The holiday season is on its way, but don’t let that distract you from writing… and entering The A3 Review’s last monthly contest of 2016.

This month’s theme is Orange Things: an antidote to the grey winter weather (or to echo the sunshine if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere). Deadline for entries is 24th December. We won’t be expecting you to address festive topics (do people still put satsumas into Christmas stockings?) or even The Donald’s tan and hair dye!

We’re looking for short fiction, poetry and artwork that reflects the complexity and uniqueness of ‘orange’ – an ancient word and one of the few which (fun fact alert) has no direct rhymes in English, only half-rhymes.

Write about the colour orange and its associations with places: an orange beach under an orange sun with melting orange ice-lollies. Write or draw the moods and situations associated with orange: warmth, fire, energy, danger. Or explore the association of orange and religion: Irish Protestant links with Orange in France, the meaning of the colour for Hindus and Buddhists. The Dutch House of Orange.

Visit our Submittable page for more inspiration.

“Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now’.” Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast.

Each month we choose two winning pieces for publication in our six-monthly journal. All winning entries receive Writing Maps and contributor copies, while three overall winners for each issue receive cash prizes totalling £275.

Follow us on Twitter and sign up to our newsletter. And if you’re looking for detailed, knowledgeable and forward-looking feedback on your short fiction, editors KM Elkes and Shaun Levin offer a critique service for writers. To find out more about it, click here.