Friday 20 April 2012

Competition News...


You may have been fortunate in not getting the heavy prolonged rain that I've experienced this week, but if you have, and you've had to go out in it- as I did, you have my sympathy.

So to cheer you up, I've got a few competition details you might like.


  • Words with Jam First Page Competition 2012.

"What are we looking for: the most gripping, read-on-able first page of up to 400 words. Any genre, but as always we're looking for The Best First Page."

Entry cost: £6 for one entry or £10 for two but the winner receives £500, while 2nd and 3rd get £100/£50 respectively. And the three winning entries will be published in the August 2012 issue of Words with JAM.
It will be judged by the author of '22 Britannia Road', Amanda Hodgkinson.

Details here and here.

  • Grazia and Orange’s ‘First Chapter’ Competition.
Best-selling author Rosamund Lupton has written the opening paragraph which leaves you to complete the chapter in 800-1,000 words.

Sadly this appears to be a UK entrants only- if you look at the general rules and conditions. It is free to enter, but you must include with your entry a brief bio and a passport photograph of yourself, with your date of birth and occupation included on your contact information sheet.

The winner is awarded £1,000 and attends a party (invitation only) at The Royal Festival Hall on the 30th May- presentation on stage. There are two runner-up prizes of £500 each. The winner's story will appear in Grazia, while the runners-up will see their story on the website. All will receive the short-listed books for this year's Orange Prize.

This may be one to avoid if you're well over the target age range for the magazine's readership- but that's my personal opinion only.

Details here

  • If you're interested in Crime-writing not doing- here's an ongoing competition opportunity.
"Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook, in association with Bloomsbury Publishing and The Crime Writers’ Association, have launched the Short Sentencecrime writing competition."

"Tell a tale of dastardly deeds in 1000 words or less. A new theme will be set every two months and we will select a winner for each theme. Entries will be collected throughout the year and we will also announce one overall winner during National Short Story Week in November."

One of the best bits about the prizes is a ticket for the Harrogate Crime Festival 2013.

For full details see here.

There's lots of competitions around at the moment, so you'll be sure to find something you like and if you know anyone who might be interested please direct them here. :-)

2 comments:

Rosemary Gemmell said...

Thanks for these, Carol - didn't know about two of them. For once, we didn't have as much rain this week - must have been down your way!

Carolb said...

Obviously we got your rainfall, Rosemary. :-)