WIGTOWN POETRY COMPETITION

The Wigtown Poetry Competition is the largest poetry competition in Scotland - with over 2000 entries in its first year - and this year's competition will be launched on 28 September at the Wigtown Book Festival. This year's judge is poet, academic and critic Professor Douglas Dunn

1st Prize is £2500, 2nd Prize £1000, 3rd Prize £500, Gaelic Prize £1000 and there are ten supplementary prizes of £50 each. See website www.wigtownbookfestival.com/poetrycomp for fees and guidelines. Closing date: 5pm Friday 30 January 2009 and winners will be notified by Monday 6 Apri. Winners will be announced in Scotland on Sunday and the winning poem and runner-up published in the Scotsman.

 

BOOK AND PAMPHLET COMPETITION FOR POETS
If you’re a poet and are looking to have your collection published, then The Poetry Business have a competition just for you. The five winners will have their collections published in pamphlet form, and also receive a share of the £1,000 prize money. The 2008 judges are Michael Longley, Peter Sansom and Ann Sansom. Entrants should send a collection of poems - between 20 and 24 pages - but before entering the competition please be sure you have read the conditions of entry, which you can find at www.poetrybusiness.co.uk/competition.aspx  Entry fee is £24 (North subscribers: £20. You can subscribe when you enter the competition) and closing date is 29 November.

 

NEW WRITER PROSE AND POETRY PRIZES 2008
The New Writer is published bi-monthly, and available by subscription only (£27.00 per annum) with special offers on 2 & 3 year subs (see website). For a free recent back copy of the magazine send 2 x first class stamps to: The New Writer, PO Box 60, Scrapbook, TN17 2ZR. The magazine promotes a major annual international competition for short stories, novellas, single poems, poetry collections, essays and articles which offers cash prizes from a total fund above £2,000 as well as publication for the prize-winning writers in The Collection, a special edition of The New Writer magazine each July. Further information including guidelines, entry form and fees at http://www.thenewwriter.com/prizes.htm
Closing date: 30 November

 

CARDIFF INTERNATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION
The judges for the 2009 Cardiff International Poetry Competition have been announced by Academi as poets Ian McMillan and Kurt Heinzelman. The competition is now open for entries, with some of the largest monetaryprizes for a poetry competition of its kind. First prize is £5000, £500 for second place, £250 for third and five runners up receive £50 each. To get a copy of the entry form send a stamped self-addressed envelope to: Academi, CIPC09, Mount Stuart House, Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff CF10 5FQ or download from the website www.academi.org/cipc/i/132712, where you can find all details of the competition. You can send an unlimited number of poems, with an entry fee of £6 per poem. Closing date: 30 January 2009

 

FRANCES LINCOLN DIVERSE VOICES CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARD

Award–winning publisher Frances Lincoln Limited, and Seven Stories, the Centre for Children’s Books, have recently created an award in memory of Frances Lincoln (1945–2001). The aims of the Award are to increase the representation of people writing from or about different cultural perspectives, and whose work is published in Britain today as well as to promote new writing for children, especially by or about people whose culture and voice are currently under-represented. Manuscripts are sought that celebrate cultural diversity in the widest sense, either with its story or the ethnic and cultural origins of its author. The prize, of £1,500, plus an option for Frances Lincoln Children’s Books to publish, will be awarded to the best work of unpublished fiction for 8-12-year-olds by a writer aged 16 years or over who has not previously published a novel for children. The work must be written in English, min. 10,000 words, max. 30,000. The winner will be announced at an award ceremony at Seven Stories, the Centre for Children’s Books in Newcastle in April 2009. Further details on how to submit a manuscript is at www.sevenstories.org.uk  Closing date: 30 January 2009