Writing Competitions to Enter in July

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Exeter Literary Festival Short Story Competition, Hastings Literary Festival Writing Competition, HG Wells Short Story Competition, HISSAC Annual Open Short Story Competition, Ilkley Literature Festival Short Story Competition, Sean O'Faolain Short Story Competition, W&A Working Class Writers' Prize

Skipper, one of the four-legged supporters of ninevoices, suggests that you abandon your armchairs and get down to some serious writing.

His first suggestion is that you read our previous blog, of 21st June, advising that the British Czech & Slovac Association’s 2022 writing competition deadline has been extended to Sunday 31 July. Full details can be found there and we think you really should give this serious consideration. Competition is not as fierce as that for things like the Bridport and even if you have never been to Prague, you could surely make something up. After all, you write fiction, don’t you?

The annual HG Wells Short Story Competition was founded by renowned BBC aeronautics engineer Reg Turnbull and his wife Margaret. There are two categories. The Junior Prize is free to enter and has a prize of £1,000. The prize in the Senior category is £500. The 2022 contest is for original unpublished short stories of between 1,500 and 5,000 words on the theme of ‘Switch’, which can be interpreted as broadly as the writer wishes. Winners and shortlisted entrants will be published in an anthology. Entry in the senior category is £10, or £5 with student ID. Closing date: 11 July. Details: https://hgwellscompetition.com/

Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award is looking for between 20,000 and 25,000 words of a prose WIP by a first-time author. Prizes: £10,000; runners-up £1,000, FREE Entry. Closing date: 1 July. Details: http://www.deborahrogersfoundation.org

Working class authors who don’t have a publishing contract or an agent are invited to enter the W&A Working Class Writers’ Prize with an entry of an unpublished writing sample of up to 2,000 words. Submissions may be in any genre and should include a two-page synopsis of the full manuscript and a 200-word piece of writing about the entrant and why this prize speaks to them. First prize is £200, two hour-long mentoring sessions with the prize judge (TBA), access to a number of W&A writing and publishing events, a year’s membership of the Society of Authors, a W&A writing guide bundle and a selection of Bloomsbury books. Five shortlisted entries will receive a W&A writing guide bundle plus a year’s membership of the Society of Authors and support from the W&A team. Entry is FREE. Closing date: 18 July. Details: https://writ.rs/wawcw22

Doris Gooderson Short Story Competition for stories up to 1,200 words. Prizes: £200, £100, £50, winning entries may be published in the annual Wrekin Writers Anthology. Entry fee: £5. Closing date: 12 July. Details: https://wrekinwriters.wordpress.com/doris-gooderson-short-story-competition/

Ilkley Literature Festival Short Story and Walter Swan Poetry Competitions. Short stories 1,000-2,000 words; poems up to 30 lines. Prizes: £200 for short stories, £200, £100, £75 for adult poems; £100, £75, £50 for 18-15s poems. Entry fee: £5 Closing date 31 July. Details: http://www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk

Exeter Literary Festival Short Story Competition for stories on any theme except children’s, up to 750 words. Prizes: £200, £100, £50. Entry fee: £5; £9 for two. Closing date 31 July. Details: http://www.exelitfest.com

Hastings Literary Festival Writing Competition for stories up to 2,500 words; short memoirs, up to 4,000 words, or 60-line poems; poems up to 40 Lines. Prizes: £250, £50 each category. Entry fee: £7.50, £10 for two. Closing date: 31 July. Details: http://www.HastingsLitFest.org

HISSAC Annual Open Short Story Competition. Stories up 2,000 words, flash fiction up to 500 words. No connection to Scotland is needed by theme or entrant. Prizes: £200, £75 and £50 in both categories. Entry fee: £5, £12 for 3, £18 for 5. Closing date: 31 July. Details: http://www.hissac.co.uk

Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition for stories up to 3,000 words. Prizes: 2,000 Euros, week-long residency at Aman Cara Writers’ and Artists’ Retreat, 500 Euros, 4×250 Euros. Entry fee: 18 Euros. Closing date: 18 July. Details: http://www.munsterlit.ie

Do make sure you check the details of any entry you are considering.

Skipper hopes for great things from you. Please don’t disappoint him.

Imagine things Czech or Slovak …

Tags

British Czech & Slovak Association, Czech, Freedom, Me-Too, Slivovice, Slovak

The closing date for the British Czech & Slovak Association’s 2022 writing competition has been extended.  It is now midnight on Sunday July 31.  So that gives you and your writerly friends and relatives another month to come up with 2,000 words that will interest, amuse, irritate, educate or otherwise entertain the eminent judges. £400 lies the other side of those eminent judges – plus publication in the British Czech & Slovak Review. The runner-up gets £150 (plus publication).

This year’s suggested (but not compulsory) theme is Freedom – in any aspect.  The interpretation is yours.  Personal freedom, freedom in relationships, the freedom of nations, democratic freedoms, or just the ending of lockdown?  You choose.

The 2021 competition brought in some impressive creative writing, including such gems as:

An entertaining account of a Scot’s postgraduate year in Czechoslovakia in 1972, which included a wedding missed because he was drinking slivovice to celebrate the release from prison of the father of a hitchhiker he had picked up en route.

A topical entry on the Me-Too theme that took us to a trial of a celebrity accused of sexual assault, with the simultaneous thoughts of the judge and the two victims.

A moving account of a young Englishwoman’s visit to Slovakia for her Slovak father’s funeral. (This won a runner-up prize.)

You can feature here!   Fiction or fact – either is welcome.  What is essential is that all entries must deal with either (1) the links between Britain and the lands now comprising the Slovak and Czech Republics, at any time in history, or (2) describing society in the Republics since 1989.  Topics can include, for example, history, politics, sport, the sciences, economics, the arts or literature. 

Entry is free.  Submissions are invited from individuals of any age, nationality or educational background.  Entrants do not need to be members of the BCSA.

Entries should be submitted by post to the BCSA Prize Administrator, 24 Ferndale, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN2 3NS, England, or by e-mail to prize@bcsa.co.uk.  The closing date is now midnight on July 31 2022.

The submission guidelines can be seen on the BCSA website at https://www.bcsa.co.uk/2022-bcsa-writing-competition/ , or on application to the BCSA Prize Administrator at the addresses given above.