Details of current short story and other competitions and other opportunities, events, etc
My story ’Pachydamned’ got an Honourable Mention in the Literary Taxidermy competition – the one where you take the first and last lines of a novel and write a new story to fit between them. I’ve added it to the ’Read Now’ page.
Here’s my look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month.
All the rest have a deadline of 31 December.
I am going into hospital for major surgery in early December and will be out of action for some time, so I’m afraid there will be no update on January competitions. Ones you may want to keep in mind include Secret Attic’s regular contest, the Mogford competition for food-related stories, the prestigious Manchester award, the Fish memoir competition and the Parracombe prize. Otherwise, why not keep an eye on the helpful big list Globe Soup have put together here?
See you next year!
Update: my operation was cancelled – I don’t yet know when it will be rescheduled, but in the meantime I’m not up to much.
Here’s my regular look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month (so no poetry or competitions not open to UK writers, for example).
If you get anywhere in one of these competitions, do let me know!
Here are the writing competitions with deadlines in October that I might enter – so mainly short stories and novels, with no poetry or flash.
All the rest have a deadline of 31 October.
Good luck – if you get anywhere with these, do let me know!
I think I may owe an apology to anyone who may have entered the Wit to Woo contest after seeing it on my list. I believe they were originally supposed to announce a short list in mid July. On 29 July, their Facebook page claimed winners had been notified and an announcement was coming soon. Comments were barred.
Nothing has happened since except that the website has gone down. In effect they have disappeared, and it seems we must assume the worst.
Here’s my regular look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month. The ones I know of seem to be grouped in the later part of the month (which I suppose means more time, though things could be hectic on 30th!). This month we’ve got several unusual formats, and quite a few freebies.
All the others have a deadline of 30th September.
I’ve been doing these posts for a year now – how time flies! Good luck if you enter any of these competitions; if you are long-listed, win, or get some recognition, please do let me know.
H
ere are the writing competitions with deadlines in August that I might enter – though to be honest I have reservations about a couple.
All the others have a deadline of 31 August.
Here’s my regular look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month (so no poetry or competitions not open to UK writers, for example). The majority have deadlines at the end of the month, so you mostly have a bit of time to work on a story.
Here is my regular look at the short story/novel competitions I might enter next month (so no poetry, for example, because I’m rubbish at it).
As always this is a purely personal selection, with no claim to be comprehensive – but it might be of interest.
I hope some of these appeal to you.
I’ve just had a cheery email from the Tusculum Review to say they’re extending the deadline for their competition, judged by Amy Sturgis, to 1 June – from 1 April! Competitions try to present an extended deadline as them being nice and giving more time, but in fact it’s very unfair to the people who made the effort to meet their original deadline, especially if they are offered no chance to make further revisions (and that never happens). What’s particularly odd here is that their website still gives the original deadline – so who else do they think is going to enter a competition which appears to have closed over a month ago? Surely they could not be extending the deadline for the benefit of particular people they already know?
I have asked them to withdraw my entry, and I would advise anyone else who played fair to do the same. It’s not to be expected that they will be honest enough to refund entry fees, but I think the point needs to be made.
Update
I received the following response from Kelsey Trom, for which I am grateful. There are a couple of misunderstandings here which I will not try to unpick.
I’m truly sorry to hear that our decision to extend the deadline of the contest is unethical in your view, and I especially regret that you feel ill-used and swindled by our organization. I have withdrawn your entry as requested and am happy to send you a refund of the entry fee. Our organization is small, so our means of refunding entries is by check–if you’ll send me your W-9, I’ll have the business office send you a check for $15.00.
We, the genre editors, discussed the decision at length, and felt that it was in line with the contest guidelines as published–we have always reserved the right to extend the deadline if we don’t receive the anticipated number of submissions. On occasion, we have exercised that right. This year, in particular, seemed like a time in which an extended deadline would give more authors the time to enter, so we would be able to give the final judge, Amy Sturgis, more than a dozen stories to weigh.
It was in the name of equal access that we made this decision: when we announced the contest in November, we did not anticipate the ways that writers with children, sick relatives, or compressed school schedules would be unable to meet an April 1 deadline. When we saw the low number of entries–much lower than usual–we understood.
We have not changed our rules–all submissions are still in the running. For my communication missteps that apparently made this unclear, I apologize.
I pointed out to Kelsey that I wouldn’t be able to cash an American cheque, but that Submittable has a refund facility. I haven’t heard back on that so far, but they have updated the information on their website.
Seen and Done 