Writing Competitions to Enter in October

Tags

Bath Flash Fiction, Bedford Competition, Cranked Anvil Short Story Competition, Earlyworks Press Short Story, Flash 500 Novel Opening Chapter & Synopsis Competition, Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize 2021/2022, National Flash Fiction Day Novella in Flash Competition, The Imison Award for Radio Plays, Totally Free Best of the Bottom Drawer Global Wri Writing Prize 2021

Autumn is a time for reading books by the fire, or on the banks of a lake in a National Trust garden. It is also a time for writers to spend more time writing their own books, poems or short stories.

To whet your appetites, here are a few competitions to enter in October. The list is a little earlier than usual because of several early October deadlines.

Grindstone International Novel Prize for finished and part-finished novels aimed at YA and adult audiences, of any genre. Authors must be unrepresented and not previously traditionally published. Entry fee: £20, with an optional £8 feedback supplement if you wish to receive feedback. Prizes: first, £1,000; runner-up £500; shortlist, 4 x £100. Closing date: 1 October. Details: https://grindstoneliterary.com/novel-prize

The Perito Prize for short stories between 1,000-2,000 words, on the specific themes of inclusion, access, diversity, inclusive design and inclusive environments. Prizes: £500 and publication. Free entry. Deadline 1 October. Details: http://www.weareperito.com/perito-prize.

The Imison Award for original radio plays by writers new to radio. Prizes: £3,000. Free entry. Closing date: 3 October. Details: http://www.societyofauthors.org/imisonaward

London Short Story Prize for stories up to 5,000 words by writers with London postcodes. Prizes: £1,000, 2 x £250. Entry fee: £10. Closing date: 7 October. Details: http://www.spreadtheword.org.uk

Retreat West Micro Fiction Competition for fiction of 100 words exactly, to a prompt posted on the website at the start of each month. Prizes: 50% of total entry fees. Entry fee: £4. Closing date: 8 October. Details: http://www.retreatwest.co.uk

Retreat West Prize: for short stories between 1,500-2,500 words, flash fiction, 150-500 words, and micro flash, up to 150 words. Prizes: £400, £250, £150, £20 each shortlisted for short stories; £350, £200, £100, £15 for flash; £200 #£100, £50, £10 for micro. Entry fee: £10 for short stories, £8 for flash, £5 for micro. Closing date: 31 October. Details: http://www.retreatwest.co.uk

The Bath Flash Fiction competition has a first prize of £1,000 for a piece of short fiction no longer than 300 words. There are second and third prizes of £300 and £100. Two commendations will each receive £30, and up to 50 longlisted authors are offered publication in the annual anthology. One entry costs £7.50; two costs £12, and three, £18. The deadline is 10 October. Details: https://bathflashfictionaward.com/

Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize 2021/2022 is inviting entries, with a £2,000 first prize. The winner receives £2,000 and each shortlisted author gets £200. Longlisted authors receive £50 of bookshop vouchers and a four-book subscription to Galley Beggar Press. Short fiction of any style can be entered, up to 6,000 words. Entry costs £10 per story. Closing date: 10 October. Details: http://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/prize

The Totally Free Best of the Bottom Drawer Global Writing Prize 2021 for “anything at all”, 40-1,000 manuscript pages. Prizes: advance and publication. Free entry. Closing date: 16 October. Details: https://store.eyewearpublishing.com

The current annual Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction has the theme ‘Crime stories’. The competition from Comma Press and The University of Central Lancashire is in honour of writer, lecturer and Comma Press founding board member, Dinesh Allirajah, who died in 2014. The winner will receive £500 and all ten shortlisted stories will be published in a Comma Press anthology. The winning entry will also be published online by Northern Soul. Each writer may enter one story of between 2,000 and 6,000 words. Deadline: 29 October. Details: https://commapress.co.uk/resources/prizes/

The next quarterly Cranked Anvil Short Story Competition is inviting entries, with prizes of £150, £75 and £30, and anthology publication. Stories can be on any theme, up to 1,500 words. Entry is £5 for one and £8 for two. Closing date: 31 October. Details: https://crankedanvil.co.uk/shortstory/

Bedford Competition for short stories up to 3,000 words, poems up to 40 lines, on any theme. Prizes in each category: £1,000, £200, £100. Entry fee: £7.50 or 3 for £15. Closing date: 31 October. Details: http://www.bedfordwritingcompetition.co.uk

Earlyworks Press Short Story, in two categories – up to 4,000 and up to 8,000 words. Prizes: £200; cash and books. Entry fee: £5 for up to 4,000 words; £10 for 4,000 to 8,000 words. Closing date 31 October. Details: http://www.earlyworkspress.co.uk

Fiction Factory Short Story for stories up to 3,000 words. Prizes: £300, £100, and £50. Entry fee: £6. Closing date: 31 October. Details: http://fiction-factory.biz

Flash 500 Novel Opening Chapter & Synopsis Competition. For an opening chapter no longer than 3,000 words, plus synopsis. Prizes: £500, £200. Entry fee: £10, £18 for two, £26 for 3. Closing date: 31 October. Details: http://www.flash500.com

National Flash Fiction Day Novella in Flash Competition. Novellas, 6,000-12,000 words, in individual flash blocks, maximum 1,000 words each. Prizes: £300, £100, £50. Entry fee: £14. Closing date: 31 October. Details: https://nationalflashfictionday.co.uk/index.php/competition/

There should be something for everyone there, so why not try your hand? Please remember to check all details before entry, in case of last-minute changes or cancellations.

(The autumnal photograph was taken last autumn at Sheffield Park, in Sussex)

Elizabeth Gaskell – novels for our time

Why does Elizabeth Gaskell take a back seat among nineteenth-century classic novelists? Is it because we think her too Victorian – over-doing sentiment, religion and morality?

 Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels vary considerably. You might try one, not care for it, and dismiss the rest. Or love one, and feel disappointed not to get more of the same.

Blame Cranford here. Elizabeth Gaskell is best known – and loved – for this altogether delightful account of small town life and the splendidly independent and inter-dependent women living almost entirely without the support and companionship of men. It’s a far cry from the uncompromising depiction of the harsh realities of Manchester’s workers and factory conditions in Mary Barton  and North and South. Eye-opening reading at the time, and Elizabeth Gaskell is a terrific story-teller. But nobody could call these two novels cosy reads, despite the satisfying romantic love stories woven into the plot.

Even less cosy is Sylvia’s Lovers, set in a coastal town during the Napoleonic wars and described by Elizabeth Gaskell as ‘the saddest story I ever wrote’. Not a good choice when you want a comfort read. You need to be in the mood for Thomas Hardy-style mischance and tragedy.

Elizabeth Gaskell was married to a Unitarian minister based in Manchester where conditions for the working classes at a time of rapid industrialisation were a squalid mix of poverty, disease, and early death. She was deeply concerned with how Christian belief translates into social action, working alongside her husband and for charitable causes to alleviate the misery she saw around her.  In Mary Barton, subtitled A Tale of Manchester Life, published in 1848, she was writing about what she witnessed first-hand: those who are ‘doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want’.

In North and South published in 1855 we are shown the violent clash between employers and employees. Elizabeth Gaskell doesn’t take sides. She tells the stories clearly and sympathetically of those individuals caught up in either side of the conflict. She was interested in the need to reconcile different interests and classes, and how society can work together for the good of all.

In these novels dealing with social problems and industrial relations, Elizabeth Gaskell knew what she was talking about. How Lord David Cecil in his Early Victorian Novelists published in 1934 can write that these subjects ‘… entailed an understanding of economics and history wholly outside the range of her Victorian intellect’ is a mystery. He has to be forgiven much, given his later championship of Barbara Pym, but it’s difficult not to feel indignant at his condescending description of Elizabeth Gaskell as a ‘mild feminine Victorian’ who ‘sees nothing but flowers in the garden.’

Religion in novels – as in life – isn’t plain sailing. Jane Austen, although a devout Christian, largely steers clear of the spiritual lives of her characters. It’s understood they are governed – or not governed – by Christian principles, but we are left to imagine them on their knees in prayer. In contrast, Elizabeth Gaskell is unashamedly explicit in how religion shapes their thinking and behaviour.

Characters talk about God and quote the Bible. In North and South Christian faith is what drives the courageous heroine Margaret Hale and comforts the dying mill worker Bessy Higgins. ‘Nay, Bessy – think!’ said Margaret. ‘God does not willingly afflict. Don’t dwell so much on the prophecies, but read the clearer parts of the Bible.’ ‘I dare say it would be wiser; but where would I hear such grand words of promise  – hear tell o’ anything so far different fro’ this dreary world, and this town above a’, as in Revelations? …It gives me more comfort than any other book i’ the Bible.’

Elizabeth Gaskell doesn’t go in for theological debate – we are never told the reasons for Mr Hale’s dissent in North and South – that isn’t what interested her. Instead she shows how disparate people can be brought together. Higgins looked at Margaret doubtfully. Her grave sweet eyes met his; there was no compulsion, only deep interest in them. He did not speak, but he kept his place. Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel knelt down together. It did them no harm.

Mary Bennet pronounces in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice ‘that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin.’ Mary’s sister Lydia gets away with it, but for Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘fallen women’ it involves a life of atonement. It’s a subject which recurs in her work – Esther in Mary Barton, Ruth, and the short story Lizzie Leigh.

Elizabeth Gaskell was the hands-on, intelligent, and perceptive mother of four daughters. In Sylvia’s Lovers, Cousin Phillis, and Wives and Daughters she shows us how young girls are morally exposed, how vulnerable they are. Plus ça change.

Modern readers may well find the highly-charged emotional religion in Ruth, a story of the repentance and redemption of an orphan seduced and abandoned by an older man all too much. She’s the victim not only of a self-entitled rake but a nasty mix of hypocrisy and judgmental morality. It doesn’t sit well with our twenty-first century thinking. What has she got to atone for?

Contemporaries found Mrs Gaskell too much for different reasons: they were shocked at the bold way she wrote about illegitimacy and prostitution. She was ahead of her time in a careful, thought-out compassion – and unswerving in her wholesale condemnation of seducers like the self-entitled Henry Bellingham in Ruth through the voice of the Good Samaritan character Mr Benson. ‘Men may call such actions as yours youthful follies! There is another name for them with God.’

Religion isn’t always presented in what some may feel to be an over- melodramatic manner. In the novella Cousin Phillis, published in 1864, Mr Holman ends the day’s haymaking with a psalm. Elizabeth Gaskell gives us here perhaps the loveliest religious scene in all her work – a moving image of harmony between nature, work and God.

But for those who wish Jane Austen had written another book, Elizabeth Gaskell’s last and unfinished novel Wives and Daughters is the perfect choice. It’s written on a similarly small canvas: families living around the small country town of Hollingford, based like Cranford on the real life Knutsford, where Elizabeth Gaskell lived as a child.

In this novel Elizabeth Gaskell employs almost the same reticence on religion as Jane Austen. Christian values are mostly unspoken but no less present. Early in the novel, the teenaged heroine Molly struggles to overcome her resentment of the new stepmother when her father returns home from the deathbed of a patient. She is remembering what Roger Hamley advised her: to think of others.  ‘Papa, I will call her “mamma”! He took her hand, and grasped it tight; but for an instant or two he did not speak. Then he said, – ‘You won’t be sorry for it, Molly, when you come to lie as poor Craven Smith did tonight.’

Like most Victorians, Elizabeth Gaskell didn’t shy away from talking about death in the way we do today. The deaths in Wives and Daughters are affecting and unforgettable. But this is a novel which faultlessly and satisfyingly combines the the profound with the comic. Here is social-climbing Mrs Gibson, who’s always parading and misquoting her superficial reading, speculating about the advantages of the possible death of the heir to an estate: ‘I should think myself wanting in strength of mind if I could not look forward to the consequences of death. I really think we are commanded to do so somewhere in the Bible or the Prayerbook.’

The very last part of Wives and Daughters was never written – Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly in November 1865 – but we know what’s going to happen, and it’s the ending we long for.

Elizabeth Gaskell doesn’t necessarily give us the secure, happy endings of Jane Austen, the philosophical worldview of George Eliot, the wild passion of the Brontes. But she gives us something equally remarkable. Despite being written over 150 years ago, her novels speak strongly and clearly, and they say something important in the confusing fragmented world of today.

Elizabeth Gaskell