota in the United States

You can read more about the new columnists and their writing ambitions in the 2nd June issue of Nature.

Thanks to everyone who applied — for those of you who were unsuccessful this time, we hope you keep writing.