‘Quite a few of my authors have wanted to move into screenwriting which makes sense because publishing doesn't always pay them enough to keep them going in that particular way.
Open to writers across the world. Entry fee for both prizes £18
Prize:
Two £10,000 prizes are awarded: the Manchester Poetry Prize for best portfolio of poems and the Manchester Fiction Prize for best short story
The Manchester Writing Competition offers the UK's biggest literary awards for unpublished work, offered by the country's most successful writing school. The Competition was established in 2008 by Carol Ann Duffy (UK Poet Laureate 2009-19) and has awarded more than £195,000 to writers. Read more
Quentin Blake's ascent to national treasure status has been fuelled by a 70-year career as an illustrator, most prominently of children's books, and works by one writer in particular. Read more
Moms and dads stormed into the Spotsylvania county town hall, in Virginia, in early November, hell-bent on purging all "objectionable" books from the scholastic jurisdiction. Novels containing any commentary about race, sexuality and sexual content were put under the microscope, as a fresh reactionary panic takes aim at the stacks in high school libraries. "Results for gay, 172. Read more
In the presence of so much handwritten material by the Brontës, Austen, Scott and Burns, you find yourself imagining that the authors have just popped out of the room. "Manuscripts," says Prof Kathryn Sutherland, as she leafs through an exercise book filled by Emily Brontë with poems, "are sticky with their writers' presence." Read more
What is falling action? This is a question I ask myself about once a year. Why do I ponder falling action so regularly? Well, I teach junior high English, and nowhere does falling action have more importance than in the middle school English class. That's because falling action is part of Freytag's Model, the story pyramid, a standard structure that teachers use to introduce plot structure. Read more
Well, friends, it's been another tough year. But as we wind down 2021, it is useful to remember the good parts, the pleasures small and large that got us through. And yes, a beautifully designed book can be one of those pleasures-especially when we're still spending more time at home than perhaps we would like.
I don't know about other people, but nothing stresses me out like having too much work on my plate and too little time to do it. At any given time, I have papers to grade, classes to prepare for, dissertations to read, documents to review for upcoming meetings, emails to respond to, letters of recommendation to write. The list goes on and on-and every single one of them has a deadline. Read more
For a long time, I believed that my only hope of becoming a professional writer was to find the perfect tool. A few months into my career as a book critic, I'd already run up against the limits of my productivity, and, like many others before me, I pinned the blame on Microsoft Word. Read more
'The biggest mistake you can make as an author is to think while writing "What does the reader wants to hear"? Because unique worlds & characters are built inside an individual mind. And also your readers do not know what they want to read until they read it.'