Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition

Mslexia welcome poems of any length, on all subjects - as long as they're written by women.

1st prize: £2,000

(plus two optional extras*: a week's writing retreat at Cove Park and a mentoring session with the Editor of premier magazine Poetry Review.

2nd prize: £400
3rd prize £200

17 other finalists will each win £25

SPECIAL NEW PRIZE: £1,000 for the best poem by a previously unpublished woman poet.

Judge: Wendy Cope

Closing date: 16 June 2014 

All winning poems will be published in Mslexia.
Please read the competition rules before entering.
Enter the competition here

Poetry Pamphlet competition

For the second year, and in conjunction with Seren Books, we are running a pamphlet competition for short collections of 20-24 pages of 18-20 poems, open to any woman poet who has not previously had a full-length collection published. The prize is publication of the pamphlet by Seren Books plus £250.

More information »
Last year's winning pamphlet, Shadow Dispatches by Polly Atkin (right), is available to buy for just £5.
Click here »

Which Short Story Competition to enter?

Bath Short Story Award 2014 offers £1k, £200 and £100 plus publication in an anthology. Entrants must be over 18. Send up to 2.2k words on any theme or subject. Entry fee: £8. Deadline: 31 Mar

Short Fiction Journal, International Short Story Prize offers £500 plus publication for up to 5k words on any theme. Online entries only. Entry fee: £5. Deadline: 31 Mar

Brighton Short Story Prize offers £400 and the chance to read your story at Brighton Festival Fringe show. Send 1-2k words on any subject or genre. Entry fee: £6. Deadline: 1 Apr

Berkhamsted Writing Competition offers cash prizes and raises money for the Hospice of St Francis. Send stories up to 1k words on the theme ‘beginnings’.  Entry fee: £5. Deadline: 4 Apr

Flash 500, Flash Fiction Competition offers £300, £200 and £100 for encapsulating a story with just 500 words. Any subject or genre. Entry fee: £5 for one story or £8 for two. Deadline 31 Mar

SI Leeds Literary Prize 2014 for unpublished fiction of over 30k words by Black or Asian women writers resident in the UK. Prizes: £2k, £750, £250. Winner also gets a place on a 2015 Arvon Foundation course and all three finalists will receive manuscript feedback from The Literary Consultancy. Deadline: 31 Mar
Bristol Short Story Prize offers £1k, £700, £400 for a story up to 4k words, any theme, subject or style, including graphic and verse. Entry fee: £8. Deadline: 30 Apr

Almond Press Short Story Competition offers £100 plus publication for vivid and imaginative dystopian portrayals of mankind’s future, up to 5k words. Entry is free. Deadline: 1 May

Fiction Desk Ghost Story Competition offers £500 plus publication in Fiction Desk anthology for stories of 2-5k words. Entry fee: £7. Deadline: 30 May

Frome Festival, Short Story Competition offers £525 in prizes. Winning stories will be read by a leading London literary agent. 1-2k words, any theme or genre. Entry fee: £5. Deadline: 31 May

Bridport Prize Short Story Competition offers £5k, £1k, and £500 as well as the opportunity for your story to be read by leading London literary agents and submission to the BBC National Short Story Award. Entry fee: £9. Deadline: 31 May

Bridport Short Story, Flash and Poetry Competition

This is one of the most prestigious writing contests in the British literary calendar.

Do you have a really good poem or short story? Or a few? I mean, really really REALLY good?

poem - no more than 42 lines
short story - no more than 5,000 words.   
flash fiction category - stories of up to 250 words 

This year’s judges are Liz Lochhead (poems) Tania Hershman (flash fiction) and Andrew Miller (short stories).

    Closing: 31st May 14 (postmarked)

    Prizes: In each of the main categories (Short Stories, Poems) - £5,000, £1,000, £500.  There are also ten runners-up prizes of £50.  These are called ‘supplementary prizes’ to make you feel less like an also-ran.  The top four poems will be submitted to the Forward Prize. 
Prizes in the Flash Fiction category are £1,000, £500, £250, plus three supplementary awards of £25.
The top 13 short stories will be entered for the National Short Story Prize worth £15,000, and the Sunday Times Short Story Award worth £30,000.  
There's also a prize for the highest placed piece from a writer in Dorset. 
All winners will be invited to an awards ceremony on October 14th at the Bridport Open Book Festival.
 
The judges have some pointers here well worth reading.

Note: Entries must never have been published, self-published, published on any website, blog or online forum, broadcast nor winning or placed (as in 2^nd, 3^rd,, runner up etc) in any other competition.

    Entry Fees:Poems - £7.  Short Stories - £8.  Flash Fiction - £6
 
    Comp Page: Click Here.

Raving Beauties

Sue Jones-Davies, Dee Orr, Anna Carteret and Fan Viner invite submissions for their fourth anthology of

‘women’s poems about being women’

which will be published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015.

However you feel about your body and whatever kind of writer you are – a published poet or impelled to write your first poem reading this – they want to hear from you. And they’ll consider previously published work as well as new poetry.

Send up to three poems by 1 May 2014 to here.

More information here

Crannog

Get your submissions in for Crannog magazine from Galway.

Submissions for Crannóg 36, the summer 2014 issue, opened on 1 March and closes 31 March. They have reduced the submission time for each issue to one month which means submissions are not tied up for long and a decision will be reached quickly. 

Deadline: 31st March 2014

Please read full submission rules HERE first!

Stinging Fly magazine open for poetry and prose

Stinging Fly has a new Short Story Editor and they are open for poetry and prose submissions from March 1st to March 31st.

Work submitted in this period will be considered for our issue in October 2014. Work submitted outside of this period will likely be lost or mislaid, so please do submit before March 31st.

* No more than one story and/or four poems should be submitted during any one submission period.

* Short stories and poems should always be just as long (or as short) as they need to be. (In our Winter 2012-13 issue the longest story is over 5,000 words; the shortest has less than 600.)

* The postal address for submissions is: The Stinging Fly, PO Box 6016, Dublin 1, Ireland. At present, we do not accept e-mail submissions.

Reading in Maynooth Library

Come and see two of the Poetry Divas in civvies at Maynooth Library this Thursday evening, starts at 8pm on the dot!

Maynooth library
Main street
Thursday 20th March
Kickoff 8 on the dot
Final whistle 9.30

Kate Dempsey
Maeve o Sullivan
Aoife Hynes
Emma Tobin
Cormac Fitz
Cormac Lally
David Mallaghan
Paul Curran
Lewis Kenny
David Hynes MC and organiser