Prose comp entry details

THIS YEAR'S PROSE COMPETITION HAS NOW CLOSED FOR ENTRIES. THANK YOU TO EVERYBODY WHO SUBMITTED WORK. WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN JANUARY 2018.

*

Are you a prose writer? Do you write fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction? Do you enjoy life-writing? Essay-writing? Then enter your work for 2017's Words And Women writing competition.

• National prize: £1,000 & up to a month’s writing residency (retreat), provided by Hosking Houses Trust.
• Regional prize: £600 & a mentoring session with Jill Dawson of Gold Dust.
• Winners will be published in the Words And Women Compendium.
• Entries judged by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney the authors of A Secret Sisterhood: The hidden friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf. 
• Closing date: 15th November 2017.
• Entries can be short prose, on any theme, up to 2,200 words.
• National prize open to women writers over the age of 40. Regional prize open to women writers over the age of 16 living in the East of England.

Read on for full competition details and how to enter:

Prizes and Opportunities:

• National prize: £1,000 & up to a month’s writing residency, provided by Hosking Houses Trust. *
• Regional prize: £600 & a mentoring session with Jill Dawson of Gold Dust.**
• The winning entries will feature in our  anthology The Words And Women Compendium
• The short-listed writers and eventual winners will be announced on the Words And Women blog in January 2018. 
• The winners will be invited to read at the launch of The Words And Women Compendium on International Women's Day 2018.
• All entrants will receive a special code which will entitle them to a 10% discount off the Gold Dust mentoring scheme.

* Conditions for this prize: The prize money and residency for the national prize will only be offered in conjunction with one another. The prize money is a condition of the writer taking up the residency and will be transferred to the winner's bank account in April 2018.  The winner will be obliged to pay any expenses - travel, subsistence etc - incurred when taking up the residency. The winner will be put in contact with Hosking Houses Trust in January 2018 to arrange the residency. It is hoped that the residency will take place within 12 months of the prize being awarded. The winner will be able to determine the length of their residency with Hosking Houses Trust. It can be for up to one month or less. Last year's national winner Deborah Arnander opted to spend two weeks at Church Cottage because this suited her work and domestic arrangements best. 
** The mentoring session with Jill Dawson of Gold Dust will take place in Cambridge, or Ely where Jill will provide the winner with detailed advice, on receipt in advance of two chapters of a work-in-progress, a brief 1-2 page synopsis & a letter for prospective submission to agents. The winner will be put in contact with Jill in January 2018 to arrange the mentoring session. It is hoped that the session will take place within 6 months of the prize being awarded. The winner will be responsible for any personal - e.g. travel and subsidence costs etc - incurred when attending the session. It is not a condition of the regional prize that the writer attends the mentoring session. 


Entry fees:

• £10 per entry.
• Pay online via Paypal using the button at the bottom of this page.
• Or by BACs to Lloyds Bank, Sort Code 30-96-17, Account Number 84433760
• Send as many entries as you wish. But note each entry costs £10.

Eligibility:

• Work should be in English (or English dialect) and should not have been published or accepted for publication elsewhere, including on-line publication.
• Work that has won or is under consideration in other writing competitions is not eligible. 
• No extracts please.
• We encourage writers to send in fiction and non-fiction. We are open to short stories in any genre, memoir, creative non-fiction, and essays on any theme.
• Work should not be a translation of another author’s writing.
• Any woman writer living in the UK or Ireland, aged 40 and over by the 15th November 2017,  can enter for the national prize.
• Any woman writer living in the East of England, ie. Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and  aged 16 and over by the 15th November 2017,  can enter for the regional prize.
• If you are a woman writer living in the East of England, and aged 40 and over by the 15th November 2017,  then your entry can be considered for the national and regional prize.

Judges:

The competition will be judged by the organisers of Words And Women – Lynne Bryan and Belona Greenwood - in conjunction with  guest judges Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney, the authors of A Secret Sisterhood: The hidden friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf. 

Rules:

• Entries can be short prose – either fiction, memoir, life-writing, essays or creative non-fiction – on any subject upto 2,200 words in length.
• No extracts please.
• Closing date is midnight, 15^th November, 2017.
• Please submit your work double-spaced with numbered pages  by email attachment - for more details see below.
• Your entry will be judged anonymously, so do not put your name on the pages of your work.
• But include a separate cover page with your name, address, telephone number and email address, plus the title of the work you are submitting and a word count, plus identify your work as fiction or non-fiction. Please also state if you wish your work to be considered for the national prize or the regional prize or both.
• No alterations may be made to a piece of work once submitted.
• Your work will not be returned, so please keep a copy.
• Sorry, but we do not send copies of the results to entrants. If you would like to hear that your entry has not been shortlisted, make sure you include an email address with your contact details.
• The winners will be contacted by email the first week in January 2018.
• No competitor will win more than one prize.
• Judges reserve the right to ask for proof of age of any contestant at any point during the judging process and after.
• Copyright of any entry remains with the author, but Words And Women has the unrestricted right to publish the winning entries in its compendium, on its website, and in any related material for PR purposes.
• The judges’ decisions will be final and no individual correspondence will be entered into.
• Entry implies acceptance of the above conditions. 

How to enter:

• Send your entry by email as a single attachment, as either a PDF or a Word document, to wordsandwomencomp@gmail.com
• The entry fee of £10 allows you to enter one prose piece. You may enter as many times as you like, provided each entry is accompanied by the £10 entry fee.
• Entry fees must be in pounds sterling.
• You can pay by  BACS to Lloyds Bank, Sort Code 30-96-17, Account Number 84433760 or you can pay online via PAYPAL using the button below. Please note that you must include with your entry the date on which you paid, and, in the case of PAYPAL, the email address you used, so that we can trace your payment. 

your full name

and email address