Northern Writers’ Awards Call for Submissions

£40,000 of prizes and support available to talented writers in the north of England

Deadline for submissions: Friday 17th January 2014, 5pm

New Writing North is delighted to announce that the Northern Writers’ Awards are now open for submissions. The Northern Writers’ Awards were established in 2000 as a pioneering programme that aimed to support both new and established writers in the pursuit of their creative ambitions. Since then the awards have supported over 150 writers, many of whom have gone on to achieve publication of their work in the UK and internationally.

Originally open only to writers in the North East, the awards, thanks to the support of Northumbria University, are now open to writers in the North East, North West and Yorkshire. The awards support writers of prose, poetry, creative non-fiction and children’s fiction. From this year there will also be a new programme of awards for young writers: the Cuckoo Young Writers Award and the Matthew Hale Award.

For new writers, winning a Northern Writers’ Award helps to get them noticed by agents and publishers and lifts them onto the first rung of the ladder towards publication. For more established writers, awards can buy precious time to undertake a new project or to support work in progress that has not yet been commissioned. The support that winning writers receive includes cash awards alongside mentoring, editorial feedback and support and help with professional development within the writing industry.

Past winners of the Northern Writers’ Awards include novelist and poet Carolyn Jess-Cooke, who won both a Northern Promise Award in 2008 and a Poetry Award in 2013; Niel Bushnell, who met his agent through the awards and has gone on to publish the popular children’s Timesmith series, and writer Ben Myers, whose Pig Iron has been critically acclaimed and won the 2013 inaugural Gordon Burn Prize.

Source: New Writing North