New Writing Ventures Prize for emerging writers

This is the only literary prize that significantly recognises unpublished writers and backs up cash prizes with individually tailored career opportunities.

The winner in each of the three categories, fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry, will receive £5,000 and two short listed writers in each category £1000 each.

All the winners and short listed writers will receive a place on the year-long Ventures Development Programme, which includes individual mentoring, workshops and professional advice.

Judging panel

Ali Smith, author of The Accidental, winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year award, also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and on the longlist for the Orange Prize, and William Fiennes, author of The Snowgeese, are among this year’s panel, which also includes Candida Clark, Patricia Duncker, Courttia Newland, Edward Platt, Michael Laskey, Roddy Lumsden and Esther Morgan.

Entry specifications

All entries to New Writing Ventures must be written in English and aimed at adults. Entrants must be UK residents who reside in the UK. To be eligible, writers must not have had a dedicated publication of their work. They may have had work published as a poetry pamphlet, as part of an anthology, included in a literary magazine or produced via self publication or the Internet.

Entries for the fiction prize can include a chapter, novella, or a short story and should not exceed 3000 words.

Entries for the creative non-fiction prize (e.g. biography, travel, history or memoir) should not exceed 3000 words.

Entries for the poetry prize should include five to ten poems with an upper total limit of 2000 words.

Entry forms can be downloaded from www.newwritingpartnership.org.uk. Follow links to Ventures 2006.

Booktrust

The awards are administered by Booktrust www.booktrust.org.uk

The deadline for submissions is 31 May 2006 for all three categories

The short listed authors will be announced in July 2006. The awards will be presented at the New Writing Ventures Award ceremony to be held in London on 25 September 2006

©WritersServices.com 2001-2006