The most delightful competition ever

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Barbara Pym, Barbara Pym Society North American Conference

If you are a fan of Barbara Pym and looking for the perfect short story competition to enter, the Barbara Pym Society’s 2018 Ellen J Miller Memorial competition could be made for you.

What could be more blissful than the brief which is that entries must prominently feature one or more characters from Barbara Pym’s published novels, in any setting or situation the author chooses? Readers of Barbara Pym know how her characters continue to live beside them, in moments of recognition, both painful and comic, while offering endlessly comforting human solidarity …

The prize for the winning entry is $250 and the story will be read at the Society’s annual North American Conference held in Boston March 2018. The deadline is 4 December. Details at http://www.barbara-pym.org/

 

 

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Ninevoices Summer Competition – the winner!

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Endangered words, Nature, Winners

Ninevoices are delighted to announce that the winner of our Summer Competition is ‘The Last Walk’ by Karen Martyn. Congratulations, Karen! The prize of £100 will soon be coming your way.

In our competition entrants had to use one or more words taken from a list of little-known words with meanings related to nature, such as smeuse (Sussex dialect for a hole in a hedge left by the repeated passage of a small animal – see photo) or petrichor (the smell of dry earth and rock that comes before and during rainfall). The required length was 99 to 199 words.

Our decision came after much discussion (really!). Entries came from across the world – from three continents, in fact. We were impressed by the imagination and ingenuity shown in the way our chosen words were deployed.

A close runner-up was ‘Stop the Rain’ by Christina Dalcher.

Special mention should also be given to the following entries:

‘Before and After’

‘The Mangrove Mist’

‘The Scent of Descent’

‘The Gloaming’

Our thanks to all those who sent us entries. Sorry there could be only one winner!

Ninevoices Summer Competition

Thank you all for your entries. We will discuss them at our next meeting and announce the winner mid-month.

Stop Nurdling and Write

Ninevoices Summer Competition ends on Thursday, 31st August 2017. A mere 99-199 word story incorporating at least one of the endangered words associated with nature featured in our 22nd June post could win you £100. The entry fee is £5 and any profits will go to the charity PMRGCA-UK.

Ninevoices Summer Competition

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Endangered words, Nature

Last month a Times article highlighted the dwindling use of certain words associated with nature. Featured in a sidebar were eleven such words as follows:

Owl-light Twilight
Roarie-bummlers Fast-moving stormclouds
Shivelight Lances of light cast through a woodland canopy
Petrichor Smell of dry earth and rock that comes before and during a rainfall
Glashtroch Incessant rain
Gludder Fleeting sunshine between showers
Neptunes-uouue Sea mist
Smeuse Sussex dialect for a hole in a hedge left by the repeated passage of a small animal
Landskein Weave of horizon lines on a hazy day
Stravaig Scots and Irish for wandering aimlessly
Nurdle East Anglian dialect for wandering aimlessly

Ninevoices challenges our followers to write a story (not a poem or piece of descriptive prose) of between 99 and 199 words using one or more of these words in a manner organic to the story. For stories of equal quality, your chance of winning will rise if you’ve used more than one of these words or introduced another such word (defined in a footnote outside the word count. The title is also excluded from the word-count).

The deadline is 31st August 2017. The entry fee is £5 payable via PayPal. The prize is £100 for the best story. Entries should be sent to ninevoices@ymail.com.

Any profits above the prize amount will go to the charity PMRGCA-UK

 

—HOW TO ENTER—

Please send each entry separately to ninevoices@ymail.com.

Stories should be sent as Word documents or pdfs.
In the email, tell us:

• Your name
• Your phone number (including country code if not in the UK)
• Your writing name (which is what will be shown if we publish the story)
• The title of your story

—PAYMENT—

Please pay us £5 per entry.

For multiple entries, please pay as separate transactions.  It would help us if you could mention the title of the story in the notes area.

Pay here:

 

 

 

 

Brexit can win you £300, plus a free dinner

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Brexit, Czech, Slovak, the EU, Vietnamese, Writing competition

Brexit – that’s the suggested (but not compulsory) theme in this year’s British Czech & Slovak Association’s writing competition.

Last year’s was the EU, and that resulted in a winning entry describing how a Referendum Night party turns sour for a Czech girl living in England. In 2015 it was migration, and the winning entry put you in the place of the Vietnamese minority in the Czech Republic today.

So let Brexit rip – at least in your imagination, for or against – and go for the £300 prize, the free dinner you get when it’s presented to you at the Association’s annual dinner at a hotel in London’s West End, and the publication of your piece in the December 2017 issue of the British Czech and Slovak Review.

The second prize is £100. Entry is free.

Fact or fiction – both are welcome.  The first second prizes will be awarded to the best 1,500 to 2,000-word pieces of original writing in English on the links between Britain and the Czech/Slovak Republics, or describing society in transition in the Republics since the Velvet Revolution of 1989.

There’s still time – the closing date is 30 June.

For further info go to http://www.bcsa.co.uk/the-bcsas-2017-writing-competition/, or approach the BCSA Prize Comp Administrator at prize@bcsa.co.uk, or at 24 Ferndale, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN2 3NS, England.

The Exeter Novel Award

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Briony Collins, Broo Doherty, News

Many congratulations to Briony Collins who yesterday won the Exeter Novel Award with her wonderful-sounding civil rights novel Raise Them Up.  Here she is sitting next to Sarah (front row, second from right).

Our lovely judge was Broo Doherty of DHH Agency. If you’d like to see her thoughts on the six shortlisted novels, go to: http://www.creativewritingmatters.co.uk/2016-enp-award-ceremony-and-judges-report.html

Brexit? Try the 2017 British Czech & Slovak writing competition

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BCSA, Brexit, Czech, Slovak

Brexit? Its effects not only in Britain, but in Slovakia or the Czech Republic as well? Its causes (likely, unlikely, or just plain impossible)? Any aspect of Brexit could be the subject of your entry in the British Czech & Slovak Association’s 2017 writing competition. That could win you £300 (and a free meal at our glittering Annual Dinner!).

Fact or fiction – both are welcome. A first prize of £300 and a second prize of £100 will be awarded to the best 1,500 to 2,000-word pieces of original writing in English on the links between Britain and the Czech/Slovak Republics (at any stage in their history), or describing society in transition in the Republics since 1989. Topics can include history, politics, the sciences, economics, the arts or literature. Brexit is this year’s suggested theme, but is not compulsory.

The writer of this year’s winning entry will be presented with the prize at the BCSA’s annual dinner in London in November 2017. The winning entry will be published in the December 2016 issue of the British Czech and Slovak Review and the runner-up in a subsequent issue. Submissions are invited from individuals of any age, nationality or educational background. Entrants do not need to be members of the BCSA. Entry is free. Entries should be received by 30 June 2017. An author may submit any number of entries.

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.

All entries must be in English, prose, typed with double-spacing and no more than 2,000 words in length. (The recommended minimum is 1,500 words.) For full Submission Guidelines and the Rules of the competition apply to the Prize Administrator at the addresses given above. Details are also shown at http://www.bcsa.co.uk/the-bcsas-2017-writing-competition/.

The winning entry in the 2016 competition was Ms Bernhardt’s Brexit, by Jennifer Moore, and can be read by following the link at http://www.bcsa.co.uk/competitions/.   The runner-up was The Pig, the Cupboard and the Reichsprotektor, by Jack Mullin. See https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2016/12/22/brexit-night-and-a-hidden-pig-bring-czech-slovak-writing-prizes/ for more info.

Shortlist Success

Many congratulations to all those who made the shortlist of Adventures In Fiction’s ‘Spotlight First Novel Competition’ – announced today.  A special well done to Maggie for her well-deserved place on it with The Gingham Square: https://www.facebook.com/AdventuresInFiction

Check out the competitions

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News

There’s a scene in Chariots of Fire where a disheartened Harold Abrahams declares that if he can’t win he won’t run – to which his girlfriend replies that if he won’t run he can’t win. I don’t have Olympic gold in my sights but without my writing pals’ encouragement I’d never have entered my novel for this year’s Exeter Novel Award. Which means I’d never have received yesterday’s email telling me it had been shortlisted. This is a first for me – so I hope our blog-readers won’t just think ‘smug git’ when they read that! I feel so grateful (as well as amazed) that I want to encourage everyone to listen to the positive voices in their lives – and act on what they hear.  Maggie’s monthly round-up of competitions (below) is a particularly helpful spur for me.