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The Moth Short Story Prize 2021

Information

Closing date: 
30 June 2021
Entry: 
Open to all writers over 16. Entry fee €15 per story
Prize: 
1st prize €3,000, 2nd prize week-long writing retreat at Circle of Misse in France plus €250 travel stipend, 3rd prize €1,000

The Moth Short Story Prize is an important date on the literary calendar. Every year, a single judge is asked to choose three winning stories to feature in the autumn issue of The Moth.

This year's judge is award-winning story writer and novelist writer Ali Smith.  Read more

2020 Manchester Writing Competition

Information

Closing date: 
18 September 2020
Entry: 
Open to writers across the world. Entry fee £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The Manchester Writing Competition offers the UK's biggest literary awards for unpublished work, offered by the country's most successful writing school.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

Anthology Magazine Short Story Competition

Information

Closing date: 
31 July 2020
Entry: 
Unpublished short stories - open to all. Entry fee Early Bird: 31 May 2020 – €10 per story, Final Deadline: 31 July 2020 – €15 per story
Prize: 
A €300 cash prize and the chance to see their work published in a future issue of Anthology Magazine

Writers of short fiction are invited to enter the Anthology Magazine Short Story Competition. Established to recognise and encourage creative writing and provide a platform for publication, it is open to original and previously unpublished short stories in the English language by a writer of any nationality, living anywhere in the world.  Read more

The Moth Short Story Prize 2020

Information

Closing date: 
30 June 2020
Entry: 
Open to all writers over 16. Entry fee €15 per story
Prize: 
1st prize €3,000, 2nd prize week-long writing retreat at Circle of Misse in France plus €250 travel stipend, 3rd prize €1,000

The Moth Short Story Prize is an important date on the literary calendar. Every year, a single judge is asked to choose three winning stories to feature in the autumn issue of The Moth.

This year's judge is Mark Haddon, author of the worldwide bestseller, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which won seventeen literary prizes and is now an acclaimed stage play.  Read more

The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award 2020

Information

Closing date: 
13 December 2019
Entry: 
Open to any novelist or short story writer from around the world who has been published in the UK or Ireland. No entry fee
Prize: 
First Prize £30,000, shortlisted authors get £1,000

Promoting & celebrating the excellence of the modern short story

The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award is the richest prize for a single short story in the English language, worth £30,000 to the winner. The award, for a story of 6,000 words or less, is open to any novelist or short story writer from around the world who has been published in the UK or Ireland.  Read more

Nobrow Short Story Competition

Information

Closing date: 
9 December 2019
Entry: 
Open to all writers of 18 and over with an unpublished and not yet submitted story or creative non-fiction piece. No entry fee
Prize: 
The overall winner will receive £2000, all selected contributors will receive £150 and two complimentary copies of the book

Nobrow Short Story Competition for writers! Up to twelve winning entries will be published in our short story anthology, and this beautifully illustrated book will celebrate the best short fiction and non-fiction writing.  Read more

Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2020

Information

Closing date: 
1 November 2019
Entry: 
Open to Commonwealth writers for unpublished stories in 11 languages No entry fee
Prize: 
Overall winner £5,000, five regional winners £2,500

Entrants can submit in 11 languages and the prize is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2,000-5,000 words). The five regional winners each receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives a total of £5,000.

Entries must be 2,000 words minimum, 5,000 words maximum.  Read more

The Moth Short Story Prize 2019

Information

Closing date: 
30 June 2019
Entry: 
Open to any writer over 16 from anywhere in the world Entry fee €15 per story
Prize: 
1st prize €3,000, 2nd prize week-long writing retreat at Circle of Misse in France plus €250 travel stipend and 3rd prize €1,000

This year's judge is Kit de Waal.

The Prize is open to anyone (over 16), as long as the work is original and previously unpublished. There is a word limit of 5,000 words.

The winners will be announced in September 2019 and all three stories will appear in the autumn issue of the Morh Magazine.  Read more

LoveReading Very Short Story Award 2019

Information

Closing date: 
31 October 2018
Entry: 
Unpublished stories by writers from all over the world No entry fee
Prize: 
The winning story will be read by a professional actor on The LoveReading Podcast, and published on the LoveReading website.

LoveReading.co.uk has launched a competition for stories of between 600-1000 words in length, written in English, in any genre. The award is open to entries from overseas as well as the UK, from both unpublished and published authors. However, only unpublished stories are eligible for entry.  Read more

The Caterpillar Story Prize 2018

Information

Closing date: 
30 September 2018
Entry: 
The Prize is open to anyone (over 16), as long as the work is original and previously unpublished. Entry fee £12 per story
Prize: 
£1,000

The entry fee is €12 per story, and you can enter as many stories as you like.  Read more

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14 June 2021 - What's new

June 2021
  • 'Writing is rewriting. The first draft is the jabber you forced on that blind date. She was hoping for someone to ask her what she was feeling, but all you said was, and then I, and then I, and then I, and then . . . The first draft is meant to be discarded. The first draft is the beginning of the idea, the slender thread of a story.
  Read more

Walter Mosley on rewriting

14 June 2021

'Writing is rewriting. The first draft is the jabber you forced on that blind date. She was hoping for someone to ask her what she was feeling, but all you said was, and then I, and then I, and then I, and then . . . The first draft is meant to be discarded. The first draft is the beginning of the idea, the slender thread of a story.  Read more

‘All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.'

— P D James