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

Literature Wales Opportunities

JOB VACANCY: Tŷ Newydd Manager – 29 January (12:00pm midday)

Full time (37 hours per week), 9-month fixed-term contract (adoption leave). To start as soon as possible.

Salary: £35,000 pro rata

Location: Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre, Llanystumdwy, LL52 0LW

The ability to work unsociable hours, including occasional weekends, bank holidays and usually one evening per week is essential due to the nature of this role. There will be occasional opportunities to work from home and it is desirable for the post holder to live close to Tŷ Newydd. Please note, we are open to discussing joint proposals to share this role. Current Vacancies and Opportunities – Literature Wales

Writer Development Programme

Literature Wales is proud to launch a programme of FREE virtual talks to inspire and educate the writers of Wales over the coming months. You’ll meet editors, publishers, successful authors and those who work within the literature and publishing industries in Wales and beyond. Browse our programme and register today!

Tŷ Newydd Creative Writing Courses

We have a range of creative writing courses and retreats available at Tŷ Newydd – the National Writing Centre of Wales. Why not have a look and discover what’s on offer.

Browse through our programme.

Work Opportunities

Arts & Business Cymru: Business Development Manager – 26 January (12:00pm midday)

Full time, based in Cardiff. Salary – £35, 000.

A&B Cymru is seeking an experienced manager to play a crucial role in sustaining and developing the charity’s relationship with the corporate sector.

The Manager will be responsible for the delivery of key A&B Cymru programmes and services and acts as a primary point of contact for businesses across South & West Wales. The role requires highly developed influencing skills and an instinctive approach to problem-solving. The successful candidate will also be creative, dynamic, proactive and highly efficient.

For further details and an application pack, please click here or e-mail contactus@aandbcymru.org.uk

Business Development Manager | Arts Council of Wales

Community Music Wales: Director of Community Music Wales – 31 January

Salary: £40,981. Hours: 35 hours per week. Location: Hybrid working with Wales wide travel

Community Music Wales empowers disadvantaged individuals and communities by enabling participation in creativity and learning, with music-making at the heart of everything we do.

We are seeking an inspiring and experienced Director to lead Community Music Wales into its next phase of development. The successful candidate will bring significant senior management experience from either the not-for-profit or private sector and will provide strategic leadership for the organisation. Director of Community Music Wales | Arts Council of Wales

Creu Cymru: Events and Membership Officer – 2 February

Creu Cymru is seeking a dynamic and proactive Events and Membership Officer to join our team.

This part-time role is central to delivering our membership services and events programme, supporting the growth and engagement of our network of performing arts organisations across Wales.

Salary: £31500 FTE per annum (pro rata £17,878) plus £40 per month home-working allowance.

Hours of work: 3 days per week, which may involve occasional unsociable hours or week-end work.  17 days plus Public Holidays.

Events and Membership Officer (part time) | Arts Council of Wales

Hay Festival Academy – 17 February

Looking to break into the creative industries? Hay Festival is the perfect place to get experience, meet new people, and kickstart your career! They are looking for young people to join their team and work on one of the world’s leading art and literature festivals.

Hay Festival Academy is a skills development and practical apprenticeship programme based in Hay-on-Wye in Wales for young people aged 18-25. It gives young people the opportunity to learn, train and practically experience how festivals and live events are created and produced from some of the industry’s most experienced events practitioners.

There are openings for Event Management interns (ideal for those aged 20-25) and Press Office interns for the duration of the festival, 21 – 31 May 2026. The closing date is Tuesday 17 February. Accommodation and meals are provided, and travel costs within the UK are covered.

Hay Festival welcomes and encourages applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries. Full details here: https://www.hayfestival.com/academy

Call-outs

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.

Folding Rock – Rolling

New Croton Review – Rolling

While the New Croton Review seeks poetry, fiction and non-fiction in English, we welcome the submission of translations of work written in other languages (as long as, if the author of the translated work is still entitled to copyright, the author has given permission for the translation). Those who submit English translation of their own work in Welsh may also submit the original Welsh version and should indicate whether they prefer that, if the translation is accepted for publication, the original version be included.

There are no geographical or age limitations. Click here to read the submission guidelines on our website. If your work is accepted, we’ll ask you to grant us the right to publish it, but you retain the copyright and the right to publish it elsewhere.

Expressions of Interest: Unwriting Workshops – 6 February

Paid opportunity for creative writers in Cardiff and South Wales

Are you a creative writer with one or more unfinished projects stored on your computer or hidden in a desk drawer? Do these projects raise complicated feelings for you, or perhaps even negative ones such as disappointment, frustration, or shame?

The Unwriting Workshops offer a safe, constructive, and research-informed space for you to return to and reimagine your unfinished work. You’ll be supported to reflect on the circumstances and conditions that shaped your experience of incompletion, as well as to cultivate a pragmatic and even positive attitude to unfinishedness as a regular part of creative practice.

Eight paid creative writers will participate in three in-person, catered workshops at Cardiff University from March–June 2026. They will also help to devise and deliver a showcase event at a public venue in Cardiff in July 2026, presented in collaboration with Literature Wales.

Participants will be asked to undertake a small amount of preparatory work for the workshops and to make themselves available to complete (brief!) surveys or virtual interviews at the beginning, middle, and end of the project.

Each of the selected creative writers will receive a £400 fee to be paid in a lump sum at the project’s conclusion. This flat rate covers the costs of the writers’ creative labour and materials, as well as their participation in the workshops and surveys/interviews. Participants will retain intellectual property for their created works.

The project will also offset the cost of participants’ travel to and from the workshops and public event, in addition to providing funding for catering and all other costs associated with these activities.

Email beestona@cardiff.ac.uk a statement of no more than 150 words indicating the nature of your unfinished work and why you’re interested in participating in this project. Please also include a short bio to give us a sense of your relevant experience.

M2M Books: Open Call for Poetry & Prose Submissions: 2026 Anthology – 13 March

Margin to Margin Books is excited to announce an open call for submissions for our second multi-community anthology. Provisionally titled Margin to Margin, this collection seeks to amplify a range of voices from the literary periphery.

For this second volume, we are expanding our horizons. While poetry remains at the heart of the project, we are also opening the door to prose. We invite submissions that speak to Marginalised Communities in the following categories:

• Poetry: Bold, beautiful, unfiltered.
• Short Stories: Narrative fiction exploring the complexities of identity and place.
• Essays: Personal reflections, social critiques, and lived experiences.

Open Call for Poetry & Prose Submissions: 2026 Anthology – Margin to Margin Books

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.

2025/26 Nature Chronicles Prize – 31 January

The prize is a global, biennial competition originating in the Lake District for essay-length, non-fiction – proudly regional yet international in scope. The winner will receive £10,000 and five runners up £1,000 each. The winning and shortlisted entries will be included in The Nature Chronicles Prize: 3 anthology, published by Saraband.

The competition is open to any work of non-fiction prose between 2,000 and 8,000 words long on a topic the writer considers to be contemporary nature writing. Entries must not have been published, self-published or accepted for publication in print or online. Essays, standalone extracts from unpublished books, and diaries may all be submitted. The Nature Chronicles Prize | An Award for Nature Writing

The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association’s Poetry and Essay Prizes 2025-26 – 2 February (10am)

The Keats-Shelley Memorial Association’s Poetry and Essay Prizes 2025-26 are open. As in previous years there are two competitions. The Keats-Shelley Prize, which is open to all, and the Young Romantics Prize, aimed at anyone aged between 16-18yrs. The Chair of this year’s judging panel is author, critic and journalist Rupert Christiansen.

Poets are asked to write a new work inspired by this year’s prize theme of “Dystopia” or “Utopia”, chosen to mark the 200^th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s novel, The Last Man.

Keats-Shelley essayists are invited to write on any aspect of the work and/or lives of the Romantics and their circles. Young Romantic essayists can respond to one of two questions set by the judges.

Keats-Shelley Prize winners receive £1000. Two highly commended entrants in each category will receive £500. Young Romantics winners receive £700. Two highly commended entrants in each category will receive £300. All finalists’ poems and essays will be published on the Keats-Shelley website and Keats-Shelley poetry and essay prize finalists will also be published in The Keats-Shelley Review. More information and how to enter both prizes: Keats-Shelley Memorial Association

Rhys Davies Short Story Competition – 16 February (midnight)

The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition is a distinguished national writing competition for writers born or living in Wales. Originally established in 1991, we are delighted to manage this prestigious award on behalf of The Rhys Davies Trust and in association with Parthian Books.

1st Prize – £1,000 sterling and publication in a short story anthology to be published by Parthian Books in 2026.

Runners-up/Finalist Prizes – £100 each and publication in a short story anthology to be published by Parthian Books in 2026.

Rhys Davies Short Story Competition – Swansea University

Poetry Wales Award – 16 February (23:59pm)

The Poetry Wales Award is our annual single-poem competition open to poets from anywhere in the world. We are grateful to Literature Wales for their sponsorship of the competition in the form of our first award prize of a stay at Tŷ Newydd writing centre.

Poets can submit up to five pieces of previously unpublished work for consideration. Poetry Wales Award – Poetry Wales

The Tower Poetry Competition – 19 February

The Tower Poetry Competition offers the UK’s most valuable prize for young poets. The competition is free to enter and it is open to students between 16 and 18 years of age who are educated in the UK.

The competition is judged by two guest judges and the Christopher Tower Student, Dr Anna Nickerson. Each year the theme is chosen with the intention of giving entrants free rein to interpret it as widely as they like.

The poet who writes the single best poem on the theme receives £5,000. There will be a second prize of £3,000, and a third prize of £1,500. Along with these, there will be ten runners up, who will each receive £500. The top three winners will also be offered a place on the Tower Poetry Summer School. The 2026 Competition is now open. The theme is ‘A Riddle’.

Enter the Tower Poetry Competition | Christ Church, University of Oxford

Next Generation Story Awards – 26 February

A not-for-profit awards program open to authors writing short stories worldwide is now accepting entries written in English.

Enter by February 26, 2026 to take advantage of this exciting opportunity to have your short story considered for cash prizes, awards, exposure, and recognition as one of the top short stories written this year! Next Generation Short Story Awards – Welcome

The 2026 Forward Prizes for Poetry – 15 March (11:59pm)

Whether you’re a publisher championing brilliant new voices, an editor celebrating outstanding single poems, or a performance poet ready to share your work – we want to hear from you.

Four categories, £17, 000 in prizes:

Best Collection (£10,000)

Best First Collection (£5,000)

Best Single Poem – Written (£1,000)

Best Single Poem – Performed (£1,000)

Forward Prizes for Poetry – Forward Arts Foundation

BBC Young Writers’ Award 2026 – 23 March

The BBC Young Writers’ Award with Cambridge University gives people in the UK aged between 14 -18 years the opportunity to submit short stories of up to 1,000 words.

There are amazing prizes and opportunities to be won. The five shortlisted writers will:

• have their story printed in an anthology
• have their story recorded by a professional actor, and available to listen to on BBC Sounds.
• receive experience days at Cambridge University and at BBC Broadcasting House including workshops with published authors.
• attend the award ceremony at the BBC’s Radio Theatre in London, where the overall winner of the 2026 BBC Young Writers Award and the 2026 BBC National Short Story Award will be announced live on Radio 4
• the winner of the 2026 BBC Young Writers’ Award will also receive one-to-one writing support from one of the judges and have the chance to pitch a short story idea to a BBC radio producer.

You can find out more information on the YWA Website www.bbc.co.uk/ywa and find lots of great tips and hints here www.bbc.co.uk/teach/articles/z8phm39

Royal Mint Museum Short Story Competition – 17 April

The Royal Mint Museum are passionate about increasing accessibility to our collection, promoting literacy and supporting community and they run a short story competition every year for 7- to 11-year-old children in the UK. Their next competition is opening soon and stories can be submitted between 16 February – 17 April 2026. 

The first-place winner will receive a gold coin, £5,000 for their school or local library, and their story illustrated by an artist, and there are more prizes to be won! You can view all the latest information here: https://www.royalmintmuseum.org.uk/learning/short-story-competition/

Bridport Prize – 31 May

The Bridport Prize is one of the most  prestigious awards in the literary world, so you’re in good company. Whether you’re writing poetry, a short story, flash fiction, novel or a memoir, we can’t wait to read your words. Home – Bridport Prize