Tag Archives: creative writing competitions

Enter The Masters Review Award for New Writers

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Lake Michigan beach.Photo by Judy DarleyThe Masters Review is inviting entries for its Summer Short Story Award for New Writers.

The deadline for submissions is 27th August 2023.

The winning story writer will receive $3,000, an agency review and publication online.

Second and third place finalists will be awarded publication, agency review and $300/$200 prizes respectively.

Participating agents include Nat Sobel from Sobel Weber, Victoria Cappello from The Bent Agency, Andrea Morrison from Writers House, Sarah Fuentes from United Talent Agency, Heather Schroder from Compass Talent, and Marin Takikawa from The Friedrich Agency.

This year’s guest judge is Jai Chakrabarti, author of A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness and A Play for the End of the World.

Crucial details

  • $20 entry fee
  • $3000 1st prize
  • $300 2nd prize
  • $200 3rd prize
  • Stories must be under 6,000 words in length
  • Previously unpublished stories only
  • Simultaneous and multiple submissions allowed
  • Emerging writers only; writers with book-length work published or under contract with a major press are ineligible. Authors with short story collections are free to submit unpublished work, as are writers with books published by indie presses)
  • Deadline: 27th August, 2023
  • No identifying information on your story

Find full details here.

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw attention to? Send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud(dot)com.

Enter the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award

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Arnos vale portal. Photo by Judy Darley. A natural formation of growing wood or vine that seems to hold a circle of light.

The Aesthetica Creative Writing Award celebrates outstanding short fiction and poetry from around the world. The deadline for entering the award is 31st August 2023, making this the perfect time to get polishing your poetry and prose.

Prizes include publication within Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology plus £2,500 for the winner of each category. Winners will receive:

  • A Five-Day Course from Arvon (Poetry & Fiction Winners)
  • One year print subscription to Granta (Poetry & Fiction Winners)
  • One year digital subscription to Mslexia (Poetry & Fiction Winners)
  • Six-Week Writing Poetry Course from Curtis Brown Creative (Poetry Winner)
  • Full membership to The Poetry Society (Poetry Winner)
  • A Course from  the Poetry School (Poetry Winner)
  • One year print subscription to Poetry London (Poetry Winner)
  • Consultation with Redhammer Management (Fiction Winner)
  • Six-Week Writing  Short Stories Course from Curtis Brown Creative (Fiction Winner)Poetry entries should be no more than 40 lines.
    Fiction entries should be no more than 2,000 words long.

There’s no theme – just submit your finest story or poem offering your own unique window on a slice of the world!

Entry fees are £18 for short fiction and £12 for poetry.

For full details, visit aestheticamagazine.com/creative-writing-award/how-to-enter/

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw attention to? Send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

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Submit your novel for the Virginia Prize For Fiction

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Virginaia-woolfs-house-richmond-hogarth-press-begun-hereBlue PlaqueThe Virginia Prize for Fiction is open for submissions. Run by Aurora Metro, the Twickenham-based arts organisation, the competition is searching for the best new fiction by a woman writing in English. Finalists will receive editorial guidance and a conditional publishing deal from Aurora Metro Books with an advance and royalty payable for the publishing rights.

The deadline for standard entries is 1st August 2023, and costs £20.

The closing date for late entries is 31st October 3023 and costs £25.

The prize is open to any woman (over 18) around the world, writing in English. Your entry must be a completed, unpublished novels for adults or YA readers, of at least 45,000 words in length.

Longlisted writers will be contacted in January 2024. A special event to announce the finalists will be held in London.

The novel can be of any genre but cannot have been published or self-published before.

This biennial prize was launched in 2009 as a tribute to Virginia Woolf who wrote her first novel, The Voyage Out, while living an Hogarth House on Paradise Road in Richmond, where she and her husband Leonard also founded the Hogarth Press in 1917.

The prize’s founder, publisher Cheryl Robson, hopes that “by naming this prize in Virginia Woolf’s memory we will inspire women to find their voice and contribute to the pantheon of great women writers.”

The prize is open to any woman (over 18) around the world, writing in English. The novel can be of any genre but cannot have been published or self-published before. You must submit your entire completed novel to be eligible. The entry fee is £10 per manuscript.

For more information about the prize and to enter, click here.

Find out more about Virginia Woolf’s time in Richmond.

Searchlight Writing for Children Awards 2023

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Brandon Hill, Bristol, child in tree by Judy Darley

The Searchlight Writing for Children Awards 2023 are open for entries.

There are two competition categories: Best Novel Opening for Children or Young Adults, and Best Picture Book (text only).

The closing date for both categories is 31st August 2023.

Winners will be chosen by Silvia Molteni, Head of the Children’s and YA books department at PFD Literary Agents and Becky Bagnell, founder of Lindsay Literary Agency. The top ten entries in both categories will feature in Searchlight’s Pitch Book of winning stories, which is sent to an extensive list of literary agents and publishers who have requested it.

Novel Openings category

Novel Openings should be for ages seven to eighteen and should be 1,200 words long (you don’t need to have completed your novel).

“I always look for a unique and strong voice from the very start,” says judge Silvia Molteni. “I want to see the kind of writing that can sweep me off my feet, hook me in and make me want to drop everything and keep turning the page. I love to be able to immerse myself into the main character’s head right away, as well as meet characters I can really root for and that I want to get know. I’m a sucker for strong first lines, original openings, clever prologues and strong/immediate hooks and concepts from a plot point of view.”

The author of the winning entry will receive £1,000.

The entry fee is £14 for a novel opening.

Picture Books category

Your picture book should be no more than 500 words long.

The winner will receive £500.

The entry fee is £9 for a picture book.

For full details, visit www.searchlightawards.co.uk.

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw attention to? Send an email to judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

Enter The Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize

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Terra Nostra Tropical plants cr Judy DarleyWasafari magazine invites submissions of Poetry, Fiction and Life Writing for The Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

The prize closes on 30th June 2023 at 5pm BST.

The prize supports writers who have not yet published a book-length work, with no limits on age, gender, nationality, or background. Winners of each category receive a £1,000 cash prize and will be published in Wasafiri’s print magazine. Shortlisted writers will have their work published on the Wasafiri website. All 15 shortlistees and winners will be offered the Chapter and Verse or Free Reads mentoring scheme in partnership with The Literary Consultancy (dependent on eligibility), and a conversation with Nikesh Shukla of The Good Literary Agency to discuss their career progression

The fee is £10 for a single entry and £16 for a double entry. No entry may be more than 3,000 words long.  

Subsidised entry is available for those who would otherwise be unable to enter the prize.  

Shortlisted entrants will be notified in early September. 

Find full details of how to enter at www.wasafiri.org.

About the judges

Leila Aboulela (fiction judge) is the first ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Nominated three times for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction), her novels include Bird Summons, The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, which was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Her short story collection Elsewhere, Home won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year. Leila’s work has been translated into fifteen languages. Her sixth novel, River Spirit, set in Sudan in the lead up to the British invasion of 1898, is due for publication in March 2023. Leila grew up in Khartoum, Sudan and now lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. 

Diana Evans (Chair) is the author of the novels A House for Alice, Ordinary People, The Wonder and 26a, which was the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers. Ordinary People won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. She also publishes stories, essays and criticism, is associate lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. 

Raised on the North Peckham estate in South London, Caleb Femi (poetry judge) is a poet and director. His debut collection, Poor, was published in 2020 by Penguin Press. He has written and directed short films for the BBC, Channel 4, Bottega Veneta and Louis Vuitton. A former Young People’s Laureate, Caleb won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection (2021) and has been shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize (2021), and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize (2021). He has been featured in the Dazed 100 list of the next generation shaping youth culture. 

Aanchal Malhotra (life writing judge) is a writer and oral historian from New Delhi. She is the co-founder of the Museum of Material Memory, and the author of two critically acclaimed books, Remnants of Partition and In the Language of Remembering, that explore the human history and generational impact of the 1947 Partition. Her work has won the Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award, and been shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize, the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, Hindu Lit for Life Non Fiction Prize, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize and the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. Her newest work is a debut novel titled The Book of Everlasting Things. 

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw my attention to? Send me an email at judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com.

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Wells Festival of Literature competitions

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City of Wells cr Judy Darley

Wells Festival of Literature takes place from 27th October to 4th November 2023, but before that they hold their annual writing competitions, with entries accepted until 30th June 2023.

The categories are open poetry, short stories, poetry and children’s books, as well as poetry by anyone aged 16-22 inclusive.

The Open Poetry Competition

The fee for each separate entry is £6. Each poem must be under 36 lines long, and may be on any subject.

First Prize is £1,000. Second prizes is £500. Third prize is £250. There’s also a £100 prize for a local poet.

The judge is William Sieghart, founder of the Forward Prizes, the UK’s biggest poetry prizes. William also instigated National Poetry Day which is now celebrated in the UK every October.

The Short Story Competition

The fee for each separate entry is £6. Stories should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length. They can be on any subject.

First Prize is £750. Second prize is £300. Third prize is £200. There’s a £100 prize for a local writer.

The judge is Claire Fuller, an author whose much anticipated fifth novel The Memory of Animals was published in April this year and her fourth, Unsettled Ground, won the Costa Novel Award 2021 and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Book for Children Competition

The fee for each separate entry is £6. The competition will judge writing for children, age 7 and up. This includes writing for young adults

You’ll need to submit either the first two chapters or first twenty pages, whichever is the shortest, together with the synopsis of up to two pages.

First Prize is £750. Second prize is £300. Third prize is £200. There’s a £100 prize for a local writer.

The judge is Rachel Hamilton, a part-time literary agent, a lecturer in Creative Writing and the author of six books. Rachel’s experience includes editing and mentoring and, as a literary consultant, she loves helping authors refine their manuscripts and find their voice. She holds a first-class degree in English Literature & Language, as well as Creative Writing qualifications from St Martin’s College and London School of Journalism.

The Young Poets Competition

The fee for each separate entry is £3. Each poem must be under 36 lines long, and may be on any subject.

First Prize is £150. Second prizes is £75. Third prize is £50. All three prize-winners also get a year’s subscription to the Poetry Society.

The judge is Deanna Rodger, Deanna won the UK Poetry Slam when she was 18. She curates spoken word events, facilitates workshops, writes commissions, and mentors. Most recently, her reimagined version of Kipling’s If was read by Serena Williams on BBC Sport.

The closing date for all entries is 30th June 2023. Prizes for all four competitions will be presented on Monday 30th October 2023 during the Festival.

Find the full rules and details of how to enter.

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw my attention to? Send me an email at judydarley (at) iCloud (dot) com

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Enter the Bridport Prize 2023

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Pebble man by Judy DarleyThe Bridport Prize, one of the UK’s most prestigious writing competitions, is currently seeking your short stories, flash fiction, poems, memoirs and debut novels.

The deadline for all competition entries is 31st May 2023.

All entries are judged anonymously. To avoid disqualification, make sure you do not include your name, address, phone number, email, website, twitter handle etc on the document or in the file name.

Poems may be up to 42 lines in length (not including the title). There is no minimum line count. The entry fee is £12. The winning poet will receive £5,000.

Short stories may be up to 5,000 words long. The entry fee is £14. The winning short story writer will receive £5,000.

Flash fiction may be up to 250 words long. The entry fee is £11. The winning flash fiction writer will receive £1,000.

Novel extracts must be between 5,000 and 8,000 words long. You must also supply a 300-word synopsis, which should be the first page of your entry. The fee is £24.

First prize is £1,500 plus mentoring by The Literary Consultancy and consultations with literary agent AM Heath and publisher Headline.

Memoir extracts must be between 5,000 and 8,000 words. You must also supply a 300 word overview. The fee is £24.

Bridport Prize judges

Roger Robinson is the poetry judge. Rogerhas been awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize for A Portable Paradise, which was also a New Statesman Book of the Year. He has been commissioned by The National Trust, the V&A, and the National Portrait Gallery, amongst others, and is a co-founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen and Spoke Lab.

Colin Barrett is the short story judge. Colin’s debut collection of stories, Young Skins, was awarded the Rooney Prize, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize and the Guardian First Book Award. His stories have appeared in the Stinging Fly, the New Statesman, the New Yorker and Harper’s. His second short story collection, Homesickness, was published in 2022.

Christopher Allen is the flash fiction judge. Christopher is the editor-in-chief and publisher of SmokeLong Quarterly. A teacher, editor, and translator, he is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins (Matter Press).

Sarah Hall is judging novel entries. Sarah is the author of six novels and three short story collections. She has won multiple literary prizes in the UK and overseas, including the BBC National Short Story Award twice, the Portico, Edge Hill and Commonwealth Prizes, and the EM Forster Award. She’s been shortlisted for the Booker prize and the Prix Femina Etranger.

Cathy Rentzenbrink is judging memoir entries. Cathy  is the author of The Last Act of Love, A Manual for Heartache, Dear Reader and Everyone is Still Alive. Her latest book Write It All Down: How to put your life on the page was published in January 2022.

Don’t forget to check out the Writers’ Room on the Bridport Prize website for resources and inspiration.

Find full details and enter your creative works at www.bridportprize.org.uk. And don’t forget to sign up for their newsletter full of useful tips and inspiration.

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw my attention to? Send me an email at judydarley (at) iCloud(dot)com.

Green Stories seeks superhero tales with a climate twist

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Northern Slopes stream and woodland by Judy DarleyThe Green Stories’ team invites you to create an eco-Superhero for their latest creative competition.

They say: “‘Saving the world’ is the basic job description of most superheroes, but who on Earth is going to help ‘save the planet’? Maybe that’s where you come in! As part of the Green Stories Competition, this contest challenges you to create an uplifting short story of superheroes that respond to climate change.”

Your target audience should be teens and young adults who enjoy watching superhero films.

The winner will receive a £500 prize, plus a scene from their winning story will be turned into a one-page comic strip, created by a professional artist.

The competition is free to enter.

The deadline is 15th April 2023. Entries should be no longer than 2,000 words, excluding title.

Imaginative prompts

  • What kind of superpowers would your heroes have?
  • What are your own experiences of climate change (and extreme heat) in the countries you’ve lived in? 
  • Are there any personal/ emotional barriers to your own efforts to address climate change in real life? Would your own heroes face similar challenges? 
  • What are the personalities of your heroes? What are their virtues and limitations? What about their backstory and occupation? 
  • How will they attempt to reduce, or adapt to, climate change (and extreme heat)? Will your audience be able to do similar in their own lives?
  • Which solutions will you include in the story? If possible, draw on the information provided below *. Will technology help or hinder their goals?
  • Will the character(s) take political action? If so, how effective would their campaigns/ activism be in addressing their fears for the future?
  • Is your story entertaining enough for the target audience?
  • If you have not lived in a country that’s particularly vulnerable to the climate crisis, are you able to listen to the experiences of people that have? 

You can download a free anthology of climate solution stories to inspire you here. You may also find the associated webpages a useful resource: https://www.greenstories.org.uk/anthology-for-cop27/solutions/.

The Green Stories website is packed with information on the topics they’d like you to consider, ranging from practices such as the sharing economy to advances such as nanotechnologies and green transport.

For full details of prizes and how to enter from 1st April, visit www.greenstories.org.uk/upcoming-competitions/superhero-competition/ 

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw attention to? Send me an email at JudyDarley (@) iCloud (dot) com.

Enter National Flash Fiction Day’s microfiction competition

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Sweets by Judy DarleyNational Flash Fiction Day’s 100-word microfiction competition invites your submissions. Send something funny, something that resonates, is fresh and exciting, and leaves the judges lost for words.

The deadline is 15th February 2023. You’re invited to submit up to three flash fictions on any theme at no more than 100 words each. Titles aren’t included in the word count.

Last year’s winner was Jan Kaneen with her beautiful mini-tale ‘Just a Word to the Snowblind.’ Read it and the other winners here.

The microfiction competition prizes are:

  • £150 for first place
  • £100 for second place
  • £50 for third place

There are also seven awards of £20 for highly commended pieces. The winning and highly commended authors will be published in the National Flash Fiction Day 2023 anthology, and will receive a free print copy of this anthology.

This year’s judges are:

  • Tim Craig
  • Amanda Huggins
  • Fiona J. Mackintosh
  • Johanna Robinson

Read more about the judges here.

Please only submit work that is not and will not be under consideration elsewhere before 15 March 2023.  By submitting work to the NFFD Microfiction Competition, you are agreeing to publication online and in the 2023 NFFD Anthology if your work is selected as a prizewinner or highly commended flash.

Find full details here.

This year, National Flash Fiction Day is on Saturday 24th June. How will you celebrate?

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw attention to? Send me an email at JudyDarley (@) iCloud (dot) com.

Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook Short Story Competition

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Heart leaf by Judy DarleyWriters’ & Artists’ Yearbook Short Story Competition is one of my favourites on the literary calendar.

Your story must be no more than 2,000 words long. For the first time in a while, there’s a theme – so your story must involve the theme of ‘love’ in some way.

The deadline for entries is midnight BST on 14th February 2023.

The winner of the competition – along with two runners-up – will be announced on the W&A blog pages in March 2023.

Entry is free, but don’t forget to register (also free) with the website www.writersandartists.co.uk before submitting your story.

This year’s judge is Naomi Booth, the author of Animals at Night, Exit Management, Sealed and The Lost Art of Sinking. Her work has been longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award and included in the Guardian’s Best Fiction of the year 2020. Her story, ‘Sour Hall’, was adapted into an Audible Originals drama series. Naomi lives in York and teaches at Durham University.

Prizes of this writing contest

Find full details and competition rules at www.writersandartists.co.uk/competitions/writers-artists-short-story-competition-2023 

Got an event, challenge, competition or call for submissions you’d like to draw attention to? Send me an email at JudyDarley (@) iCloud (dot) com.

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