Ambit Summer Competition 2016 #seanocarolan.com #Writing #contests

Ambit Magazine Summer 2016 Competition

Ambit Magazine announces the launch of its 2016 Poetry and Fiction Competition. There’s no theme this year – just send us your best work on any subject, in any style.
The Prizes

First place prize in each category will be £500, second place £250, and third £100.

All six prize-winning pieces will be published in issue 226 of Ambit Magazine, and the poets and writers will be invited to read at the launch on 25 October 2016 in London.
The Deadline

The competition will open on 1 May and close on 1 July.

The winners will be announced on this site.
The Entry Details

Submissions can be made either online – www.ambit.submittable.com – or by post.

Poetry – each submission costs £6. With 5 UK or 6 overseas submissions, you’ll receive a free year’s subscription to Ambit Magazine and a tote bag.

Short fiction – each submission costs £8. With 4 UK or 5 overseas submissions you’ll receive a free year’s subscription to Ambit Magazine and a tote bag.
All judging will be done strictly anonymously.

Rules and Regulations

1. The entries must be the original work of the author. The competition is open to anyone, of any nationality, aged 16 or over.
2. Poems or short pieces of fiction must not have been previously published, either in print or online – this includes self-publishing and blogs.
3. There is no minimum line requirement, but poems must not exceed 42 lines and short fiction should be under 1000 words.
4. Please do not put your name, address, email or any identifying marks on the word document in which you enclose your poems. These details must be in your cover letter only.
5. All entries must be written in English. Translations into English are accepted and encouraged, but the entry must be marked as ‘Translation’.
6. No simultaneous submissions – any poems or fiction that become published after submitting to the competition will be disqualified.
7. The winning entries will be announced on 1 September.
8. The decision of the judges is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
Guide to Postal Submissions

1. Postal submissions must come included with a cheque made out to Ambit. Each submitted poem costs £6 and each piece of short fiction £8. If submitting from overseas please include Visa or Mastercard details including expiration date and security code, or pay via Paypal using the Ambit website. We do not accept non-sterling cheques.
2. Poems must come with a cover sheet, which should contain your name, postal address and email address. If you do not have an email address, please include an SAE with UK stamps. As the judging will be done anonymously, absolutely no names or addresses should appear on the individual poems.
3. The competition deadline is 1 July. Only submissions postmarked on or before that date will be accepted.
4. Send your postal submissions to: Ambit Competition, Staithe House, Main Road, Brancaster Staithe, Norfolk, PE31 8BP, UK.
The Judges
David Gaffney

David Gaffney comes from Cleator Moor in West Cumbria and now lives in Manchester. He is the author of Sawn-off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), Never Never (2008), The Half-life of Songs (2010) and his latest collection of short stories, More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). He has also written Buildings Crying Out (Lancaster LitFest 2009); 23 Stops To Hull (Humber Mouth Literature Festival 2009); Sawn-off Opera, with composer Ailís Ní Ríain (BBC Radio 3, RNCM, Liverpool Philharmonic and Tête a Tête festival London 2010); Destroy PowerPoint for Edinburgh Festival 2009; The Poole Confessions (Poole Literature Festival 2010); Station Stories (Manchester Literature Festival 2011); Boy You Turn Me (Birmingham Book Festival 2011); Errata Slips (Cornerhouse Manchester 2011), Preston 3twenty (2012-2032), Men Who Like Women Who Smell of Their Jobs (Manchester Literature Festival 2014) with painter Alison Erika Forde, and The Three Rooms In Valerie’s Head (Lakes Comic Art Festival 2015) a graphic novel with Dan Berry. He has written articles for the Guardian, Sunday Times, Financial Times and Prospect magazine and was a judge for the 2015 Bridport prize. Seewww.davidgaffney.org for more.
Sarah Howe

Sarah Howe is a British poet, academic and editor. Her first book of poems, Loop of Jade (Chatto & Windus, 2015), won The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. Born in Hong Kong in 1983 to an English father and Chinese mother, she moved to England as a child. Her pamphlet, A Certain Chinese Encyclopedia (Tall-lighthouse, 2009), won an Eric Gregory Award. Her poems have appeared in journals including Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Ploughshares and Poetry, as well as anthologies such as Ten: The New Wave and four editions of The Best British Poetry. She is the founding editor of Prac Crit, an online journal of poetry and criticism. Formerly based at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, she is a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute in 2015-16.