Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize

2017 FITZCARRALDO EDITIONS ESSAY PRIZE

The Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize is an annual competition for unpublished writers. Made possible by an Arts Council grant in 2015, the prize awards £3,000 to the best proposal for a book-length essay (minimum 25,000 words) by a writer resident in the UK and Ireland who has yet to secure a publishing deal.

Submissions will open from 1 January to 15 March 2017 and will be judged by an editorial committee put together for this purpose. The judges will be looking for proposals for essays that explore and expand the possibilities of the essay form, with no restrictions on theme or subject matter. In addition to the £3,000 prize, which will be in the form of an advance against publication with Fitzcarraldo Editions, the winner will have the opportunity to spend up to three months in residency at the Mahler & LeWitt Studios in Spoleto, Italy, during the summer of 2017, to work on their book. The winner will then be published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2018.

The Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize aims to find the best emerging essay writers and to give them a chance to develop and showcase their talent. It will also provide future winners with their first experiences of publishing a book, from the planning, research and writing of it through to the editing, production and publicity stages.

THE MAHLER & LEWITT STUDIOS

The Mahler & LeWitt Studios are established around the former studios of Anna Mahler and Sol LeWitt in Spoleto, Italy. The residency programme provides a focused and stimulating environment for artists, curators and writers to develop new ways of working in dialogue with peers and the unique cultural heritage of the region. For more information please visit mahler-lewitt.org.

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

Joanna Biggs is a writer and editor at the London Review of Books. Her book about the way we work, All Day Long, is published by Serpent's Tail.

Brian Dillon is a writer and critic. His books include The Great Explosion (Penguin, 2015), Objects in This Mirror: Essays (Sternberg Press, 2014), Sanctuary Sternberg Press, 2011), Tormented Hope (Penguin, 2009) and In the Dark Room (Penguin, 2005). He is UK editor of Cabinet magazine, and teaches critical writing at the Royal College of Art.

Joanna Kavenna is the author of The Ice Museum, Inglorious (which won the Orange Prize for New Writing), The Birth of Love, Come to the Edge and A Field Guide to Reality. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Guardian, Observer, Telegraph, Spectator, London Review of Books and New York Times and she has held writing fellowships at St Antony's College Oxford and St John's College Cambridge. In 2011 she was named as one of the Telegraph's 20 Writers Under 40 and in 2013 was listed as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. She lives in Oxfordshire.

Paul Keegan has been editor of the Penguin Classics and Faber poetry editor; he co-founded Notting Hill Editions, has edited the Collected Poems of Ted Hughes and The Penguin Book of English Verse.