Competitions
I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork. Peter de Vries
We run competitions throughout the year, at least one per quarter. The main competitions are for short stories up to 3000 words and have no set theme, so you can enter whatever you have gnawing away at the back of your brain.
We will also be announcing smaller competitions, usually free to enter and with a smaller prize. These may have a theme, might be for flash fiction, non-fiction or articles. We want to encourage writers to challenge themselves! Cash prizes will be less for these, but you will still have the opportunity to be published on the site and have your work recorded and read on radio.
The rules are straightforward (though comprehensive) and we encourage people to write as much as they want and send in as many entries as they like.
Our Summer Loving 2011 competition has now closed. Details of the longlist, then the short-list and winners will be posted to the Winners Section when they have been decided. (Winning entries for previous competitions will be stored in the Archive section.)
Our next free to enter competition has just opened. There is a word limit of 500 to 1000 on the theme of ‘Autumn Leaves’. Click here for further details.
Our Autumn 2011 competition is as follows:
Short Story Fiction - up to 3,000 words on any theme.
| First Prize: | £100.00 |
| Second Prize: | £50.00 |
| Third Prize: | £25.00 |
Plus publication on our website, with agreement from each author. Commended entries will also be published on the site. Winners and commended entries will also receive a certificate!
Deadline for entries: Noon on 30th November 2011.
A long-list will be published on this website by 21st December 2011, and details of the winners and runners-up will be announced by end of year.
Entry Fee: £4.00 payable by PayPal or cheque. Please make cheques payable to Better Practice Associates Ltd.
You can enter as many times as you wish, paying the £4.00 entry charge each time. Select the "Add to Cart" link below once for each entry, adding the title of your entry in each case. (The "Empty" button will clear down the title field, ready for you to add the next one - but give the first one time to be actioned before doing the next!)
All entry fees must be paid for in pounds sterling, so if entering from abroad, please ensure that you have the fee correctly sorted. Please do not send any cash by post or attempt to pay with magic beans!
Please send an entry sheet with your details and then email this and your entry to comps@brightoncow.co.uk. This helps us to judge anonymously and impartially, which is fairer to everyone. If you would like to use the entry sheet we’ve designed (it’s not compulsory, just useful, and you won’t lose the competition because you’ve done your own), you can find a copy here (Word document, 46KB). If you do your own, please include the same relevant information.
We are contributors to Brighton’s Coastway Hospital Radio, and winning entrants have the chance to have their story recorded and read out on air. You can do the recording yourself, or have someone else do it for you. We have several presenters who are versed in this kind of thing. Any recording is free and in addition to any other prize. However, do not guarantee that winning stories will be recorded, as we have to abide by the rules of broadcast radio. So a winning entry may be ineligible for broadcast due to language or content. Yes it’s Nanny State, but we’re bound by the rules.
Please note that we don’t offer travel or accommodation costs, so if you’re coming from Australia, The Orkneys or just around the corner and you don’t have your own magic carpet, don’t ask us to fund your first class travel!
Dates for future Short Story competitions
2011
Summer comp: Closes Wednesday 31 August at noon. Winners announced by Friday 30 September.
Autumn comp: Closes Wednesday 30 November at noon. Winners announced by Friday 20th January 2012..