It's time to flex those writing muscles after the pleasures of Christmas-New Year. What better way to start than with the Fish Publishing Writing Contests? Short, sharp and very sweet might be just what is needed.
County Cork (Ireland) based Fish Publishing hosts 4 writing contests a year, with a view to launching talented new writers and getting them into print. They attract heavyweight Irish writers and poets as judges and patrons and you have the option of paying extra for a full critique of your submission. Michael Collins is the judge for the 2012 Flash Fiction Prize (word limit: 300 words) and US Poet Laureate Billy Collins will judge the Poetry Prize (word limit: 200 words). The Inaugural Short Memoir Award (4000 word limit) will be judged by David Shields.
Entry fee: EUR14 for first entry, EUR6 for subsequent entries. Option to pay extra to receive a professional critique of your submission.
Prize: EUR1000 for first prize in Poetry and Flash Fiction contests; EUR2000 for Short Memoir. Other prizes include accommodation at the Anam Cara Writers Retreat in Spain. Winner and up to 10 shortlisted entires selected by the judges in each category are published in the annual Fish Anthology, which is launched during the West Cork Literary Festival each year.
Open to: Authors worldwide, writing in English.
Deadlines: 30 January 2012 (Short Memoir)
30 March 2012 (Poetry and Flash Fiction)
Short Story 2012 contest to open shortly - check the Fish website
Website: Fish Publishing
Just seen the winners and runners up of the 2012 memoir competition - didn't enter it and am not Irish, so this is not sour grapes but -
ReplyDelete6 writers from the USA in the top 8 places ?
( including first, second, third, fourth, fifth and eighth); one from Canada sixth, one from Australia seventh, and possibly only one from Ireland ( ninth place, - ten could be from Ireland, but place is not noted).
How can this be?
Replying to my own message here- Apologies, the info above isn't quite accurate - only the first three stories are placed ( first, second, third) the other seven stories are classed as runners up in no particular order, so that changes the statistics a bit - six stories from USA in the top ten in total, which doesn't sound quite so skewed.
ReplyDelete