Each member of a short-list of 15 will receive a £25 book token, free tickets to attend any 10 events at the Words by the Water Festival and publication in the 2015 Cumbria Young Writers’ Anthology. Excerpts from their work will be read by actors at the Awards ceremony at Theatre by the Lake to a large and discerning audience before the announcement of the winner. He/she will receive £250, and two runners-up £125 each.

Theme is JOURNEY; this can be interpreted as widely as you wish, you need not use ‘journey’ in the title or in the work itself. What are the possibilities within expedition, travel, trek, voyage, cruise, safari, ride, drive, flight, pilgrimage, excursion, outing, ramble? Is it the beginning of a journey or the end? A journey done every day which you fear? Are you being taken or taking? Escaping or liberating?

It could be a passage or process through life – ‘a journey to success’ or ‘the road to ruin’. Or consider rites of passage, those ritual events that mark a person’s transition from one social status to another, baptism, coming of age, a debutant’s ball, first communion, a wedding, a funeral.

For more information and to send your work