Seán Ó Carolan Over One Thousand Writing Competitions
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Thursday, 16 June 2022
Anthology Poetry Award
Entries are now invited for the Anthology Poetry Award.
Established to recognise and encourage excellence in the craft of poetry writing and to provide a platform for publication, the Poetry Award is open to original and previously unpublished poems in the English language. Entries are invited from poets of all nationalities, living anywhere in the world. Poems submitted must be on the theme of ‘Dreams’ and should not exceed 40 lines. There is no limit to entries per person.
It is not a requirement, but is advisable to refer to Anthology magazine or purchase a copy before submitting your work, so that you can see the type of material we publish. Subscriptions and single copies are available to purchase through our online shop.
Prizes
The winner will receive a €500 cash prize and the chance to see their work published in a future issue of Anthology. The winner will also receive a one-year subscription to Anthology magazine
Submission deadline & entry fee
Early Bird: 31 July 2022 – €10 per poem
Deadline: 31 October 2022 – €15 per poem
McLellan Poetry Competition
THE 2022 COMPETITION IS NOW OPEN FOR ENTRIES
We are really excited to announce that this year’s judge will be the wonderful Hollie McNish.
Hollie McNish is a poet and author based between Glasgow and Cambridge. She won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for her poetic parenting memoir – Nobody Told Me - of which The Scotsman stated ‘The World Needs this Book’. She has published four further collections of poetry – Papers, Cherry Pie, Plum and her most recent poetic memoir Slug...and other things I’ve been told to hate, which is a Sunday Times Bestseller. With fellow poet Sabrina Mahfouz, she co-wrote Offside , a play relating the history of UK women’s football, and has just completed a re-imagining of Sophocles’ Greek Tragedy Antigone, published in October 2021 with Hachette. Hollie loves writing. Her poetry has been translated into German, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Japanese and French. She is a patron of Baby Milk Action.
ENTER HERE
www.holliemcnish.com
Instagram/Twitter: @holliepoetry
Facebook: /holliepoetry
2022 MCLELLAN POETRY COMPETITION PRIZES
First Prize £1300
Second Prize £400
Third Prize £150
Five commendations of £50 each
Seán O’Faoláin International Short Story Competition
Word limit: 3,000
Closing date: 31st July (midnight)
Entry fee: €19 per story
The competition is open to original, unpublished and unbroadcast short stories in the English language of 3,000 words or fewer. The story can be on any subject, in any style, by a writer of any nationality, living anywhere in the world. Translated work is not in the scope of this competition. Entrants may submit more than one entry. Once entered, no alterations can be made to the submission. Simultaneous submissions are accepted but please notify us immediately should your work be accepted elsewhere.
Theme: clean vs green short Story Contest
Deadline 21st July 2022. £500 prize (or local currency equivalent)
Often when promoting waste reduction and reduction of high-energy activities, such as running hot water, we come up against health and safety issues. Some of these are valid, but many are misinformed.
This is a targeted competition aimed at using an engaging fictional story to help readers understand how over-cleaning and misinformation about bacteria can mean that we can end up killing our bodies ‘good’ bacteria through over-use of harsh cleaning products.
Your challenge is to write a short story (between 1000 and 3000 words) that helps to raise awareness and shift attitudes, especially for those people who assume that the more detergent the better.
We provide story briefs and ideas further down to inspire you.
We will update this page with details of runner up prizes and links to more information related to cleaning and workshop up until June. Sign up to our mailing list to be informed when more details are available.
Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize
The 2022 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize is open for submissions until 30 June 2022, closing at 5pm BST. You can read the full Terms and Conditions and enter the prize here.
Exceptionally international in scope, the prize supports writers who have not yet published a book-length work, with no limits on age, gender, nationality, or background. The winners of each category will receive a £1,000 cash prize and publication, and will be published in Wasafiri’s print magazine. Shortlisted writers will have their work published on Wasafiri’s website. All fifteen shortlistees and winners will also be offered the Chapter and Verse or Free Reads mentoring scheme in partnership with The Literary Consultancy (dependent on eligibility), and a conversation with Nikesh Shukla of The Good Literary Agency to discuss their career progression.
Every writer recognised by the prize, running since 2009, remains part of the Wasafiri community, and is supported by the magazine as their career grows. Past winners and shortlistees have gone on to score deals with major international publishing houses such as Verso, Peepal Tree Press, and HarperCollins India, and to be shortlisted for and win prizes including the T S Eliot, Ambit Short Fiction, and Bocas Poetry Prize, among very many others.
This year, the prize will be chaired by literary leading light Marina Salandy-Brown, who says, ‘I am delighted and honoured to be judging this important prize’. Marina will be joined by a truly remarkable panel of multi-award-winning poets and authors. Mary Jean Chan, judging poetry, remarks that ‘the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize has always caught my attention for its focus on discovering, supporting and mentoring emerging talent across multiple genres’. Judging Fiction, Preti Taneja will be looking for work that ‘feels fully arrived in terms of its thematic ambition, its use of language and its confidence in its own voice’. And finally, Francesca Wade, on judging Life Writing, says that ‘Wasafiri has long been a brilliant home for innovative work. I’m excited to read pieces that explore – and interrogate – the myriad possibilities of life-writing today’.
The Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction
The Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction (‘The Lindisfarne Prize’) is a literary prize which recognises outstanding writing in the genre of crime or thriller fiction, sponsored by the author L J Ross through her publishing imprint, Dark Skies Publishing, in association with the Newcastle Noir Crime Writing Festival and Newcastle Libraries. It is open to all writers who are from, or whose work celebrates the North East of England, and who have not previously had their submission published in any form (though they might have had other stories published before). To be considered, entrants must submit a short story of no more than ten thousand words or the first two chapters and a synopsis of their work in progress.
The winning entry will be awarded a prize of £2500 to support the completion of their work and funding towards a year’s membership of both the Society of Authors (SoA) and the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and smaller financial awards to shortlisted candidates. Entries are open from 31st January 2022 – 30th June 2022.
The Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction offers financial support but, more importantly, helps to build and maintain creative confidence for new, emerging and established writers in the genre.
The Henshaw Short Story Competition
Enter Here
Prizes in the June competition are:-
1st Prize £200, 2nd Prize £100, 3rd Prize £50
The entry fee is £6 and the fee for a critique is £14.
We now offer a Proof Reading Service
If this is your first competition entry or if you are concerned about the presentation of your story do read our writing tips and our guides to on the Story Presentation Page, before submitting your entry.
Competition Rules
1. Entries must be a fictional short story of up to 2000 words on any theme.
2. Entries must be on A4, double spaced and page numbered with the title on each page..
3. All entries must be the original work of the Author, must not have been published before the date of submission and must be accompanied by the author's name, address and telephone number which must be included on a separate page or within the body of the e mail
4. The Author's name must not appear as a title or in the body of any page other than the author information page.
5. Entries received after the closing date will not be considered.
6. Do keep a copy of your entry, manuscripts cannot be returned.
7. The judges’ view is final and no correspondence will be entered into in connection with the award of the prizes.
8. Prize Winning Stories will be published on this site.
9. Entries may be made by E mail as a Word document (pdfs cannot be accepted), or by post.
10. Winning entrants will be offered the opportunity to have their stories included in an Henshaw anthology. It is intended to produce our next anthology when there have been sufficient prize winning stories.
11. Receipt of all entries will be acknowledged by e-mail or by post where no e-mail address is available. Please remember to check your Junk Box.
12. Entrants must be aged over sixteen. If you are sixteen or under do have a look at our Young Writers page.
Each entry by post must be accompanied by a cheque for £6 payable to G. Jennings and sent to:
The Henshaw Competition
24 Rowlandson Close
Northampton
NN3 3PB
Entries by E-mail should pay the appropriate fee using the button below and send their story separately to:-
editor@henshawpress.co.uk
For an extra £14 the judges will provide a critique (of any story entered into the competition) after the results of the competition have been published.
THE MOTH SHORT STORY PRIZE 2022 IS NOW OPEN!
ABOUT THE PRIZE
The Moth Short Story Prize is an international prize, open to anyone from anywhere in the world as long as their story is original and previously unpublished. The winners are chosen by a single judge each year, who reads the stories anonymously.
‘A total pleasure judging this. This was an exceptional set of stories.’ Ali Smith, 2021 judge
‘The Moth Short Story Prize is hugely important to me. Short stories give writers and readers the opportunity to experiment with all kinds of approaches and effects that might not work over the sustained length of a novel, and sometimes to talk about things that we might not be able to approach in any other way. The Moth is a fantastic champion of that.’ Owen Booth, 2020 winner
‘To see my story in a publication that has done as much for writers as The Moth is the most astounding and unexpected affirmation I could have imagined.’ Conor Crummey, 2019 winner
‘This seal of approval is superglue for the sanity! I am mighty grateful.’ Caoilinn Hughes, 2018 winner
Previous judges include Mike McCormack, Belinda McKeon, Donal Ryan, Kit de Waal, Kevin Barry, Mark Haddon and Ali Smith.
THE JUDGE
The Prize will be judged this year by Sarah Hall, the prizewinning author of three short story collections and six novels, her most recent being Burntcoat. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award and Edge Hill Short Story Prize, among others, and the only person ever to have won the BBC National Short Story Award twice. As well as teaching creative writing, Sarah has judged a number of prestigious literary awards, including the Man Booker Prize and the Sunday Times (EFG/Audible).
‘A writer of show-stopping genius’ Guardian
HOW TO ENTER
The Prize is open to anyone (over 16), as long as the work is original and previously unpublished.
There is a word limit of 4,000.
The entry fee is €15 per story.
You can ENTER ONLINE or send your story along with a cheque or postal order made payable to ‘The Moth Magazine Ltd.’ with an ENTRY FORM or a cover letter with your name and contact details and the title of your story (or stories) attached to: The Moth, Ardan Grange, Milltown, Belturbet, Co. Cavan, Ireland H14 K768.
Please note: If you are at all concerned about the formatting of your story online, please send a copy of the story (or stories) in a word doc to enquiries@themothmagazine.com, along with your entry number. Payment can be made via PayPal to enquiries@themothmagazine.com.
Please remember to read the rules of the competition before you enter.
CLOSING DATE 30 JUNE 2022
The winners will be announced in September 2022 and all three stories will appear in the autumn issue of The Moth.
With thanks to Circle of Misse (www.circleofmisse.com) for the superb second prize of a week-long writing retreat in France and a travel stipend of €250. Their house rests on the banks of the Thouet River (a tributary of the Loire), ‘thouet’ being the ancient Gallic word for ‘tranquil’.
Call 00 353 87 2657251 or email enquiries@themothmagazine.com for more details
* The Lascaux Prize in Flash Fiction
Stories may be previously published or unpublished, and simultaneous submissions are accepted. True stories are welcome as long as they’re written in a narrative style. Winner receives $1,000 and a bronze medallion. Finalists receive $100. Winner and finalists are published in both the online and annual print editions of The Lascaux Review.

Two copies of the journal will be supplied to every writer appearing in it. Entry fee is $15. Writers may enter more than once, and as many as three stories may be submitted per entry (all pasted into one document). Individual story length should not exceed 1,000 words. All genres and styles are welcome. Judges are the journal’s editors. Writers retain all rights to their work at all times.
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