April 2025 Contests

March 25, 2025

Another look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month (so no poetry or competitions that are not open to UK writers, for example).

  • Don’t forget the Alpine Fellowship Prize, deadline 1 April! The word count has been reduced this year, to 1,250, and the prize, at £3,000 is no longer quite as large as it once was: but this is still easily one of the best free competitions going.
  • The John Gardner Memorial Prize looks for up to 4,500 words, charges $19 and offers a prize of $500. Again the deadline is 1 April.
  • The Letter Review keeps going, offering a $600 prize for a maximum of 5,000 words: $20 to enter, by 1 April.
  • The Barry Hannah Prize from the Yalobusha Review takes up to 5,000 words, charges $3 and has a prize of $500: once again the deadline is 1 April.
  • A few more days for the Mairtín Crawford prize, with a deadline of 9 April. Up to 2,500 words, £10 to enter, £500 prize.
  • Desperate Literature is back wanting up to 2,000 words. €20 to enter and the prize is an attractive €2,000 plus a residency in Italy. Get your entry in by 13 April.
  • Fractured Lit wants ghost, fables or fairtales with a fresh approach, up to 1,000 words. $20 fee, $3,000 prize and the deadline is 13 April.
  • For the Perkoff Prize your story must relate to health or medicine, and it can be up to 8,500 words long. It costs $15 to enter and the prize is $1,000. The deadline is 15 April.
  • BOMB magazine takes up to 5,000 words for an entry fee of $30 and offers a prize of $1000. Deadline 15 April.
  • With the same deadline the New Ohio Review looks for 20 pages: $22 entry and $1,500 prize.
  • The Hemingway Shorts prize has a limit of 2,000 words, a fee of $15 and a prize of $1,000 and again the deadline is 15 April.
  • Also by 15 April, the Florida Review Editor’s Award takes stories up to 9,000 words, charges $25 and awards $1,000.
  • The Eyelands Contest has a theme of ‘2025’ (Did someone get the columns in their table transposed?) it wants stories up to 3,000 words, €10 to enter and a mere €500 prize. The deadline is 20 April.
  • The HoneyBee Prize from the Goodlife Review (how wholesome it all sounds) takes up to 5,000 words. $18 to enter, a relatively modest prize of $300, deadline 21 April.
  • Those excellent folk at FreeFall magazine have a word limit of 3,000. Entry is CA$25, and the prize is CA$500 plus publication. The deadline is 30 April, as it is for the next two.
  • The Plaza Prizes comp wants up to 5,000 words, and for £15 you  could win a very decent £4,000.
  • Finally the Gulf Coast Prize has a limit of 7,000 words, costs $26, and offers $1,500

If you enter any of these and win (or get anywhere), do let me know.

March 2025 Competitions

February 21, 2025

Here is another look at writing competitions I might enter which have deadlines in the coming month.

·      The Weatherglass Novella prize looks for 20 to 40,000 words: it’s £20 to enter. The winner(s) will be published and receive an advance of £500. The deadline is 1 March.

·      For the Tennessee Williams short story contest, your piece must have some sort of connection with A Streetcar Named Desire, and be between 1,500 and 4,000 words. $10 to enter, with a $300 prize. The deadline is 11 March.

·      The organisers of the Phoebe competition say there is no actual word limit, but that if your story is more than 4,000 words it will need to be extraordinary. $7 to enter, a $500 prize and the deadline is 15 March.

·      The Brick Lane Bookshop competition will accept up to 5,000 words: £10 entry for £1,000 prize: get your entries in by 17 March.

·      It’s festival time in Fowey again: they want a maximum of 1,500 words on the theme ‘Making Waves’. £10 entry and just £250 as top prize. The deadline in 28 March.

All the rest have a deadline of 31 March.

·      The Clay Reynolds Novella prize requires 20 to 50,000 words – $20 entry and $1000 as an advance plus publication for the winner. Looks like slightly better value for money than Weatherglass?

·      I don’t often do poetry, but the Plaza Prizes have a contest specifically for prose poetry – which I take to be laid out like prose but reading sort of like poetry? The limit, however, is specified as 60 lines. £10 entry, £250 prize.

·      The good old Henshaw contest is still going: 2000 words, £6 entry, £750 prize.

·      Speaking of value for money, the Deborah Rogers Foundation award appears to be free but offers a prize of £10,000! You will need 15 to 25,000 words, however.

·      The Bath Short Story award is back: 2,200 words, £9 entry and a prize of £1,000.

·      The Letter Review competition accepts up to 5,000 words: entry is $20 and you get a share of $1,000, so the final sum depends on how many winners they pick – most likely it will be 2-4 so maybe $333.33?

·      Just outside the month (deadline 1 April) you might want to be aware of the Alpine Fellowship competition. The prize is sadly reduced these days, but still £3,000: this year the word count has been halved, to 1,250, on the theme ‘fear’. The good news is, it’s free.

Good luck if you enter any of these; if you get anywhere, please do let me know.

On Ó Rathaille

January 25, 2025

Went to the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith for the launch of Brian O’Connor’s new book Wave, a translation with parallel texts of poems by Aogán Ó Rathaille (c.1670–1729). Brian (on the right of the picture) was joined by Declan Kiberd to talk about Ó Rathaille and read some of the poems. There was also some traditional music.

Ó Rathaille considered himself the last of the traditional bards of Ireland, and among other things developed the poetic form of the Aisling, where the poet meets a female spiritual embodiment of Ireland who laments the country’s misfortunes. Displaced from his poetic post after the Battle of the Boyne, which led to a general purge of the Catholic nobility, Ó Rathaille found his hopes of restoration were cruelly disappointed and he was reduced to poverty (he is the beggar referred to in Yeats’ The Curse of Cromwell). His misery did at least provoke some of his finest poetry.

As a master of form, alliteration, and verbal music, Ó Rathaille is a particular challenge to translators. I can’t assess their technical accuracy, but Brian’s versions are a very good read.

February 2025 Competitions

January 24, 2025

Here is a look at writing competitions I might enter which have deadlines in February.

  • The Jim Baen Memorial prize is free to enter: the winner is published and paid commercial rates. Entries should be upbeat, realistic space stories up to 8,000 words – you need to get them in by 1 February.
  • The same tight deadline applies to the American Short Fiction competition (you need not be American, or short). Entries can be up to 1,500 and for the $18 fee you can have two. The prize is $1,000
  • The Masters Review once again looks for up to 6,000 words: $20 entry and a $3,000 prize. Enter by 2 February.
  • The Writers and Artists prize, from the handbook of the same name, is free and offers an Arvon course as its top prize: they want 2,000 words on the theme ‘Wonder’, and you have until 14 February.
  • The Mary McCarthy Prize is for a collection of stories of 150 to 250 pages. The fee this time is up from $29 to $34 (somebody there clearly thinks round numbers sound bigger). You can win $2,000 and publication and you have until 15 February.
  • The Elmbridge Literary Competition asks for 1,500 words on the theme ‘The River’. £8 to enter and a prize of £250. The deadline is 21 February.
  • The Next Generation award is for a story up to 5,000 words long. Entry is $25and you could win $500 plus a medal. Enter by 27 February.

All the rest have a deadline of 28 February.

  • The Brink prize is for hybrid or cross-genre writing up to 15 pages. $25 to enter, with a prize of $1000 and publication.
  • Bridge House is not actually running a competition as such but accepting submissions for its anthology. No fee, therefore, and your reward will be royalties if published. They are looking for up to 5,000 words on the subject of ‘Magi’, interpreted however you wish.
  • Exeter Writers want 3,000 words maximum: for £7 you get a chance at a prize of £700. Unusually, they don’t allow simultaneous submissions.
  • The Grace Paley award is for a collection of stories, between 150 and 300 pages. $30 to enter, $5,500 plus publication as the prize.
  • The NOWW competition from Ontario wants pieces between 2000 and 3,500 words. $CA10 to enter, and the prize is $CA125
  • The Edinburgh Short Story award has a maximum word count of 2,000: it’s £11 to enter and first prize is £3,000

If you get anywhere with any of these, please do let me know!

Earnest

January 23, 2025



A handbag

Reviews had led me to believe that The Importance of Being Earnest with Ncuti Gatwa at the National Theatre featured so much gay behaviour that the plot was seriously distorted. This was a huge exaggeration. Yes, the subtle gay hints in the text kind of get pointed out with a nudge and a wink: some extra references are put in, and the whole thing is framed with two dances in which the cast camp it up. But the play itself is delivered pretty straight, and actually very well. No-one who loves the play need fear that this version is a travesty.

Casting is obviously colourblind in this case. Lady Bracknell is nevertheless allowed to be West Indian, which is slightly confusing but allows for a performance by Sharon D Clarke which we wouldn’t have wanted to miss.

The cast also add the kind of reactions that could not have featured originally: punching the air, muttering ‘Oh fuck’ and so on. But really none of these little quirks is a problem.

Arguably a bigger difficulty would face any production: the fact that the play is one of the best-known texts in the English language. The audience knows the script almost as well as the actors. We might almost feel like the lady who said Hamlet was a disappointment – it turned out to be just a lot of popular quotes strung together.

Anyway, there is a film of the performance coming out, and I recommend it.

The Silk Road

January 9, 2025

What a wealth of intriguing artefacts at the British Museum’s Silk Road exhibition! The title is slightly misleading: the Silk Road is being used here as a central part and symbol for something wider: namely the far-reaching and complex exchanges of goods, ideas, art and religion that went on during what we used to call the Dark Ages, roughly the latter half of the first millennium. The exhibition is laid out geographically from Japan to Britain (both of which were well beyond the ends of the Silk Road, but as I say, this is broader). Hard to pick out the best, but I loved the cheery ancient Chinese picture of a horse and camel, and the flagon brought back from Syria by an English mercenary who went to fight for the Byzantines.

The geographical layout perhaps sidelines the chronology a bit, so it can feel as if all these artefacts are contemporary, whereas they cover several centuries of change (not that that isn’t very much spelt out within each location). But all these niggles are minor: this has at worst been a fantastic opportunity to show some marvellous things.

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!