Opportunities
Welcome to Literature Wales’ opportunities page where we share internal and external literary opportunities, from competitions to residencies, from Wales and beyond. If you have any opportunities you’d like us to feature, please email us on: post@literaturewales.org
Work Opportunities
Wales Millenium Centre: Community Engagement Producer – 20 March
Salary Bracket: £29,371 – £30,949. You will be responsible for two music based projects, steel pans and our new female Punk Band as well as working on the community contribution to Llais. WMC are looking for someone with at least two years of experience working in community settings or as a project manager delivering with multiple partners and collaborators. More information.
Wales Millenium Centre: Casual Duty Manager – 27 March
Salary: £12.50 per hour. A Casual Duty Manager will assist in leading a team of casual staff and volunteers assist to manage the day-to-day operations in order to ensure a world class customer experience. More information.
Theatr Clwyd: Producer – 5 April
Salary – £35,212 – £39,402 (pending pay award). Permanent contract, 37 hours per week. The Producer will sit within the Theatre Making family and is the line producer for Theatr Clwyd’s productions at home and on tour. They will employ significant specialist knowledge of, and creative approach to, theatre producing to support the Director of Producing in delivering the programmed work across the building and beyond. More information.
Call-outs
Arts Council Wales: Creative Steps – 30 March (Last day of each month)
The aim of this programme is to support individuals and organisations who have experienced barriers to accessing our funding. Creative Steps aims to address this by supporting artists, creatives, and organisations throughout their developmental journey.
You can apply for the Individual strand if you are an artist or creative who identifies as being ethnically and culturally diverse, as Deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent, or as someone who has experienced racism or discrimination.
You can apply for the Organisations strand if your organisation is led by ethnically and culturally diverse people, Deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent people, or people who have experienced racism or discrimination.
This will be a rolling programme, with applications accepted on the last day of each month. Click here for further information.
Black Bee Call for Submissions – Rolling
Black Bee Books is currently open for submissions from under-represented voices in Wales. As a new publishing house based in West Wales, the company want to be reflective of a wide variety of experiences and are actively seeking those who are under-served by the industry.
They are looking to publish both adult and young adult fiction and non-fiction, but not children’s books.
For submission guidelines please see: www.blackbeebooks.wales/contact
Hack Publishing – Rolling
Hack Publishing are looking for 10 writers to join us an exciting project that will explore work now and imagine working culture in the future. This will be a collection of essays with 10 different perspectives, although writers are encouraged to experiment with genre.
In addition, they are also looking for writers to contribute to their upcoming magazine. The first issue’s theme is: resilience. Writers can submit any genre of up to 3,500 words. It is a chance for new writers to see their work published alongside one another.
Find the full details on their website.
Saari Residence 2025- 27 March
The Saari Residence is pleased to announce an Open Call for the 2025 Residency Program. They welcome applications from professional artists for the international Saari Residence in 2025. The residency periods for individual artists are two months long, and the residency includes a work grant in addition to accommodation.
Saari Residence, maintained by Kone Foundation, is an international residence for artists in Mynämäki, Southwest Finland. Located in a culturally and historically significant countryside setting, the Saari Residence offers an excellent and inspiring working environment supporting artistic development and creativity. More information.
Dramatic Heart of Wales – 2 April
Neath Port Talbot has been Wales’ creative furnace for generations, producing writers, artists, poets, actors, musicians and film & theatre makers whose legacies are renowned. The area is also known as the Dramatic Heart of Wales: a striking landscape of dramatic contrast, with creativity flowing through the towns, valleys and vales.
The area’s tourism team seeks a writer with a connection to the area to showcase and celebrate the region’s creativity.
We are producing a short film – between 1 – 2 minutes in length – which will show multiple creative scenarios: such as a male voice choir taking to the stage, a dance troupe performing in Margam Park, a young guitarist practicing in their bedroom, a group art class, a busker. These are examples only, as we will be led by the chosen writer / artist and their knowledge of the people and places of the area. It will be similar in style to this video.
We are seeking a writer to create the story which weaves these scenarios together and speaks of the inspiration they all share from the surrounding nature, culture, community, and creative legacy of the region’s great artists.
We invite a writer to pitch an idea for how the story of the region’s creativity could be told. We welcome poets and spoken word artists, short-story writers, fiction authors, memoirists, musicians, playwrights, creative writing students ¾ the brief is open to interpretation.
We envisage that your written piece will form the voiceover of the video, but we would also love to feature you performing, reading, speaking, singing, etc, as suits your creative idea. However, this is not a requirement and we would not wish to put anyone off from applying if they would prefer to remain behind-the-scenes.
To find out more about what makes us proud to represent the Dramatic Heart of Wales, visit our website: dramaticheart.wales.
To pitch your idea, email dramaticheartofwales@rethinkprm.com with the subject line ‘Dramatic Heart – writer pitch’. We accept pitches in Welsh or English. The email should include:
- A brief outline of your chosen format and creative concept (i.e. poem, short story, short radio play, song, etc). 200 – 400 words max.
- Examples of your work. This can take the form of links to online sources, attached stories/poems/plays/scripts. They do not have to be published and should just show us your style and voice. Previous publication is not a requirement for this project.
- A short bio. Please include your connection to the area, as we can only accept pitches from creatives who have lived experience of the region. 150 words max.
Eligibility:
- Entrants must be 18 or over. The final video will be bilingual.
- If you are bilingual, please outline how you would execute your piece with both Welsh and English language used. Please note we work closely with a creative translator who has decades of experience translating poetry and prose. She would collaborate with you to produce bilingual sections of your work, so being a Welsh speaker is not a requirement.
Contact details: dramaticheartofwales@rethinkprm.com
Fee: £500.00
Further T&Cs: This project is funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Upon completion, the copyright of the work commissioned through this call out will sit with Neath Port Talbot Council, however an agreement will be put in place with the artist/ author and NPTCBC is open to discussing how this work can continue to be used by the artist/ author in future.
2024 RSL International Writers Programme – 3 May
This is the RSL’s new flagship programme to celebrate literary excellence in the global writing community and the power of literature to transcend borders. Recommendations will be reviewed by the following panel – Kit Fan (Chair), Moniza Alvi, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Chloe Aridjis, Homi K. Bhabha, Margaret Busby, Maureen Freely, Deirdre Osborne and Nathalie Teitler.
To be eligible, recommended writers must:
- not be resident in, or citizens of, the UK; and
- have published two substantial works of outstanding literary merit (where works are translated into English, or originally written in English).
Competitions
Eisteddfodau Cymru – Ongoing
There are several literary competitions held by various Eisteddfod events across Wales annually.
All the closing dates can be found here. For further information, visit the Cymdeithas Eisteddfodau Cymru website.
Click this link for more information and entry requirements.
BBC Young Writers’ Award – 25 March
Young people in the UK aged between 14-18 just have to write a short story of up to 1,000 words – no theme, no subject, just great storytelling. Shortlisted writers’ stories are professionally recorded and made available on the BBC, with the shortlist invited to an award ceremony broadcast live on BBC radio, where the winner is announced. More information is available at bbc.co.uk/ywa
2024 International Rubery Book Award – 31 March
The 2024 International Rubery Book Award is now OPEN for self-published and independently published books. Book of the Year: £2000. Plus 4 category winners each winning £200. All winners receive a review and glass plaque.
Judges: Paul McDonald and Kerry Hadley-Pryce. More information.
Overton Poetry Prize 2024 – 31 March
Young Writer Competitions – 19 April
Two writing competitions for young people aged 16-18 aim to uncover the next generation of writing talent. Become the next Young Writer (a short story writing competition for creative writers) or Young Anthropologist (for writing about identity and culture). You can register to enter now! Both competitions have a £1,000 first prize and two runner-up prizes of £50. All shortlisted entries will also receive a small prize. Read more.
The 2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize – 22 April
Australian Book Review welcomes entries to the 2024 ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, one of the world’s leading prizes for an original short story – between 2,000 and 5,000 words on any subject and in any style. Prize money: Worth a total of 12,500. Judges: Patrick Flannery, Melinda Harvey, Susan Midalia. More information.
The 2024 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize – 1 July
The prize supports writers who have not yet published a book-length work, with no limits on age, gender, nationality, or background. The winners of each category (Fiction, Life Writing and Poetry) will receive a £1,000 cash prize and will be published in Wasafiri’s print magazine. Learn more, and submit.