Category: Competitions etc

Details of current short story and other competitions and other opportunities, events, etc

Exeter Longlist

November 5, 2020

I had recorded the Exeter Story Prize in my spreadsheet (yes, I have a spreadsheet) as a fail, but it turns out the judging process was just slow, and in fact I have been longlisted, which is gratifying! I’m not allowed to say which story yet, though.

(Update: it was ‘The Dimitropol Chinese Restaurant’, but alas it didn’t progress any further. )

Billboard TV

October 26, 2020

The Hammond House prize announces its results on a local (Lincolnshire) arts channel which they call ‘Billboard. This year they did a little montage of entrants, including me, introducing themselves. You can see it here, me at 8:50.

Last year I placed third, one of my best ever results, so it would probably be greedy to hope for anything this year.

November Competitions

October 20, 2020
Here’s my look at writing contests I’m thinking of entering next month.
  • The Caledonia Novel Award offers a top prize of £1,500, and for the best entrant from the UK and Ireland, a week-long course at the Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre. The judge is literary agent Laura Williams, who I believe is keen to find new talent; entrants cannot already have representation. They want the first 200 pages plus a 200 word synopsis (rather tight); the deadline is 1 November so you need to get moving quickly.
  • Also with a 1 November deadline is the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. This is judged in regions (1. Africa, 2. Asia, 3. Canada and Europe, 4. Caribbean and 5. Pacific.); regional winners get £2,500, with the overall winner getting £5,000. Entries in certain languages other than English are permitted (no idea how they judge across languages, and not all Commonwealth languages are covered – not even Hindi, it seems, though you can write in Bengali). If a winning entry is a translation, the translator gets a small extra prize, which is nice. They are looking for 2-5,000 words, one entry per writer.
  • Sutton Writers, that excellent group, invites Christmas ghost stories of up to 1,500 words, deadline Friday 13 November… In addition to online publication there will be a cash prize made up of the entry fees (£5 per story), so the more people enter, the bigger the prize!
  • Tripfiction promotes books with a strong sense of location, offering members a database where they can find recommended books about any particular place. Their competition encourages you to write some more of that kind of thing. They’re looking for 750 to 3,000 words with a strong ‘sense of place’; they provide more detailed tips, but only after you’ve registered (free) and signed up to enter. Top prize is £300, the deadline is 15 November.
  • Hope Mill Theatre is looking for plays of at least an hour’s length; top prize is £5,000 and a full performance. Finalists also get a scene performed and one-to-one mentoring sessions.  You need to submit the script, a short biog, synopsis and character list (thought a character list was a standard part of a script anyway?) all by 27 November.
  • Fiction Factory offers a top prize of £300 for stories up to 3,000 words, with a deadline of 30 November. Top stories will be published in an anthology. The judge is Tim Symonds, who writes stories about Sherlock Holmes, which might be a clue to what’s likely to go down well.
  • Last but certainly not least we have the prestigious Fish Prize for stories of up to 5,000 words. Top prize is €3,000 plus a 5 day Short Story Workshop at the West Cork Literary Festival. Second place brings a week at Anam Cara Writers’ Retreat and €300.  Even the honourable mentions get €200, and the top ten stories will be published in an anthology. The deadline is 30 November.
I have to admit I’m still working on October competitions…

Literary Taxidermy

October 19, 2020

I got an honourable mention for my story ‘New Troy’ in the Literary Taxidermy competition! This is an unusual competition where you have to take the first and last sentences of a novel (Brave New World in this case) and fill in the gap with a new story.

October Competitions

September 25, 2020
Here’s my review of novel/short story contests I’m thinking of entering next month.
  • Book Pipeline’s Unpublished competition is for full-length manuscripts and offers $15,000 to winners plus circulation to agents etc (though I’m never sure how much value to attach to the latter). Deadline is 5 October so you really need to have the finished manuscript already.
  • Fosseway Writers offer £50 as their top prize for a story of up to 2,500 words on the (possibly prophetic) theme ‘Another Disappointment’. The deadline is 10 October.
  • The University of Louisville is running its annual Calvino Prize for writing in ‘the fabulist experimentalist style of Italo Calvino’ – but entries must not be ‘merely imitative’ – tricky! First prize is $2,000 plus publication in their journal; entries can be part or all of a continuous work or a collection, but there is a strict limit of 25 ‘industry standard’ pages, whatever they are. The deadline is 15 October.
  • The Dinesh Alirajah Prize for Short Fiction offers a top prize of £500; shortlisted entries will be published in an ebook anthology (I like to see paper myself). The word count must be between 2,000 and 6,000 words on the theme ‘Home’; the deadline is 23 October.
  • Retreat West calls for stories between 1,500 and 3,000 words with a first prize of £400; the deadline is 25 October.
  • F(r)iction is a beautiful periodical that seeks to push the literary boundaries. Its current competition offers ‘$1,600 in prizes’ for a story between 1,001 and 7,500 words (love that niggling ‘1,001’), with a deadline of 30 October.
Then once again we have a cluster of contests at the very end of the month, all with a deadline of 31 October.
  • First the strange case of the Bedford International Writing Competition, where it seems there has been kind of coup. Back in May I (and presumably all the other previous entrants) received an email from the Chair saying that three committee members had seized control of the website and funds, in defiance of the other members and the constitution. The ‘proper’ competition had therefore had to be closed, and anything that was organised by the breakaway group would not be the BIWC and could not trade on its good reputation. There is indeed a Bedford competition under way, with a first prize of £500, and a maximum of 3,000 words; judge for yourself whether to enter!
  • Cranked Anvil’s quarterly competition has a prize of £150 for a story up to 1,500 words.
  • Southport Writers’ Circle also offers £150 but the word limit is a slightly more generous 2,000
  • The Horwich Prize is £50 for a story of 1,500 words on the theme of ‘Nature and Nurture’.
  • The Cinnamon Literature Award has categories for short story collections, full novels, and poetry; no prize except proper publication (yay paper!). You need two short stories of up to 5,000 words or 10,000 words of your novel (or ten poems, but that’s not for me).
Enough to keep me busy!

Short Story September

September 4, 2020

Dahlia Publishing’s Short Story September is meant to promote both reading and writing (and, er, buying no doubt) featuring a month of short story collections with:

  • a writing prompt
  • short story resource
  • short story criticism

It seems an interesting idea, but I’ve got too much to read already and I don’t really like writing prompts. They make me think of this.

September 2020 Competitions

August 27, 2020
September looks like a busy month.Write fast!
  • PANK magazine has a Big Book contest for full length books (novel or short story collection) with a deadline of 8 September. Top prize is $1000, a $500 dollar publicity campaign, a reading in New York, and you get to judge next year’s contest (I think I might want more than $1000 to take that on). They might publish some runners-up too.
  • One of the really big ones; the Manchester Fiction Prize, has a top award of £10,000 for a short story of up to 2,500 words. The entry fee is £18, but the fee can be reduced or waived if you can’t afford it. Last year these people sent me some confused emails right before the announcement of the shortlist, saying they’d lost my entry and could I email them another copy. If it got read at all that late in the process, I have to doubt whether there was time for its intricate beauty to sink into the soul of the reader. Still, they could have just let it go and I suppose I’d have been none the wiser. I suspect that happens. Deadline is 18 September.
Then we have no fewer than six contests with a deadline of 30 September.
  • One of the regular Henshaw competitions with a top prize of £200 for a story up to 2,000 words. Anthologies including placed stories are published occasionally. The entry fee is £6 and you can get a critique for an extra £12. These are good value in my experience; pretty cheap and the report gives the impression of being written by a thoughtful, intelligent reader whose suggestions make sense.
  • Crowvus, up in Wick, offers a top prize of £100 for a Christmas ghost story of up to 4,000 words. I don’t generally write ghost stories, but I have a couple to hand that I might put a Christmas gloss on. Entry fee is £3 or £5 for two.
  • Hammond House offers a top prize of £500 plus an award televised on the enviable local cultural television show. The word count must be between 2000 and 5000 words, on the theme ‘Survival’. This is a good competition, in my opinion; an anthology including lots of runners-up is published annually, so it might be a good way of getting into print. There is a feedback option for an extra £10, but last year I found this disappointing, with the report late and formulaic.
  • Dzanc books has a competition for full-length short story collections; the winner is published with an advance of $2,000. The entry fee is $25. This is a small but very respectable American press; if you won, you’re probably not going to get launched into huge fame and wealth, but hey, publication is publication.
  • Galley Beggar Press offers a top prize of £2000; the word limit is 6,000, so you’ve got room to spread yourself a bit. The entry fee is £10. This is an excellent small press that enjoyed huge success recently with Ducks Newburyport, which I’m afraid I gave up on after a few thousand words. Galley Beggar ran into financial difficulties recently when a customer who had put in a large order for Ducks, Newburyport went bankrupt owing them a substantial sum of money; but an appeal fortunately rescued them from the brink; we can ill afford to lose publishers like this.
  • Finally The Wit to Woo wants twelve Christmas stories, each in the style of a famous author. There are twelve ‘first prizes’, each a twelfth of the total entry fee pot; currently at least £100. The winners will be published in a special anthology inspired by Max  Beerbohm’s volume of parodies A Christmas Garland.