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The Plaza Prizes: Crime, Memoir, Literary, Poetry & Poetry Prose Competitions
Deadlines 31st January 2023 – 31st March 2023
There is something for every writer at the Plaza Prizes, whatever you write!
Crime: First Chapters. Send us your first 5,000 words, plus a One-Pager (300-word summary)
Deadline 31st January 2023
First Prize: £1500. The winning Crime: First Chapters entry will be published on The Plaza Prizes website. The winner will also receive a one-to-one tutorial and detailed feedback from the judge, bestselling crime writer Sam Blake.
Details here: https://theplazaprizes.com/competition/crime-masterpiece/
Memoir: First Chapters. Send us your first 5,000 words, plus a One-Pager (300-word summary)
Deadline 31st January 2023
Toby Litt is the judge of our inaugural Memoir: First Chapters competition. He is a novelist, short story writer, poet, musician, essayist, activist, and lately—a memoirist. Galley Beggar Press published his family memoir, Wrestliana, in 2018, and will publish his memoir, A Writer’s Diary in January 2023.
First Prize £1500. The winning Memoir will be published on The Plaza Prizes website. The winner will receive a one-to-one tutorial and detailed feedback from the judge, Toby Litt.
Details here: https://theplazaprizes.com/competition/memoir-masterpiece/
Poetry: Poems up to 60 lines.
Deadline 28th February 2023
On whatever subject fascinates you. You can write less if you want to, but you have 60 lines to express yourself fully.
Our judge, Richard Skinner, is poet, novelist, essayist and prolific writer of non-fiction. He has written seven collections of poetry, the most recent of which are Dream Into Play and White Noise Machine. He has published three novels with Faber & Faber, and five books of non-fiction. His works have won awards and been translated into eight languages.
First Prize: £1000. The 10 shortlisted entries will be published in The Plaza Prizes Anthology, which will be launched at our inaugural awards ceremony, August 2023.
Details here: https://theplazaprizes.com/competition/poetry/
Prose Poetry: up to 50 lines.
Deadline 31st March 2023
Send us your prose poems. Be experimental. Play with reader expectations.
Our judge, Maya C. Popa, is an American poet. She has published two collections, Wound is the Origin of Wonder (Norton 2022 / Picador 2023), and American Faith) (Sarabande, 2019) and three chapbooks. Her poems, essays and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, and The London Magazine.
First Prize £500. The 10 shortlisted prose poems will also be published in The Plaza Prizes Anthology, which will be launched at our awards ceremony, August 2023.
Details here: https://theplazaprizes.com/competition/prose-poetry/
Literary Fiction First Chapters. Send us your first 5,000 words, plus a One-Pager (300-word summary)
Deadline 31st March 2023
First Prize £1500. The winning Literary: First Chapters entry will be published on The Plaza Prizes website. The winner will also receive a one-to-one tutorial and detailed feedback from the judge, Simon Trewin.
Simon Trewin is the judge of Literary: First Chapters. He has been a literary agent for the last 30 years and has launched the careers of many internationally published novelists, including John Boyne, Andrew Miller, Mary Costello, Chloe Esposito and Sam Blake. He now runs his own boutique literary agency out of London where he is also developing projects for film, theatre and digital platforms.
Details here: https://theplazaprizes.com/competition/literary-first-chapters/
Ensure you read all terms and conditions before entering any competition.
