May 2025 Competitions

April 23, 2025

Here again are some writing competitions with deadlines during the coming month. The list is not comprehensive (I don’t bother with flash much, for example), but I hope it might be of interest.

  • Folly Journal takes stories between 800 and 2,500 words: NZ$10 to enter and first prize is NZ$1,000 – but the deadline is 1 May, so you need to be quick.
  • F(r)iction is looking for 1,000 to 7,500 words and it’s $10 to enter with a $1,000 prize. The good news is, you’ve got until 2 May. Incidentally, the same publisher is running Dually Noted, where people submit short (500 word) self-contained episodes which can continue the main story arc or be incidental episodes fitting the overall theme, a new addition every week. At the moment the overall theme, which continues until December, is A Night Club for the Newly Departed. No prize except online publication, but it’s free.
  • The Australian Book Review’s Elizabeth Jolley prize looks for up to 5,000 words. AU$30 to enter, a nice $5,000 prize, and the deadline is 5 May.
  • Old stalwart Writer’s Digest is back with a word limit of 4,000, a fee of $30 and a $5,000 prize. Enter by 5 May.
  • Ironclad want stories on the theme ‘Planted’. Up to 6,000 words, it’ll cost you £9 and you can win a comparatively unexciting £100. The deadline is 10 May.
  • Lush Triumphant offers a prize of $1,000 for stories up to 3,000 for a fee of $30 – deadline 15 May. I entered one of these a couple of years ago and could never seem to find out who won.
  • Ploughshares wants up to 6,000. The competition is free to subscribers, or you can pay $30 to enter (for which you also get a year’s subscription – see what they did there?). Enterr by 15 May.
  • The Ghost Story wants – well, have a wild guess – of up to 10,000 words. $20 entry gets you a chance at a $1,500 prize. Deadline 30 May.

All the rest have a deadline of 31 May.

  • The lively Frome Festival wants between 1,200 and 2,000 words: it’s £8 to enter and the top prize is £625.
  • You do not want to miss the prestigious Bridport competition. £5,000 for 5,000 words, with entry £14. This year a new Never Too Late prize will be awarded to the best entrant across all categories who is over 60 (discreet cough).
  • The Goldfinch Novel competition wants your first 3,000 words, plus a synopsis. £10 entry, and the winner gets £500.
  • Yeovil’s short story competition is for stories up to 2,000 words, entry £10.50 and the prize £625. It seems they don’t believe in round figures.
  • The Blue Pencil Agency First Novel competition asks for your first 5,000 words plus a 300-word synopsis. It’s £25 to enter and the prize is £1,000, but if you place you also get an introduction to one of their literary agents: I suppose you finally get to use that elevator pitch.
  • Finally I really have to mention the Robert Traver Fly Fishing Writing Award. (J.R. Hartley! Thou shouldst be living at this hour.) The word limit is 3,000, the fee $25 and the prize $2,500. Judges will look for three key things in the writing: the joy of fly-fishing (personal and philosophic experience); ecology (knowledge and protection of the natural world); and humour (piscatorial friendships and fun on the water). Apparently this has been going on since 2019, and long may it continue.

If you enter any of these and get anywhere, do let me know!

The Score

April 11, 2025

Brian Cox gives a masterly performance as J.S.Bach in The Score at the Theatre Royal Haymarket (whose opulent interior provides a suitably baroque background). The play, by Oliver Cotton and directed by Trevor Nunn, centres on the true story of Bach’s visit to the court of Frederick the Great, where he was challenged to improvise a three-part fugue on an ‘unfuguable’ theme – which he did, a feat of mental musicianship that seems hardly credible.

Here though, Bach rather implausibly uses the opportunity to denounce Frederick’s military ‘interventions’ and the horrors they bring with them. The King is portrayed as a precursor of later German belligerence, but Bach’s musical insights reveal the complexes that motivate him, rooted in an unhappy childhood. The play is neatly constructed and works pretty well apart from sometimes getting just a little bogged down.

The weakest part, in my view, is Voltaire, who appears as a secondary character but is written, not as the sharp and witty sceptic we know, but as a over-demonstrative French stereotype. He is allowed only one characteristic witticism (‘murderers are severely punished, unless they kill thousands, to the sound of trumpets’). If Voltaire had written this play it would have been shorter and funnier, but that’s a tough benchmark, and Cox’s bravura turn helps make it a well-spent evening.

Visible Darning

April 8, 2025

This old sweater had been attacked by moths: I thought I would have a go at visible darning, where you make feature of the hole repair. Experts produce works of art, but I just went for traditional square darns with coloured threads for a slight tartan effect. I don’t think I will actually wear this much, but it was an interesting thing to do.

The Seagull

March 30, 2025

We were lucky enough to get really good tickets at a reasonable price for The Seagull at the Barbican with Cate Blanchett. This is a modern, rather innovative (some might say gimmicky) production by Thomas Ostermeier. Most of the additions, changes and updates are OK, I think. Some, like regularly breaking the fourth wall, are intended to highlight a kind of dialogue about the relation between performance and reality: modern music and references are either irrelevant or legitimately funny. Probably the most uneasy thing imo is the way the character Semyon Medvedenko is changed from a poor schoolteacher into a ‘factory worker’ (how is a factory worker hanging around this country estate all the time?) who drives around on a quad bike and sings Billy Bragg songs – though of course we are made well aware that it is not Medvedenko singing, but the actor Zachary Hart.

The cast is terrific, by the way though obviously Cate Blanchett’s amazing performance as the famous actress (see what they did there) and attention-hogging narcissist Irina Arkadina outshines everything else. The tap-dancing and doing the splits are the least of it, I promise you.

It’s a terrific show, and the fact that it is so clever, funny and profound is largely due to the fact that none of the fancy tricks is ultimately allowed to get in the way of Chekhov’s classic play, which is delivered pretty well intact. I would strongly recommend it, but I think it’s sold out.

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.