Competitions & Awards

National Student Writing Awards

Creative writing as an academic discipline has grown tremendously in recent years to the point where upwards of 15,000 students are engaged in courses. Yet up until now, there has been no national competition dedicated to encouraging and reflecting excellence among this vibrant community.

For this reason, ABCtales.com is launching the UK’s first ever National Student Writing Awards, open to all students aged 16 and over who are on creative writing courses, with the aim of providing a new focus that will help all entrants in their quest to become accomplished short-story or novel writers.

The competition is being held in association with NAWE and Preface Publishing, one of the UK’s main imprints in the fiction sector. The judges are Professor Graeme Harper, fiction writer and Chair of the Higher Education Committee of NAWE, Trevor Dolby, Publisher at Preface (part of Random House), and Tony Cook, MD of ABCtales.

Entries will be invited in two categories:

The short story prize, aimed at writers aged 21 and under. The prize will be the opportunity for mentoring sessions with established authors in writing skills. ABCtales will also publish the winning entries and make the book available for distribution.
The novel prize for a work of up to 60,000 words, aimed principally at more advanced writers such as those on postgraduate courses, but open to all, including undergraduates, if they feel up to the task. The prize in this category will be the placing through Trevor Dolby of the winner with a leading literary agent, who will then work with the winner to explore publication. Other entries judged to be of sufficient merit will also be helped towards finding an agent. Leading agents will also conduct a number of exclusive seminars for the top entrants.

Graeme Harper said: “This competition is an important milestone in the development of creative writing as an exciting university subject. For the first time, there will be a national competition that will help in our continual efforts to support excellence and encourage originality”.

Tony Cook said: “ABCtales is at the heart of the creative writing community in Britain, and we want to make the event an exciting g challenge for those engaged in studying the discipline. Our goal is to make it as much part of the literary landscape as other major writing awards.

Full details of the competition will be circulated at the start of the next academic year. In the meanwhile, it is hoped that all tutors will put draw the attention of their students to the event and encourage them to enter.

Further details from: David Keighley