“Life is hell, but at least there are prizes.” Janet Frame’s story, “Prizes”, is one of the best you’ll ever read about prizes! You can listen to Miranda July read it as a New Yorker fiction podcast here.

And talking of prizes…

We’re giving away two subscriptions to Granta magazine for one year (4 issues) to the winners of this month’s Writing Maps Writing Contest.

The prompt for December’s Writing Contest is: Write a piece about a prize you won or wanted to win, or almost won, or dreamt of winning. Or maybe you regret having won a prize. Or you were a runner up, or you didn’t turn up for the big prize-giving ceremony. As always, you can write this as fiction or creative non-fiction, a short story, a graphic story, a snippet of memoir or a piece of flash fiction, a poem or a prose poem. In 150 words.

The two winners will receive a subscription to Granta magazine. In addition to that, the first 3 submissions to arrive will each receive a pack of 3 Writing Maps; and because we’re great believers in the last-minute submission, the last 3 entries will also receive a pack of 3 Writing Maps.

Please make sure to view our full guidelines here. In brief, the main rules are:

Entry is free. One entry per person. All genres welcome. All writers welcome. 150 words max.

Deadline is 27 December 2014.

The two winning entries will be published in The A3 Review, Issue #2.

Good luck, good writing and have a creative and peaceful festive season!

PS. There’s 50% off all single Writing Maps till the 1st of January. Just enter the discount code SANTA at checkout.