The Bournemouth Writing Prize is an annual international short story and poetry writing competition, designed to boost your career as a writer. As well as generous cash prizes, winners will receive personal feedback from an industry professional, and have the chance to record a reading of their work. Our judges are all influential figures from the publishing world, including publishers, agents and award-winning authors and poets.
The categories
Short Story: Up to 3,000 words maximum. It can be about any topic and in any style. We are looking for real storytellers who create great characters to tell us something fresh, and surprise or touch us.
Poetry: Up to 42 lines. We are looking for poetry that is fresh and unexpected. Again, this can be about anything that you wish. You may have been inspired by the personal impact of recent world events or you may want to offer a story of hope for the future, the choice is yours.
What you can win
The prizes for The Bournemouth Writing Prize have been carefully selected to help you further your writing career.
Short Story: £500 cash prize, plus feedback on a sample of your work (short story or a short extract from your novel) from a commissioning editor or agent and a professionally produced recording of your work for your website.
Poetry: £500 cash prize plus feedback and advice on your work from award-winning poet and popular Arvon tutor, Antony Dunn and a professionally produced recording of your work for your website.
The judges
Ansa Khan Khattak is a Commissioning Editor at Picador, where she works on both literary fiction and narrative non-fiction. Her authors include Lucia Berlin, Manohla Dargis, Wendy Erskine, Genki Kawamura and Éric Vuillard.
Antony Dunn has an impressive four collections of poems published, with the most recent released in October 2016, ‘Take This One to Bed’. As well as publishing his own work, Antony has edited and worked on a posthumous collection of poems by Welsh poet and publisher, David Hughes, called Ex Libris. He is the Artistic Director of Bridlington Poetry Festival, has won an Eric Gregory Award and the Newdigate Prize, as well as having been Poet in Residence at the University of York 2006 and at Ilkley Literature festival.
Sophie Scard is a literary agent at United Agents and formerly worked in Rights at Penguin Books. Her clients include Tessa Hadley, Susannah Dickey and Chris Brookmyre. She has three times judged the White Review Short Story Prize, and co-runs the Pat Kavanagh Prize. She is interested in excellent writing of all types.
Emma Scattergood, Senior Lecturer on the MA Creative Writing & Publishing course at Bournemouth University. Emma is also the Editorial Director of Fresher Publishing. A former journalist on national magazines, she is the author of several non-fiction books and one novel. She has an MA in Critical and Creative Writing from Winchester University and, as well as teaching at Bournemouth University, Emma enjoys leading workshops in Dorset.
Find out more here
Registration to enter is via Eventbrite
Deadline: midnight, 16 January 2022