For women who weren't born yesterday

The Short Story Competition

CALLING ALL SHORT STORY WRITERS!

Now in its third year, The Short Story competition is open for 2013 entries: www.theshortstory.net

This competition is looking to publish the best short stories from around the world.
New or established writers welcome.

Winners will be announced in December 2013 and the stories will be published on The Short Story website.

Deadline for submission is 15th September 2013.

Word limit: 1,000 - 4,000.

Entry fee: £5 via PayPal

First prize: £300
Second prize: £150
Third prize: £50

For further details please go to the website: www.theshortstory.net

The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival Search For Local Writers

                                     LITERATURE

THE TIMES CHELTENHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL SEARCH FOR LOCAL WRITERS

Friday 4th to Sunday 13th October 2013

The Cheltenham Literature Festival is one of the largest and most prestigious in the world. During our 63rd Festival in 2012 we sold over 140,000 tickets and held 500 events on our Festival sites in beautiful parkland in the centre of regency Cheltenham. 2013 promises to be another diverse and exciting festival with a broad reach and a great buzz.

We are passionate about ensuring our programming encompasses a broad range of work, including international, UK and local writers.  Support of the local community is vital to us and we are keen to encourage participation from local authors via our continued commitment to our series of Locally Sourced events in 2013. We’re therefore inviting local writers to submit their work for possible inclusion in this series.

Whilst there are no restrictions on subject matter or literary genre, it may be of interest for applicants to know that we have a central theme running through this year’s Festival which is memory and how it shapes us both individually and as a society.  This ties in with the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past in November and the approach of the centenary of the start of the First World War in 2014.  We feel it is therefore an especially apt time to consider the fundamental role memory plays in underpinning our lives, our wider culture, our interpretation of the past and our shaping of the future. It is a theme which offers fertile ground for the Festival to explore, especially in our events focussing on autobiography and memoir, poetry, history and of course fiction.

If you would like to be considered for inclusion in our Locally Sourced series, it would be helpful if you could send us a copy of your book – if already published – or if yet to be published some background information alongside a short excerpt from the manuscript. We’d be very grateful if you’d send us a copy rather than any original manuscript, illustrations or artwork as we won’t, I’m afraid, be able to return documents submitted.

If you have submitted your work to us before, we are careful to keep work on file so there is no need to send us another copy if you wish your work to be considered again. Instead, please send a brief updated email of any new work and highlight previously submitted work you wish to be considered.

Please send your writing by email to: literature@cheltenhamfestivals.com  or by post to Suzanne Ross, Cheltenham Festivals, 109-111 Bath Road, Cheltenham GL53 7LS. The deadline is 7^th June 2013.

If we are interested in pursuing a suggestion, or require further information, we will be in touch as soon as possible after the deadline. If you have not heard from us by the end of July, then please assume that there is regrettably no room in the programme on this occasion.

You may also be interested to hear that we will again be running our “You heard it here first” open mic session for new writing which enables local writers to perform a 5 minute excerpt of their work on stage at the Festival.  The date and time is yet to be set, but watch this space!

We very much look forward to hearing from you.

Wigtown Poetry Competition

Scotland’s International Poetry Prize, Open to All
In association with The Scottish Poetry Library

The prestigious Wigtown Poetry Competition awards prizes annually to poets writing in English, Scots or Irish Gaelic or Scots.

The competition is open to anyone throughout and outside the United Kingdom.  Winners are invited to the festival, where we celebrate the prize with a special event.

Judges
This year the judges are Robin Robertson, Meg Bateman and Liz Niven.

How to Enter
Enter online >
You may also enter by post: download application form (.pdf)

Prizes
Main Prize £2000
Runner-up £400
Eight additional prizes of £25 each
Judge: Robin Robertson

Gaelic Prize £250
Judge: Meg Bateman

Scots Prize £250
Judge: Liz Niven


Deadline for Entries
Closing date for entries is Friday 31st May 2013. No entries will be accepted after this date.

Fee Structure
The first poem submitted costs £7.00
Multiple entries: the first three poems cost a total of £19.00.
Each subsequent entry after the first three costs £5 or a total of £14 for every additional block of 3, ie:
1 poem £7; 2 poems £14; 3 poems £19; 4 poems £24; 5 poems £29; 6 poems £33; 7 poems £38; 8 poems £43; 9 poems £47; 10 poems £52; 11 poems £57; 12 poems £61 etc.