Searchlight Awards – Best Novel Opening

Searchlight Writing for Children Awards is a new rolling competition for aspiring authors writing for children or young adults.




Our purpose is to shine a bright light on exceptional writing. We publish it, send it out into the world, champion it and act as a stepping stone for children’s authors to achieve their literary dreams.

We can’t wait to tell the world about you and your writing, so the top ten stories from each competition receive maximum recognition. They will:


Feature in The Winners’ Collection, which is sent to an extensive list of literary agents and publishers who have requested it, to help your writing get noticed.

Appear, alongside your biography, in our Winners’ Gallery on the Searchlight Awards’ website, which agents, publishers, friends and family can access.

Be published in our annual Searchlight Awards’Anthology, which features the best entries from all our competitions in the last year.

And, to top it all, the First Prize winner for each competition receives a generous Cash Award.


Entries are invited for the following competitions


Best Novel Opening for Children or Young Adults

Submissions from 20th August 2021 to 22nd November 2021

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Best Short Story for Children or Young Adults

Submissions from 1st January to 1st March 2022

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