Posts Tagged Poetry on Loan
A Plethora of FREE 2023 Writing Competitions
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Poetry, Self-publishing, Short Story on July 4, 2023
Four writing competitions for you – in a mix of genres!
Short Story – Run by Green Stories and the theme is ‘Microbes’.
The main prize for the winner is £500 plus up to three runner up prizes totaling £300 (or the local currency equivalent).
It may help to have a scientific bent as the aim of the competition is to use fiction to raise awareness of Environmental Biotechnology and what microbial systems can do for us. However, the website has a video explaining Environmental Biotechnology and there is also a free virtual workshop linked to the competition.
Closing date is 21st September 2023. Full details are here.
Poetry – Poetry on Loan’s 2023 poetry competition is open to anyone who lives, studies or works regularly in the West Midlands (which is a very big area!). This year the theme is ‘Refuge’.
The prize for adult entries is a paid performance as part of a Poetry on Loan event. The junior prize winner will receive book tokens to the value of £25. Plus there is a special ‘fresh poet’ prize.
Closing date is 1st September 2023. Full details are here.
Novel – The Writers College is running a novel writing competition. Any genre of novel qualifies. Submit the first three chapters plus synopsis.
First Prize is a full ‘Write a Novel Course’ and ‘Advanced Novel Course’ (value $4000; 24 months of mentoring with an award-winning writer up to 70 000 words) from the Writers College.
Closing date is 31st July 2023. Full details are here.
Self-publishing – Amazon is running its annual Kindle Storyteller Award. This has a massive £20,000 prize and is very competitive (full disclosure I interviewed Rachel McLean, the 2021 winner, for Writers’ Forum magazine and she worked extremely hard). However, anyone self-publishing a novel on Amazon KDP before the closing date of 31st August 2023 can enter by including “StorytellerUK2023” (without quotation marks) in the “keywords” metadata field as they publish the book. Full details are here.
And if you are thinking of taking your first steps into self-publishing, you might find Kindle Direct Publishing for Absolute Beginners (newly updated for 2023!) or Kobo Writing Life for Absolute Beginners useful.
Good Luck! Let me know if you’re successful in any of these competitions – I have the bubbles ready to celebrate!
Poetry on Loan Competition 2020 for the West Midlands
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Poetry on May 8, 2020
Following on from last week’s post about the Sunday Times Crime Writing Competition, here’s another free writing competition to get your teeth into during lockdown.
Poetry on Loan are asking for poems of up to 20 lines on the theme of either ‘The Unexpected’ or ‘Vision’.
Poetry on Loan promotes contemporary poetry through public libraries in the West Midlands and the competition is open to anyone who lives, studies or works regularly in the area.
The closing date is 1st September 2020.
The prize is a paid performance as part of a Poetry on Loan event. However, it’s not known how long it will be before libraries can run events again, therefore if a performance can’t be arranged before May 2021, the winner will receive a cash prize of £75 instead. The winner of the junior section of the competition will receive WHSmith tokens.
Full details of the competition can be found on the Poetry on Loan website.
If you don’t have a connection with the West Midlands, why not write a poem anyway so that you’ve got ‘something in the bank’ to send out next time a suitable competition comes up?
Sally Jenkins 