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
Due to the current situation in Wales regarding the Coronavirus, we suggest that anyone interested in taking part contacts the organisers directly for the most up-to-date information.
Job Opportunities
Sherman Theatre: Literary Associate – 15 June
Sherman Theatre wishes to appoint a talented and enthusiastic Literary Associate on a part-time, fixed term contract for one year as part of a new pilot programme supported by Arts Council Wales. This is a new role within the artistic team at the Sherman Theatre, working closely with the Literary Manager and the Artistic Director to support and nurture writers from grassroots level right the way through to every stage of their career, supporting the development of commissioned and produced plays as well as ensuring that the voices of writers from all backgrounds are represented within the Sherman Theatre programme.
This post is offered as a full time, fixed-term position.
The details can be found here.
Funding Opportunities
The Authors’ Emergency Fund – Rolling
Applications are open to all professional authors who are resident in the UK or British subjects – including all types of writers, illustrators, literary translators, scriptwriters, poets, journalists and others – for whom author-related activities make up a substantial amount of their annual income.
For further information, click here.
The White Pube Writers Grants – Rolling Monthly
The White Pube Writers Grant is £500 given out monthly to a working class writer based in the UK. This grant has been set up to support writers of all ages who are early in their careers and would benefit from this no-strings attached financial support to help them in whatever they like – be that money to cover time to write, books, web hosting, printing, subscriptions, research, development, travel, or even just money to fund life expenses and rent.
For further information, click here.
The Royal Literary Fund – Rolling
To be eligible, you need to have had 2 works published (or scripts/ plays performed) commercially. Whether it’s money or personal problems that are preventing you from writing, our panel will review your case in confidence to see if we can offer financial support.
Further information available here.
Call-outs
BBC NOW – 18 June
The BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales would like to hear from writers / poets / librettists to contribute to a new commission from the composer, Alexander Campkin.
We would like to invite potential candidates to offer idea proposals around the theme of celebrating and embracing difference; a celebration of disability in the arts. Once selected, the successful librettist would work with Alexander to develop the final subject matter through discussion and exploration.
The final piece would be for c.150-300 words of text, that could be written in English or Welsh. This will be set to music to form 10-15 minute classical piece of music for choir and orchestra to be premiered in 2023.
For more information please contact Lisa Tregale lisa.tregale@bbc.co.uk
Young Creatives Open Call – 28 June
We are seeking words or artworks from young people (11-25) that explore ideas of sleepless nights and nocturnal creations. Taking inspiration from a restless letter Frank Baker wrote at 3am to his love Isabel in 1939 after a confusing encounter, we are looking for words and artworks that explore the things that keep us up or come to us in the middle of the night.
What runs through your mind after dark? What stirs you from slumber or reaches you in a moonlit haze? What dreams or ideas are born in the middle of the night? What needs sharing before dawn comes again?
Further details, including how to enter, are available here.
Nawr – 30 June
Nawr is a quarterly online magazine publishing poetry, prose, philosophy (creative critical essays) and visual art from Welsh and Wales-based artists.
Submissions for the Summer Issue, on the theme of ‘Caru’ (To Love) open on Sunday 30th May. They are looking for creative responses to our theme from Welsh and Wales-based creatives. More details can be found on their Instagram and Twitter pages, @nawrmag, and all submissions should be sent to nawrmag@gmail.com with ‘Issue 006 Submission’ in the subject line.
Madeleine Milburn Mentorship Programme – 1 July
Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency is running a 6-month mentorship programme for the second year running for unpublished novelists and non-fiction writers worldwide. The programme will include a comprehensive introduction to how publishing works, editorial work on the author’s manuscript and guaranteed representation from an MM Agent during and after the mentorship period. This year, they’re offering eight places and at least four of them are reserved for writers underrepresented on bookshelves.
You can read about it in more detail and find out how to apply here.
Imagining History: Wales in Fiction and Fact – 1 July
The conference organisers invite contributions on any topic relating to imagining the histories of Wales. Contributions are encouraged from across disciplines, historical periods, and methodological approaches. Topics might include, but are by no means limited to:
- historical fiction and the ‘imagined nation’
- local/global histories
- race/gender/class and imagined histories
- imagining alternative histories
- historical film/television
- preserving the past
- museums/archives and historical fiction/film
- language and imagined histories
Abstracts of 250 words for twenty-minute papers plus a brief biography (two sentences) should be submitted to diana.wallace@southwales.ac.uk by 1 July 2021.
The Other Side of Hope – 31 July
The Other Side of Hope are calling for submissions of fiction and poetry of any theme, refugees and immigrants.
There is a pay of £100 per published author for the print issue, and £50 for the online issue.
There are further details here.
Lucent Dreaming – 8 August
We will be open for issue 10 submissions from new and emerging writers between June 1st 2021 – August 8th 2021. You must be a Lucent Dreaming subscriber, or have read a recent issue to submit work to the magazine. This will help you get a feel for the kind of writing we enjoy and give you the best chance.
We exist to platform new and emerging writers. We consider a new/emerging writer someone who has been published in 10 or fewer publications in the past 5 years, and has not published a book or full collection. If you have published more prolifically, or are established, we ask that you do not submit work to us and instead share our call-out with new writers.
The full details can be found here.
Black Bee Call for Submissions
Newly launched 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.
We 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
PoArtMo Anthology – 31 December
The PoArtMo Anthology (Volume 2) celebrates the most positive / inspirational art created in 2019-2021. The submissions can be in the form of six word stories, essays, flash fiction, short stories, photography, paintings, drawings, and poetry, and anyone over 17 years old can submit.
The full details are available here.
Written in a Flash Anthology – 31 December
Written in a Flash Anthology: A Collection of Positive Stories is a new project that seeks to highlight the most inspirational / positive short stories and flash fiction pieces created in 2019-2021. Submissions can be of any genre: thriller, mystery, fantasy, science-fiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction, young adult, humor, and nonfiction.
The full details can be found here.
Competitions
Future Worlds Prize – 25 June
The 2021 Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour is now open for entries.
To enter, you need to submit all of the following:
- 5,000 to 10,000 words of either the opening of a novel or a short story
- a short covering letter
- a summary of your entire work, consisting of no more than 1,000 words.
Please send your story, covering letter and summary as three separate PDF or Word documents to submissions@futureworldsprize.co.uk.
The full terms and conditions can be found here.
New Welsh Women’s Crime Anthology call out for submissions – 30 June
Whether you’re a published author or a debutante, Crime Cymru and Honno want to hear from you. Katherine Stansfield and Caroline Oakley, editors of a new anthology to be published in 2022 are looking for gripping stories that are complex and convincing, chilling or comforting and with a crime or a mystery at their heart, from the most diverse possible selection of Welsh women writers. Submissions are open to stories featuring ‘traditional’ crime fiction elements of detectives and police as well as amateur sleuths.
Submissions should be between 1500 and 5000 words in length and previously unpublished.
Full submission guidelines here:
New Welsh Women’s Crime Anthology – Call for Submissions
John Berry Poetry Prize – 1 July
Open to poets of colour, who are UK residents and have not yet published a book-length collection; special consideration will be given to LGBTQ+/disabled poets and poets from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.
Three equal winners each to receive £1,000, expert mentoring and their debut collection published by Bloodaxe Books. The winning poets will also be invited to take part in a reading as part of the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts events series in October 2021.
The prize is modelled on The Complete Works mentoring programme, devised by Bernardine Evaristo and Nathalie Teitler and is generously funded by Arts Council England.
For full information: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/ncla/james-berry/#theprize
Stephen Spender Prize – 16 July
The Stephen Spender annual prize for poetry in translation is now open for entries.
The Prize is an annual competition for poetry in translation, with categories for young people (14-and-under, 16-and-under, and 18-and-under) as well as an open category for adults. All entrants must be UK or Irish citizens or residents, or pupils at a British School overseas.
The full details are available here.
SaveAs Writers’ International Writing Competition 2021 – 31 August
2021 marks the centenary of T S Eliot’s visit to Margate, where he wrote part of The Waste Land while looking out on the sea from the Nayland Rock shelter.
To celebrate Eliot, his work and the views from our coastline, SaveAs Writers launch their annual international creative writing competition, this year asking for poems and short stories on the theme of Horizons. The theme can be literal, figurative, a celebration
of views, a reflection on Eliot and his work (The Waste Land itself opened new horizons in poetry) or a broader take on the theme.
Full details can be found here.
Crime Cymru First Novel Prize – 3 September
The Gwobr Nofel Gyntaf Crime Cymru First Novel Prize has been created to promote new crime writing talent from Wales. The prize has two categories: Welsh language entries and English language entries. For each category there are separate judges and individual prizes. There will be a Welsh-language winner and an English-language winner.
Each winner will receive a four-night stay at a date to be agreed at Literature Wales’ Nant Writers’ Retreat Cottage, located within the grounds of Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre in Llanystumdwy, Gwynedd. The two winning writers will also be offered mentoring from Crime Cymru writers, to be undertaken in their choice of Welsh or English.
Full details are available here.
Adventures in Fiction New Voices Competition – 14 September
Have you got a winning idea? Have you recently embarked on writing a novel? Like some support in the early stages? New Voices Competition is aimed at writers who have completed at least fifty pages of their manuscript.
The winning prize is a Start-Up mentoring package worth more than £550.00, including a a manuscript appraisal, guidelines, a development strategy, a consultation and an agreed deadline for a year later.
For full details, click here.
Anthology Poetry Award – 31 October
Entries are now invited for the Anthology Poetry Award. Established to recognise and encourage excellence in the craft of poetry writing and to provide a platform for publication, it is open to original and previously unpublished poems in the English language. Entries are invited from poets of all nationalities, living anywhere in the world. Poems submitted must be on the theme of ‘Freedom’ and should not exceed 40 lines.
Full details are available here.