Writing Magazine

Dear Writers The first thing you’ll notice about this letter is that there’s a change of photo. Jonathan Telfer, at the helm of Writing Magazine for so many years, wrote his last editor’s letter last month, before moving on to new directions. Since t

Art imitating life imitating art? Tom Hanks, one of the world’s best-known screen stars, is to release his first novel next year and guess what it’s about? The clue might just be in the title, The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece. Said to

WM’s favourite bearded magus Alan Moore delivered a savage take-down of the entire US superhero comics industry in What We Know About Thunderman, the story at the heart of his recent story fiction collection, Illuminations. Although ‘short’, in this

Is there a particular place that affected who you became as a writer? For Italian novelist and poet Andrea Banjani, one house in particular was formative. Writing in Domus, Andrea recalls the weekends spent in a house near Turin airport where he sat

Last but oh-so-not-least, let’s share the love for literary late bloomers. 80-year old debut author Jane Campbell’s short story collection, Cat Brushing, has recently been published by riverrun. ‘“Cat Brushing” was the first story I’d ever tried to w

Since agencies by and large only accept electronic submissions, most writers use word-processing software (Microsoft Word, Google Documents, Scrivener, to name a few) to author their manuscripts. However, these programmes can be daunting and difficul

One of the most depressing aspects of the Salman Rushdie stabbing is the way that it so quickly became folded into our ongoing obsession with the so-called culture wars. It is extraordinary and saddening that when writers as august as Philip Pullman,

TAP HERE To read an extract from The Whistling 'I been writing for most of my life. In my younger years, I tried a few times to get a foot on the publishing ‘ Ihave ‘ Ihave ladder but it led nowhere – but as I have later learned, I had gone about t

© Jasmine Aurora To read an extract from The Coming Darkness ‘Before the coronavirus lockdowns, I was a writer and producer of live theatre – but those activities, reasonably enough, were swiftly made illegal. So, I sat quietly in my study and wrote

Ayr Writers Ever suffered from imposter syndrome? That was how I felt when I went along to my first Ayr Writers’ meeting, in January 2020, writes Maggie Morton. Yes, I had written some poetry, but I was a babe in arms compared to the talent there. P

Every Wednesday afternoon All Seasons Writing Group meets at Warrington Disability Partnership, writes Cilla Shiels. They can be seen beavering away, writing a collection of short stories, poems and anecdotes, some for the first-time putting pen to p

SHARE YOUR NEWS To feature in subscribers’ news contact: [email protected] ‘You know, addictions have a terrible reputation,’ writes subscriber Sarina Wheatman. ‘It is a mental health illness that is so stigmatised that most people feel it

‘When I first started writing (too many decades ago than I care to remember!), I took a Writers Bureau course and subscribed to Writing Magazine,’ writes subscriber Esther Chilton. ‘The course was invaluable and taught me how to write, and gave me th

‘I am pleased to announce the publication of my latest novel, Learnin’ the Family Business; the story of a low-level New York Mafia family living in the 20th century,’ writes subscriber Michael J Richards. ‘Starting in 1926, it follows the Carabillos

‘Like many writers, I was a book loving child who was always telling stories but I fell into the trap of growing up,’ writes subscriber Michelle Mclean. ‘It was a journaling exercise on “what did you love doing as a child” many years later that broug

‘In 2015 I inadvertently embarked on my novel-writing journey believing that my first book, The Asylum Soul, would be a one-off,’ writes subscriber Mal Foster. ‘As I was about to rest on my laurels, I quite unexpectedly began receiving numerous reque

1. When and where did your journey as an author begin? Probably back in the 1950s in Scotland. As a child, my mother would encourage me to write ‘wee stories’ to pass the long, dark winter nights. Never one to resist a challenge, I wrote a book – aro

VISIT https://writ.rs/onlyorange TO READ THE STORY This month’s story has a main character who isn’t particularly sympathetic, for reasons we’ll discuss in detail. In Only Orange we meet Jeanne, who is on holiday with her family and finding herself

Some stories take a long time to get out onto the paper. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If we take Neil Alexanders’s example, then 15 years was what it took – and that has paid of handsomely with The Vanishing of Margaret Small (Bonnier/ Emb

The UK might be the second biggest greetings card market in the world, with a value of around £1.5 billion, but we Brits send more greetings cards per person than any other nation. In 2020, we sent 835 million cards. That’s a lot of cards. It’s also

Newspapers, whether national dailies or local weeklies, can be real treasure troves for research and help writers tap into both current and historical matters. When you start your research, identify whether it’s the national, regional and/or local pa

The 2022 Exeter Novel Prize is inviting entries. Win a £1,000 first prize in the competition for unpublished novels by unrepresented authors The Exeter Novel Prize is an annual award from Creative Writing Matters, which is given for the first 10,000

The Discoveries 2023 writer development programme from The Women’s Prize Trust is inviting entries from aspiring women novelists. Now in its third year, Discoveries is a development programme aimed at discovering talented and original new female writ

Win a £2,000 first prize in the Mslexia Poetry Competition 2022 for single poems. The competition is inviting entries of original, unpublished poems of any length, on any subject, by writers who identify as women. The first prize is £2,000. The secon

Win $100,000 and publication in the Nine Dots Prize 2022/2023 in this contest for creative solutions to contemporary problems in society. Now in its fourth cycle, the Nine Dots Prize was established in 2016 to reward innovative thinking that provides

Discover Magazine is a US bimonthly popular print magazine and website covering science, technology, mind, health and the environment. The editorial team is looking for stories that enlighten, inform and get readers excited about science. A great Dis

Unbound is an online crowdfunding publishing system akin to Kickstarter, but specifically for books. Last year the platform launched Unbound Firsts, dedicated to publishing, ‘two debut books from talented writers of colour every year’. The inaugural

The annual Ditmar Awards recognising achievement in Australian speculative fiction were presented in October in Canberra at Conflux 16, the Australian National Science Fiction Convention. The awards are named in honour of Australian fan and artist Ma

In what is excellent news for authors, Amazon is changing its policy that allows the return of ebooks for an automatic refund within seven days of purchase, regardless of how much has been read. It is a policy which some authors have complained has c

Canadian Eerie River Publishing has an editorial team devoted to horror in all its forms. Currently the team want stories for the last of the Elements series. This four-part book series is dedicated to horror from the elements. Opening to subs on 1 D

The next quarterly Henshaw Press Short Story Competition is inviting entries up to 2,000 words. The prizes are £200, £100 and £50. Entry costs £6 per story.The closing date is 6 January 2023. Website: www. henshawpress. co.uk Slam poetry champion an

The Elmbridge Literary Competition 2022-2023 is inviting short stories and poems on the theme of ‘The Road’. The Elmbridge Literary Competition from The R CSherriff Trust and Elmbridge Borough Council is celebrating the Trust’s 30th anniversary by in

Win a five-night writing retreat worth £645 in Foxes’ Retreat Winter Solstice Competition 2022. The competition from independent Foxes’ Writing Retreat is inviting entries of original, unpublished creative pieces of writing up to 1,500 words, in any

Wyldblood Press is a UK-based independent publisher of science fiction and fantasy. ‘We have a quarterly magazine, which features around ten short stories each issue, and we upload original flash fiction (up to 1,000 words) to our website every Frida

The leading UK awards for fantasy fiction were announced in September, with the British Fantasy Awards 2022 being presented at FantasyCon at Radisson RED Hotel in Heathrow. The winners were: The Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel & The Syd

Spiral is a new online service for audiobooks, and possible rival for Audible. According to director Kate Bland, it’s not attempting to offer, ‘every single book that’s ever been made into an audio, but we are selecting what we hope is a really wonde

Previously unpublished poems, including translations of poetry, are invited for Rattle, a quarterly journal whose content consists entirely of unsolicited submissions. All submissions are automatically considered for the Neil Postman Award in which e

Write a love letter to the UK’s capital city to win a £500 prize in Love Letters to London 2022. The competition from The London Society invites entries up to 500 words on this year’s theme, which is ‘making connections’. Londoners and non-Londoners

Win a £2,000 first prize for short stories up to 8,000 words in the The Plaza Prizes Short Story Competition. There is a first prize of £2,000 and second and third prizes of £300 and £100. The top ten shortlisted entries will be published in the Plaz

Win a signed copy of the lavish new edition ofThe Watkins Book of English Folklore by Neil Philips, featured in WM Oct, by entering the free contest on LoveReading by 20 November. Website: www. lovereading.co.uk/ competitions Tracey Coker has won th

A new project for playwrights living in the UK will see Hull Truck Theatre working in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company and RSC Partner Theatres to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio. The 37 Plays project is for ‘c

There is an old (military) saying that time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted. If – when – you get a book published, how many copies it sells depends on many disparate factors. It is worth considering how a reader picks which book to buy and a

Shepton Snowdrops 2023 Poetry Competition is inviting entries. The theme of this year’s contest is ‘Let Nature Thrive’ The 2023 Shepton Snowdrops Poetry Competition will be judged by nature poet Wendy Pratt. There are prizes in three categories: • 18

The Sudden Fiction contest from The Plaza Prizes is for short, sharp stories no longer than 1,500 words. The competition is for stories sightly longer than flash called ‘smokelong’ – because they can be read in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette.

Launched in 2012, Zombies Need Brains LLC is a US small press specialising in speculative fiction anthologies. Founder and editor Joshua Palmatier has recently announced four new anthologies, already fully funded via Kickstarter, with a deadline of 3

The Edward Thomas Fellowship Poetry Competition 2023 is open for entries for the Edward Cawston Thomas Prize. Enter original, unpublished poems on any subject, no longer than 40 lines. The winner will receive £150. There are two runnerup prizes of £7

The quarterly WOW Women on Writing Flash Contest is open for entries of fiction between 250 and 750 words until 30 November. Prizes are $400, $300 and $200 plus Amazon gift certificates and publication.The entry fee is $10. Website: www.wowwomenonwri

Winning poems from the Guernsey International Poetry Competition 2023 will be displayed on Guernsey buses.  The Poems on the Move competition is inviting entries of poems no longer than 14 lines. 21 winning poems will be displayed on buses, and a sel

Manchester-based Carcanet Books is open to poetry submissions from 2 January 2023 to 20 January 2023 for three of its imprints; the New Poetries anthology series, the six times a year PN Review journal and the Carcanet Collections. It is suggested yo

Enter flash up to 1,000 words to win a £300 prize in the Fiction Factory’s Flash Fiction Competition 2022. The Fiction Factory’s Flash Fiction Competition is inviting entries of original, unpublished flash fiction up to 1,000 words. Entries may be in

Mslexia Women’s Pamphlet Competition 2022 offers a prize of publication from Bloodaxe Books and £250 in the contest for women poets. The competition is for collections no longer than 24 pages. (Up to 20 poems of any lengths, as long as each page cont

The Canada-UK Foundation is a UK-based charity which promotes Canada in the UK through education and crosscultural collaboration. The editorial team are looking for ‘budding writers with a connection to both Canada and the UK’ who have not profession

The Uncover Liverpool arts bulletin is looking for writers wanting to contribute to its ‘what’s on’ guide to arts and culture in the city and the surrounding region. It is a project by Open Culture, an independent social enterprise encouraging engage

CutBank is a well-established literary magazine, founded by the Creative Writing programme at the University of Montana. The team of professors and students who publish CutBank twice a year like ‘compelling poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction’.

Win cash prizes as well as gold, silver and bronze medals for short stories in the Wenlock Olympian 2022/2023 Competition. The Wenlock Olympian Writing competition is arranged by the Wenlock Olympian Society in collaboration with Much Wenlock and Dis

Small international presses Rivercliff Books & Media are a new imprint of Wetware Media, LLC, and ‘welcome submissions from all over the authorial map – fiction, nonfiction, essay – from both new and established authors.’ They publish books, audioboo

Autumn House Press is inviting entries of debut full-length fiction for its 2023 RisingWriter Prize.The winner will receive $1,000 and a $500 promotional travel grant. All finalists will be considered for publication. Entry is $25.The closing date is

Published by the Scottish Mountaineering Press, Creatives is a digital publication ‘which promotes, reimagines and is inspired by the beauty of the Scottish landscape’. Submissions of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, visual arts and videography are invit

The Pride Book Café team pride themselves on being the best place for diverse storytellers. Their imprint Aurelia Leo is an independent, ‘Nebula Awardnominated, and BSFA Awardwinning publishing house for diverse genre fiction: romance, mystery, thril

Poetry publisher Broken Sleep Books has a submission window open for poetry pamphlets up to 30 November. Pamphlet submissions may be between 15 and 40 pages. Individual poems within the pamphlet may have been previously published,but Broken Sleep pre

It was a first for me. I’ve had reviews about my non-fiction books but had never received actual fan mail before. It was about a prize-winning story I’d written. The sender of the fan mail had taken the time to find my email address and tell me how m

Willow Springs is a biannual print journal with an editorial team aiming to publish ‘the finest in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as interviews with notable authors’. Put together by the students and professors of the MFA progr

The Romantic Novelists Association has announced the shortlists for their Industry Awards 2022. The ten categories and shortlists are as follows: The Romantic Bookseller of the Year: Tea Leaves and Reads; Words & Kisses; Inclusion Award: Mills & Boon

The next instalment of the quarterly Flash 500 Flash Fiction competition is open for entries of original, unpublished short fiction in any style or genre, up to 500 words. There is a first prize of £300, a second prize of £200 and a third prize of £1

A publisher with a ‘love of lowbrow and pop realism’ London-based Korero Press has a particular focus on ‘kuston kulture, street art, illustration, erotica and horror’. Its list consists of illustrated books so novels are not wanted. It is advised yo

Blackbough Poetry has a call out for anthology submissions in response to T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, which was published 100 years ago. Submit between 21 November and 31 December.  Website: www. blackboughpoetry. com/events Former Spice Girl Geri H

Win a £2,000 first prize in The 2022 Charles Causley International Poetry Competition. The annual competition from The Causley Trust is for poems of any length up to 40 lines. The winner will receive £2,000 and a week-long residency at Cyprus Well, t

Enter short fiction on the theme of ‘Anxiety’ for The European Writing Prize 2023. The European Writing Prize is the most prestigious of the writing competitions organised each year by the European Society of Literature. The Prize is a free-entry int

The quarterly Stand magazine has a 70-year British and world literary heritage to be proud of, and publishes both established and new writers of poetry and fiction for a worldwide readership. It is edited from the University of Leeds School of Englis

The 2022 Books Are My Bag Readers Awards Shortlist, as chosen by bookshops, are: Fiction: Heaven, Mieko Kawakami; Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, Juno Dawson; Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield; Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin.

The Furious Gazelle accepts short fiction, micro fiction, poetry, short plays, novel excerpts, and creative nonfiction and subs for its Things That Make Us Furious column in satirical essay, listicle, or rant form. Authors and publishers may submit a

Submissions for the next round of WriteNow, Penguin’s development programme for new writers from under-represented backgrounds, opens on 7 November. This round is for commercial fiction, with writers invited to submit in the genres of crime, thriller

The longlist for the 2022 William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2022 is: Be Good, Love Brian: Growing Up with Brian Clough, Craig Bromfield; The Master: The Brilliant Career of Roger Federer, Christopher Clarey; 1999: Manchester United, the Treble and

The editorial team at The Wandering Wave Press need submissions for their anthology: An Anthology of Unconventional Stories. The team are looking for ‘genre authors who cross boundaries.’ They want ‘Authors whose stories twist the tropes to showcase

The editorial team at Shooter likes to support ‘emerging writers of literary fiction, creative non-fiction, narrative journalism and poetry.’ Published biannually, in January and July, the team publish ‘themed issues in winter and summer, and runs co

Saba Sams, who was featured in WM’s My Path to Publication slot the March issue, has won the BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University 2022 for Blue 4eva, which was taken from her acclaimed debut short story collection, Send Nudes. Sa