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Writing competitions
Speaking competitions
Competitions are listed in order of their closing dates, with the
nearest first. Annual and ongoing competitions are also listed below. If you know of other writing competitions not listed here, please send details to nayna.wood@literacytrust.org.uk.
You can enter via mail or online at www.tlc-creative.co.uk, where full details are available. There is an entry fee of £5 per story and the competition. 1st prize: £350. One runner up will win £150. Post your stories, complete with entry form to ‘Short Story Competition. 104 Alumhurst Rd, Bournemouth. BH4 8HT.’, or you can also email your entries to shortstories@tlc-creative.co.uk. Your entry fee can be paid by cheque (made payable to TLC Creative) or by Paypal.
Closing date: 15 October 2008
Michael Rosen will chair the judges of this competition for seven to 11-year-olds run by the Children’s Poetry Bookshelf. Using the ‘work’ theme of National Poetry Day (9 October), the competition will be open to entries from 11 September. Cash, book and school membership prizes will be presented to the winners at a gala celebration in December and the winning poems will be published in a booklet and on the CPB website. The competition will also have an ‘international learner’ section run in partnership with the British Council. Details on www.childrenspoetrybookshelf.co.uk
Closing date: 20 October 2008
Prizes: £150, £75, £25. Fee: £3 per entry. Length up to 2000 words, unpublished original story, any subject (single spacing welcome). No name on entry, no entry form required. Send cover sheet with title, word count, name and contact details to: Short Story Competition, Southport Writers Circle, 16 Ormond Avenue, Westhead, Lancashire L40 6HT
Close date: 31 October 2008
A short story competition - the winning entrant will have their story professionally recorded by a British Equity member actor and broadcast on www.shortstoryradio.com The winner will also receive their own professionally designed website. The word limit is 3,000 words and the entry fee is £8. Visit the website for more information.
Closing date: 31 October 2008
Inspired by a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar called The Debt, Talk About Debt are running a poetry competition to find this century’s Debt Poem. First prize is £300. For more information, visit www.talkaboutdebt.co.uk/
Closing date 31 October 2008
For short stories up to 2,000 words and poems up to 40 lines on any theme. Entry fee for poems is £2 and for short stories it's £3. Entry forms are not needed but entries must be accompanied by a cover sheet stating name, address, word count and title. Cheques, postal orders made payable to Brenda Stanton. Prizes: 1st for each catorgory: £75, 2nd: £50 and 3rd £25. Address for entries: Brenda Stanton 5 Wesley Court Felling Gateshead Tyne & Wear NE10 0 BJ. SAE needed for results. Manuscripts will not be returned.
Closing date: 30 November 2008
A UK online creative writing competition, created by greenmetropolis.com to encourage reading, writing and recycling. Entrants (children, teens and adult age categories) submit work to be voted on, and at the end of each month the winning entry becomes the next chapter of a book, which will be published in December 2008, with all proceeds going to The Woodland Trust. For more information, visit www.thegreenstory.co.uk
Closing date: November 2008
The two competitions – one for short stories and one for poetry – will result in the best entries being published in a forthcoming anthology called Grist, a two-hundred page paperback collection of both new and established writers’ work, including that of judges Simon Armitage and Joanne Harris, supported by the University of Huddersfield. The short story should be no more than 3,500 words, and the poem no more than 40 lines. For more information, visit www.hud.ac.uk/grist
Closing date: 30 November 2008
To publicise his new book, a top UK ghostwriter, Andrew Croft, supported by the Arts Council youwriteon.com, is running a short story competition. The first prize is mentoring from Andrew himself to help work the story into a publishable novel, as well as publication on the Steffi McBride website. Visit www.steffimcbride.com/writing.php
Closing date 30 November 2008
A National poetry competition for children aged 5 to 11 (Years 1 to 6). Focuses on literacy, healthy eating and good citizenship. Children are asked to write a poem about fruit or vegetables and pay £1 per poem to enter into the competition. All money raised goes to Rays of Sunshine Children’s Charity. For more information, visit www.poundapoem.co.uk Launches 15 September 2008.
Closing date: 12 December 2008
The Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award is for a manuscript that celebrates cultural diversity in the widest possible sense, either in terms of its story or in terms of the ethnic and cultural origins of its author. The prize of £1,500, plus the option for Frances Lincoln Children’s Books to publish the novel, will be awarded to the best work of unpublished fiction for 8-to-12-year-olds by a writer, aged 16 years or over, who has not previously published a novel for children. For entry forms contact diversevoices@sevenstories.org.uk or Helena McConnell at Seven Stories on 0845 271 0777
Closing date: 30 January 2009
Theme: 'O Happy Day!' Prizes: 1st £70, 2nd £35 and 3rd £20. Stories between 1,000 and 1,500 words accepted. It may or may not start out dire, but it should at least have a happy outcome. It can be serious or humourous. Write something that will provide the reader with that feel-good factor. Please don’t use the theme title as the title of your story. Entry fee: £3.00 per story. Winning entries will be announced on 30 April 2009 and will be published on WritersReign.co.uk. Entry form and rules available at www.writersreign.co.uk/comp.html
Closing date: 28th February 2009
Twice yearly competition: Closing dates 31 March and 30 September
Prize: £250.00 + publishing opportunity. Entry fee: NIL. Short stories (2000 - 4000 words) - general fiction suitable for a mainstream audience. Open to unpublished prose writers. Winner is chosen by reader votes and shortlisted entrants receive feedback from readers via the website. Aall proceeds go to fund future competitions and other ventures in new writing. Full details and online entry form at www.invisibleink.org.uk/competition.html
Produce two quarterly magazines of short stories, and run several open writing competitions every year wish cash prizes and publication for the winners. For more information, visit www.parkpublications.co.uk
Prizes are: 1st £100 plus publication; three runners-up receive a dictionary plus publication. Entry fee is: £5 per poem, £7 for two. No theme, up to 40 lines. No deadline as the competition is continuous. For more information, visit www.writers-forum.com, or see the magazine, which is available from branches of WH Smith.
A national writing event for adults in Skills for Life adult
literacy, numeracy and ESOL classes in England. We are looking
for learner writing: true stories, fictional stories or poems
about life, love, home, family, dreams, sadness, hopes, experiences
- anything that someone else may want to read. Voices on the
Page has three elements: a national online storybank, a book
to be published in the autumn of 2007, and an awards ceremony
for regional winners and runners up. The aim is to create
a collection of writing in the form of the all-inclusive online
storybank and a selection in the publication, which will be
an everlasting document to what it is like to be alive now.
Visit www.nrdc.org.uk/voices
Write Away, ran for 10 years, inviting students aged
from 7 to 14 to write about their own lives, focussing on
a person, place or event that has been important to them and
experiment with forms such as a diary entry or letter.
For the final 2006 competition there were some 9,000 submissions,
from all over the UK as well as international schools in many
parts of the world, which were read by panels of teachers
organised by the National Association for the Teaching of
English (NATE) in different regions. The final four winners
were chosen by authors Michael Rosen, poet and broadcaster,
and Jacqueline Wilson, the current Children’s Laureate.
For more information see www.tes.co.uk.
The scheme closed down following the sale of the TES to a
new owner.
Publisher Leaf Books runs regular short story, poetry and other writing competitions. Each entry usually costs approximately £3 to £5 and prizes include cash awards, books and publications in a Leaf Books anthology. For details of current competitions and closing dates visit http://leafbooks.co.uk/New/For%20Writers/CurrentCompetitions.html
This poetry website runs free-to-enter poetry contests, with
monetary prizes. For more information visit www.moontowncafe.com/contest.asp
The RIF, UK website includes areas for children to get involved
with regular competitions, book reviews, quizzes and chances
for children to send in their own writing and see it published
on the site. See Rifsters
for 5-19 year olds.
runs an annual poetry competition and publishes some of the
best entries. The competition is open to all age groups. The
closing date for entries is 24 October for each year.
See www.searchforaschool.com
is based on texting micro stories- stories that contain no more than 160 characters (the maximum for one text message). The theme changes monthly and texts cost £1 plus the standard network charge for a text. For more information visit www.txtlit.co.uk/
www.brevitything.co.uk offers monthly flash fiction competitions, centred around a given theme. Entry is £2.50 per story, and first prize is £50. There's no restriction on genre or intended audience for stories, just on quality and creative use of the theme. The word limit is 250 words. Entries are welcome from everywhere in the world. Full entry details are on the website.
is a quarterly competition for original, unpublished fiction of no more than 500 words. Every entrant receives a critique of their work. Cash prizes and payment for entry. www.soszynski.btinternet.co.uk/primeprose/
Want to write for BookCrossing? If your article is accepted,
you could see it featured in their newsletter. You can write
anything about books, reading, or BookCrossing - tutorials,
release and catch stories, well-travelled book stories or
funny BookCrossing experience stories. Write it up, then submit
it to www.bookcrossing.com/articles/submit
An ongoing competition which is free to enter and judged by other members of the website. Visit www.writerscircle.biz/Competition.aspx
Writers Online is ongoing
way of encouraging children to practise their creative writing
skills. The Writers Online website encourages children to
write pieces of their own in response to, and in the style
of, an extract from a well-known writer. These can then be
submitted for inclusion on the site. See www.englishonline.co.uk/writers/.
This website often runs writing competitions. Visit www.writingwriters.co.uk
A nationwide competition for children up to age 14.
Children are invited to perform a story from the oral tradition. The stories may be folk tales, fairy tales, urban legends or family stories. They may be delivered in rhyme or as spoken narrative but must be performed from memory rather than read aloud. The winner will be offered a weekend trip for two to New York, including a visit to the Barefoot Boutique and the chance to perform there to a public audience. The winning entrant’s school will receive £1,000 of free Barefoot Books plus a storytelling workshop for 20 pupils with Daniel Morden. For more information or to submit an entry, visit http://www.barefoot-books.com/
Closing date: 3 November 2008
We would like to develop a list of speaking competitions - including debates, poetry recitals, public speaking and anything else you feel might fit the bill. Email nayna.wood@literacytrust.org.uk with any suggestions.
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