Month: December 2024

January 2025 Competitions

December 19, 2024

Fourteen writing competitions I might enter with deadlines in January.

  • The Letter Review wants up to 5,000 words, and for an entry fee of $20 you can win $5,000 – but you’ll need to get your entry in by 1 January.
  • The Exeter Novel Prize is back, looking for your first 10,000 words plus a synopsis. £20 to enter with a prize of £1,000, but with the same deadline, you’ll need to have it ready quickly.
  • Disquiet offers a free place on its literary programme in Lisbon, with money for airfare and expenses. If you can’t get there, you can opt for $1,000 instead. They want up to 25 pages and will charge $15: you have until 6 January.
  • For the Page Is Printed competition, you only need one side of A4: however, you will be charged £5 for entry to a competition whose top prize is only £100. The deadline is 13 January.
  • The Georgia Review competition has categories for both fiction and non-fiction: the overall winner gets $1,500. I can’t see a specific word limit but in the past it has been 9,000, which should be enough for anyone. Deadline 15 January.
  • The Cai Emmons prize requires a minimum of 150 pages. $25 to enter and a decent $5,000 prize. Enter by 15 January.
  • Bournemouth is back, with a maximum word count of 3,000, an entry fee of £10 and an unexciting prize of £500. Deadline 15 January.
  • With the same deadline, Storybottle will take up to 10,000 words: the entry fee is $15 and the prize $1,000.
  • The Thomas Wolfe fiction prize costs $25 for non-members with a prize of $1,000. 3,000 words maximum. Deadline 30 January.

All the rest have a deadline of 31 January

  • Story Unlikely is free to enter. The word limit is 4,000 for non-members (members are allowed another thousand for some reason) and the first prize is $1,500.
  • The Parracombe Prize (I was shortlisted last year!) looks for a maximum of 2025 words. £5 entry, £150 prize.
  • Askew’s Word on the Lake has a word limit of 2,000, it’s $15 to enter and the prize is $200.
  • Swamp Pink (no idea) wants 25 pages and $20 entry gives you a shot at $2,000 (a bit more like it).
  • Finally the Fiction Factory first chapter competition needs your first 5,000 words plus a synopsis. It’s £18 to enter and the top prize is £500, but short-listed entries get a free appraisal.

If you get somewhere with one of these, do let me know!

Francis Bacon: Human Presence

December 5, 2024

We went to the current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. People sometimes see a problem with the NPG’s remit – are they meant to collect paintings by famous artists or of famous people? But this show is unimpeachable, foregrounding an important aspect of a major artist’s work.

Bacon’s work never stopped being figurative, but he smooshes views in a way that combines and gives a sense of observer motion. It seems he often put one person’s head on a body painted from photographs of someone else. There’s also often a sense of horror, with the screaming heads and internal body parts.

The exhibition tellingly brings out his enthusiasm for certain great painters of the past: Velasquez, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, which helps situate an innovative painter within the great tradition.