Category Archives: Competitions

OUEN PRESS SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2017 – FINAL RESULTS JUST OUT!

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Tasting Notes & other short stories – a diverse menu of short fiction expertly crafted to tantalise and entertain.

The very best 2017 competition entries have been published in one anthology entitled ‘Tasting Notes & other short stories’ – a diverse and complex menu of short fiction, expertly crafted to tantalise and entertain.

Contributors were encouraged to explore imaginative interpretations of one or more of the various meanings that could be derived from the term ‘Taste’.

Congratulations to the prizewinners and many thanks to all who entered the competition – visit www.ouenpress.com to view the FINAL RESULTS.

Sussex based editor and writer, Philippa R Francis writing as K.M. Lockwood was placed as overall winner her work ‘Tasting Notes’. Other prizewinners include Texan-based writer Randall G. Arnold for ‘Taste of the Broken Sea, and UEA Creative Writing graduate and editor Krishan Coupland for ‘The Life of Dogbreath’.

Delighted again with the global reach of the competition, we have been enthralled by those who have opted for the less obvious approaches to the brief, as we hoped they would do what excellent writers can do – expand the subject beyond what might first come to mind.

Deadline dates and details of the theme for the next competition will be made available on our website later in the year – or you may wish to check in with us on Twitter @OuenP or Facebook @ouenpress, for more regular updates on future competitions and all our other activities.

Wishing you every success with your future writing projects.

The Ouen Press team

 

Writing Competition: Short Story, Flash Fiction, Poetry

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Just over a week to go now for this great competition for a great cause. So get finalising those poems, flash fictions and short stories. Closing date is next Friday 20th July at 17.00hrs.

Just over 3 weeks to go on this one so get the biros, pencils and laptops working. Closes 5 pm on 20th July

Writing Competition in aid of the Michael Mullan Cancer Fund.

Michael Mullan (26) is battling cancer for third time and needs funds to continue availing of life saving treatment in Boston that is not available in Ireland.

How to Enter

  • Email your short story, flash fiction or poetry entry to: mmcancerfundwritingcompetition@gmail.com.

  • Pay: PayPal.Me/mmcancerfund or by clicking here. Donations in excess of the stipulated entry fee would be most welcome for this deserving cause.

  • Competition is open in Ireland and internationally.

  • Longlist of top 20 authors will be published on www.michaelmullancancerfund.com in mid-August 2018.

  • Shortlist of top 6 authors will be published in early September.

  • Winners will be announced and prizes will be awarded at Kildare Readers Festival on 3rd October 2018.

  • Please read the Terms & Conditions before entering: Terms & Conditions

2018 Flash Fiction Competition

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The Casket of Fictional Delights

HURRY CLOSING DATE 31st MAY 2018

We are looking for entries with a maximum of 300 words (excluding title). The competition is open to anyone over 18.

Judge: David Gaffney

Entry: £5 per Flash Fiction. 

Prizes                

  • The winning Flash Fiction will receive £150.
  • The top Eight Flash Fictions will be published online on The Casket of Fictional Delights
  • The top Four Flash Fictions will be professionally recorded and broadcast in a special audio podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, TuneIn and Stitcher, promoted by The Casket of Fictional Delights.

Full set of Rules and writing Tips available on the website.

Judge David Gaffney has the following advice –

“I do not expect to understand it at first. I expect to be a little confused. I hope to be a little confused. I will expect to have to read it again, and maybe again after that. And the feeling I want to have after finishing it is a feeling that I have understood something I didn’t understand before but I still don’t really know what it is.”

Enter

Good Luck Everyone

#FindYourStory

To the Moon and Back

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The A3 Review is looking for entries to their May contest. This month, they’re inviting stories, poems and artwork on the theme of The Moon. Mystery, cheesy, bloody, science-fictiony, or with cows jumping over it… they welcome all moon-inpired stories.

Stories about werewolves, high tide and low tide, moonlit sonatas, stories based on myths and folklore. Stories about dancing to the light of the moon. What happens to you on nights when the moon is full? Write about that!

For more lunar inspiration, and to enter The A3 Review‘s May contest, check out our Submittable page.

As always, the word limit is 150 words, and all artwork needs to fit into an A6 panel.

Mooning anecdotes most welcome!

Visit them at TheA3Review.com.

 

Write for a Flash Walk

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Totterdown coloured houses cr Judy Darley

After a year’s hiatus, the #FlashWalk is set to return as part of the National Flash-Fiction Day UK celebrations on 16th June 2018. Far less seedy than it sounds (depending on the tales submitted), the Flash Walk will take place in Bristol, celebrating fiction in its shortest and most intense form.

The Flash Walk will take place in central Bristol, and your words can be part of it.

To be in with a chance of being included, send us a piece of flash fiction, prompted by some aspect of the theme Urban Landscape. You can take this idea in any direction you choose, using any theme and any genre, providing your tale is between 40 and 400 words in length.

Bristol can be but doesn’t have to be a source of inspiration.

The deadline for submissions is Monday 21st May 2018.

The selected stories will be shared by actors during the walk, so if yours is chosen, all you need to do is come along and enjoy the performance!

The walk begins at 10.30am on 16th June, outside the main entrance to Bristol’s M-Shed on the harbour side. It will finish at the GreenHouse, Hereford Street, BS3 4NA (just under a mile’s stroll away), between an hour and an hour and a half later.

The GreenHouse will also be the venue for the afternoon’s free writing workshops.

To be part of National Flash-Fiction Day‘s #FlashWalk2018, submit your entries to bristolflash@gmail.com before midnight on Monday 21st May 2018. There’s no charge to enter, so why not give it a try?

Going Round in Circles?

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circlesIf you’re going round in circles, we want to hear about it. This month’s theme is the title theme for our next issue, Issue 9, The Circles Issue.

The A3 Review is looking for stories, poems and artwork about circles of trust and circular logic, running circles around someone and being in or outside the circle. We’d love stories and concrete poems in the shape of a circle or a spiral. See our Submittable page for all the details and more inspiration.

Each month’s 2 winners are published in The A3 Review, receive gifts from Writing Maps, and are in the running to win cash prizes. All the details are here.

Our current issue, Issue 8, is at the printers, and should be on its way out into the world by the end of April. Pre-order a copy here.

Reflex Fiction Winter 2017 Winners!

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Summer 2018 - Reflex Fiction - Flash Fiction Competition shortstops
Reflex Fiction is a quarterly international flash fiction competition for stories between 180 and 360 words. We publish one story every day as we count down to the winner of each competition.

Winter 2017 Winners

At the end of March, we published the three winning stories from our Winter 2017 flash fiction competition as chosen by Shasta Grant. Here are the winners and links to the stories:

First Place: Anger Management by Charmaine Wilkerson
Second Place: Shrink by Julia Paillier
Third Place: Storm Drain by Billy Boyle

You can read Shasta’s thoughts on the winning stories here.

Spring 2018 Long-List

We’ve also just published the long-list for our Spring 2018 competition and have started publishing stories as we count down to the announcement of the winners at the end of June.

Summer 2018 Open for Entries

We’re also accepting entries for our Summer 2018 competition. Here are the important details:

Prizes: £1,000 first, £500 second, £250 third (or the equivalent in your local currency)
Entry Fee: £7 / $9 / €9
Entries close: May 31, 2018
Judge: Sherrie Flick

SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY

 

V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize 2018

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The Royal Society of Literature is delighted to announce the nineteenth V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. There is a prize of £1,000, and the winning entry will be published in Prospect magazine online and in the RSL Review.

Entrants must be resident in the UK, Republic of Ireland or Commonwealth and likely to be available for a prizegiving event in Autumn 2018. Stories entered for the competition must not have been published previously, or broadcast in any other medium.

The judges this year are Tibor Fischer, Irenosen Okojie and Leone Ross.

Click below to enter your story online via our Submittable site:
submit

Entries can also be sent by post to:
VSP, The Royal Society of Literature
Somerset House, Strand
London, WC2R 1LA
Postal entries must be accompanied by a completed entry form (which also contains full rules and eligibility criteria). Download the application form.

The closing date for entries is Friday 29 June 2018.

2018 Bristol Short Story Prize

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With six weeks to go until our entry deadline we’d like to take the opportunity (thank you, the mighty Shortstops) to say that the 2018 Bristol Short Story Prize is open for entries, and we really, really do mean open.

We’ve published a huge range of stories in our first 10 anthologies – stories set throughout history from ancient Greece to the present day, and beyond to imagined futures. There have been stories narrated by octogenarians, by children not yet a decade old, and others with narrators and protagonists at all stages of life in between. Stories written in the first, second and third persons, with the broadest sweep of styles and genres from the familiar to the obscure: historical, romance, literary, science fiction, harsh realism, surreal flights of fancy, tense thrillers, comic capers, ‘experimental’ tales, sparsely written hammer blows of what some might call flash fiction and lots more. Stories set in countries all over the globe, written by writers worldwide.

There have been high, mid and low brow stories; stories written as blog posts, album reviews, in verse, as diaries, as a series of emails, as well as a sumptuous crop of the more traditional; stories of 4,000 words and those with just a few hundred, one of which won first prize in 2010.

Our 2017 winner, Dima Alzayat (centre) with awards ceremony guest speaker Edson Burton (left) and judging panel member, literary agent Juliet Pickering, who now represents Dima.

We invite you to show us what’s possible in a short story, what a short story can be, what a story can do and what ‘short story’ means to you. Drop our jaws, make us weep, make us rethink, tickle us, entertain us, confound us, provoke us, comfort us, stimulate us, challenge us, storify us to another time or place but above all we want to encourage and inspire you to feel free to write what you want in whatever form you want.

We won’t be compiling lists of shoulds and shouldn’ts on how or what to write. Another contribution to the vast muddle won’t help anyone, there’s more than enough out there. You’re the writer, it’s up to you what you do. It’s your story. We’ll read every submission with the same objectivity, respect and relish.

In short, then, there are no dos and don’ts, shoulds and shouldn’ts, rights and wrongs. No borders, no barriers, no walls.

With that in mind, here are some details of this year’s competition:

The 2018 Bristol Short Story Prize is open to all published and unpublished writers worldwide over 16 years of age. Stories can be on any theme or subject and entry can be made online via the website or by post. Entries must be previously unpublished with a maximum length of 4,000 words (There is no minimum). The entry fee is £8 per story.
The closing date for entries is midnight (BST) May 1st 2018.

20 stories will be shortlisted and the 20 shortlisted writers will be invited to the 2018 awards ceremony in Bristol in October this year when the winners will be announced and this year’s anthology launched.  Prizes will be sent to any writer unable to attend the awards ceremony.

Prizes:
1st £1000, 2nd £700, 3rd £400. 17 further prizes of £100 will be presented to the writers whose stories appear on the shortlist. All 20 shortlisted writers will have their stories published in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 11.

And here is our amazing judging panel: Kate Johnson (literary agent at Mackenzie Wolf), Lucy Cowie (editor and former literary agent), Roshi Fernando (writer), and Polly Ho-Yen (writer)

Full details and rules are available at www.bristolprize.co.uk

 

 

 

Can You Play the Guitar?

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a3 guitar contestAnd even if you can’t play the guitar, you’ve probably tried, or know someone who plays, or wanted to play, or serenaded you. The A3 Review‘s March contest theme is: GUITAR. For immediate inspiration, listen to BB King and write the blues.

You could write about a busker who becomes a star, or the family that jams together, or write about your first guitar teacher. Write an ode to your favourite chord: E, Dm7, or maybe C major 7 as a barre chord. Explore guitar-related settings like a Flamenco bar, the campfire on a holiday beach, or being part of the crowd at a music gig. Write about a late-night smoky blues bar in New Orleans.

Have you ever boarded a plane with a guitar? Read Debra Marquart’s beautiful poem “Traveling with Guitar” to trigger your memory.

Click here for more inspiration and ideas, and details about our contests and prizes.

Deadline is Saturday, 24th March.

We invite you to use the language of guitars as prompts for prose or poetry: riffs, licks, hammer, pull, slide, bend, distort, reverb, overdrive. Listen to an album by your favourite guitar band on a loop as you write, imagine being on a festival stage with a wild crowd in front of you, just about to strike your first chord…

The A3 Review publishes short stories, flash fiction, poetry, comics, graphic stories, memoir, photographs, illustrations, and any combination of the above. The only restriction is a word-limit of 150 and images should fit well into an A6 panel.

Visit our Submittable page for more inspiration and details.

PS. Our Issue 8 is almost ready to launch. Click here to pre-order your copy.

2018 Flash Fiction Competition

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The Casket of Fictional Delights

Launched as part of the nationwide Get Creative Festival. We are looking for entries with a maximum of 300 words (excluding title). The competition is open to anyone over 18.

Judge: David Gaffney
Closing date: 31st May 2018

Entry

£5 per Flash Fiction. 

Prizes                

  • The winning Flash Fiction will receive £150.
  • The top Eight Flash Fictions will be published online on The Casket of Fictional Delights
  • The top Four Flash Fictions will be professionally recorded and broadcast in a special audio podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, TuneIn and Stitcher, promoted by The Casket of Fictional Delights.

Full set of Rules and writing Tips available on the website.

Judge David Gaffney has the following advice –

“I do not expect to understand it at first. I expect to be a little confused. I hope to be a little confused. I will expect to have to read it again, and maybe again after that. And the feeling I want to have after finishing it is a feeling that I have understood something I didn’t understand before but I still don’t really know what it is.”

Enter

Good Luck Everyone

#FindYourStory

 

Reflex Fiction Summer 2018 Flash Fiction Competition Is Open

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Summer 2018 - Reflex Fiction - Flash Fiction Competition - ShortStops
Reflex Fiction is a quarterly international flash fiction competition for stories between 180 and 360 words. We publish one story every day as we count down to the winner of each competition.

We had a fantastic response to our Spring ’18 competition: 287 entries from eighteen different countries. We’re busy reading and judging in preparation for announcing the long-list on April 1. In the meantime, the next round of the competition is now open for entries. We’re delighted to have Sherrie Flick, series editor for Best Small Fictions 2018, acting as judge. Here are the important details:

Prizes: £1,000 / £500 / £250 (or the equivalent in your local currency)
Entry fee: £7 / $9 / €9
Deadline: May 31, 2018
Judging: June 2018
Long-list announced: July 1, 2018
Judge: Sherrie Flick

Submissions

Submissions should be made via our online entry form.

Rules

Stories must be fiction, must be the entrant’s own work, and must be between 180 and 360 words inclusive. See the Reflex Fiction website for full Rules.

New Writing Competition for Warwickshire

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The hour-long Stratford Words radio programme has announced a free-to-enter SHORT STORY COMPETITION for residents of Warwickshire and Coventry. The title of the comp is A Certain Age, but it’s up to you what that age is and how you interpret it. Closing date is Sunday 20th May, max 3000 words, free to enter, fifty quid prize, (FIFTY QUID!!), twenty and ten pound book tokens for the runner-ups, publication in The Love Hope & Peace Journal – and – you get to read your story live on air on July 1st, in lovely Stratford upon Avon, during the River Festival. Click the link above to download your entry form, so that you can fill it out and send it off along with your fabulous short story to those lovely people at Stratford Words on Welcombe Radio. Email only folks, we can’t do paper as we haven’t got a letter box.

Shooter seeks “Dirty Money” for issue #8

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Shooter Literary Magazine invites submissions of short fiction, non-fiction and poetry on the theme of “Dirty Money” for its summer 2018 issue.

Writers should submit stories, essays, reported narratives and poetry on anything to do with dough, whether rolling in it or scrounging for it. We want to read about playboys and girls, corrupt bankers, hard-up students, entrepreneurs, gamblers, thieves, grafters – anyone affected by money in any compelling way. Are riches really the root of all evil, or the key to the world’s delights?

Please visit https://shooterlitmag.com/submissions for guidelines; deadline is April 8th, 2018. Successful writers will hear from us within a few weeks of the deadline, if not before, and receive payment and a copy of the issue. Due to the volume of submissions we no longer send rejection emails.

The 2018 Shooter Short Story Competition is also now open, with a newly reduced entry fee for those wishing to submit more than one story. Find guidelines for entering the competition at https://shooterlitmag.com/competition.

 

MEET THE WINNERS!

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Words and Women are excited to announce the winners of their 2017/2018 national and KerryHood[50180]regional new writing competition.

Kerry Hood’s intriguing and ambitious short story, The Sunbathers, wins the national prize for women over 40, £1,000 and a month-long writing retreat at Church Cottage, Stratford-Upon-Avon, generously sponsored by Hosking Houses Trust.

Margaret Meyer has been awarded the East of England regional prize of £600 and a mentoring session with Gold Dust for her entry, The Once and Only First Lady Judge.

Guest judges, Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney were drawn to Hood’s voice which ‘felt original and full of verve,’ as well as the ‘thematically complex’ nature of the story

Kerry Hood is no stranger to competitions.  She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize five times, as well as broadcasting stories on BBC Radio 4.  She is an accomplished theatre writer with work produced at the Soho Theatre, and her play Meeting Myself Coming Back was selected as the Sunday Times Critics’ Choice. She has had residences at the National Theatre, Traverse and RADA.

rgaret Meyer has previously been a fiction editor, publisher, British Council Director of Literature and a reader-in-residence in Norfolk prisons. As a therapeutic arts practitioner she provides writing and reading-for-wellbeing programmes for ex-offenders. In 2016 she won a place on the Escalator writer development scheme run by Writers’ Centre Norwich and in 2017 she was awarded an Arts Council England grant towards her first novel, The Varieties of Flight.

The competition now in its fifth year and open to women writers is unusual because it offers an opportunity to enter not only fiction but non-fiction, memoir, and life-writing.  This years’ winning texts will appear alongside past successful entrants in a compendium of the best of women’s contemporary short prose, launched on International Women’s Day, March 8th, 2018.

‘Congratulations to our worthy winning writers.  We had 350 entries and picking the most distinctive and ambitious texts was no easy task.  We are grateful to our brilliant judges for making such bold selections, and we really look forward to launching our compendium which will feature not only this year’s compelling and engaging writing but the best of the best in past years,’ said Belona Greenwood, co-organiser of Words and Women.

‘It has been a very exciting year for women’s writing,’ said Lynne Bryan, co-organiser. ‘We are extremely grateful to our sponsors. Hosking Houses Trust is a unique charity which offers women over the age of 40 time in which to start, continue or complete interesting or innovative work, in a residency free from the pressures of everyday life.  Jill Dawson, author of nine novels and founder of Gold Dust mentoring scheme is a wonderful supporter of our regional award.

See Words and Women’s blog for more details. Words and Women

 

6 New Themes at The A3 Review

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new themesHappy New Year from the editors of The A3 Review. We’re looking forward to another year of inspiration. There are still a couple more themes – Losing It and Brief Encounters – till we start putting together Issue 8 (The Gold Issue). For prompts and more details, click here to visit our Submittable page.

And already the work on Issue 9 has begun, too… the new themes for Issue 9 (The Circle Issue) are up on our Submittable page. Check out our monthly contests and send us your flash fiction, poetry and artwork inspired by thieves, guitars, wheels, and the moon. We hope you’ll enjoy the new prompts and that they’ll inspire you to try out new themes in your work.

Happy Writing!

Shaun Levin and KM Elkes, Editors, The A3 Review

Deadline Day is Coming! London Independent Story Prize

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Just a few days left until the Deadline! 10th of January!

Polish those 300-word short-short stories and take your chance. Become a part of this wonderful community of writers and storytellers. Take the chance of winning the prize! Give your story a chance to be recognised.

Check out the 2018 Calendar from here LISP.

LISP judges are looking for strong and unique voices, check out the interviews with the judges on the website.

‘Originality must come from other resources: from one’s own voice, personality, character.’ Luis Pizarro, LISP judge.

‘Given that the story can only be 300 words, I am looking for something beyond the ephemeral, a story that will make an impression.’ James Kirchick, LISP judge.

‘LISP is based on creating a great community and, of course, all the writers who attend the competition will definitely be a part of this network. However, winners are winners, and they will have the greatest advantage. First of all, the prize and publication, and when you win a competition, it means that your pen has been recognised, which is a great feature for any writer. Not only while trying to reach agents or publishers, but also the personal satisfaction is priceless. Especially for young writers, it’s a way to build confidence.

As an award winner, I can also say that it helps you to improve. Now you see that you can write things that others appreciate as well, which encourages you to be even bolder.’ Ozge Gozturk, LISP founder.

Reflex Fiction Autumn 2017 Winners!

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Reflex Fiction - Flash Fiction Competition - Winter 2017 Winners

Reflex Fiction is a quarterly international flash fiction competition for stories between 180 and 360 words. We publish one story every day as we count down to the winner of each competition.

Autumn 2017 Winners

At the end of December, we published the three winning stories from our Autumn 2017 flash fiction competition as chosen by Tim Stevenson. Here are the winners and links to the stories:

First Place: Jimmy Choo Shoes by Shannon Savvas
Second Place: Stolen Hours by Sophie van Llewyn
Third Place: Pandora’s Cat by Tracy Fells

You can read Tim’s thoughts on the winning stories here.

Winter 2017 Long-List

We’ve also just published the long-list for our Winter 2017 competition and have started publishing stories as we count down to the announcement of the winners at the end of March.

Spring 2018 Open for Entries

We’re also accepting entries for our Spring 2018 competition. Here are the important details:

Prizes: £1,000 first, £500 second, £250 third (or the equivalent in your local currency)
Entry Fee: £7 / $9 / €9
Entries close: February 28, 2018
Judge: Michelle Elvy

SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY

 

‘The Squat Pen Rests’ Short Story Writing Competition

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squat-pen-rests-large

 Grab your hats, coats, shoes and socks and be sure to wipe your calendars clean for the evening of Friday 26th January 2018.

Why?

Because on that night ‘The Squat Pen Rests’ Short Story Spoken Word Event will be barrelling into the Wyvern Theatre, Swindon, with a freshly sharpened pencil clamped between its teeth, and brandishing a proper-fancy gaggle of fabulous stories for anyone brave enough to pitch up and listen.

Six  super-fine short story writers will duke it out in front of a live audience to find out who will be crowned the very first ever ‘The Squat Pen Rests’ Writing Competition Champion of the World!

There will be prizes, live music, a bar, some occasional bawdiness and, of course, those six spoken word performers who will have travelled from far and wide (maybe even further) in pursuit of the Holy Grail that is ‘The Squat Pen Rests’ Writing Competition Champion of the World title.

The game’s afoot: and upon this charge (just £5.50 per ticket), cry ‘gimme one!’ (or maybe two) to secure your seats.

Click here to buy your tickets.

 

Meanwhile…

‘The Squat Pen Rests’ is actively seeking writer-performers. So, if you’d like to be in with a chance of performing your story on the night (and winning fifty smackers, to boot) then we’d love to hear from you. All you have to do is follow the link for further details. The Squat Pen Rests Writing Competition

And when does this glorious event take place, I hear you roar. Well, because you’ve roared so nicely, I’ll tell you.

The date is Friday 28th January 2018. Doors will open at 7.30pm and the readings will commence around 8pm. Closing time is ‘late’. 

And Where, pray tell, doth this event take place? 

All right Shakespeare, keep your hair on. I’ll tell you where:

The Place – Wyvern Theatre,

Theatre Square,

Swindon SN1 1QN

01793 524481

For all other enquiries please email: stephentuffin@hotmail.com