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Our current competition: New Writers Novel Prize 2026 – Deadline: 31st October 2026. Top Prize: £1,000 + Lifetime Access to The Novel Factory (Version 3).
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The Cheltenham Poetry Festival poetry competition is for unpublished poems in the English language. The first prize is £300 plus the opportunity to appear at the 2027 Cheltenham Poetry Festival (either online or in Cheltenham). There is no theme to this competition, so simply send your best poems. You can enter as many poems as you wish.
The Festival judge is the amazing poet Rosie Garland, who writes poetry, long and short fiction and sings with post-punk band The March Violets. She is the author of The Palace of Curiosities (which won the Mslexia Novel Competition and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize), Vixen and The Night Brother, which was described by The Times as “a delight… with shades of Angela Carter.” Her new novel, The Fates (Quercus) is a retelling of the Greek myth of the Fates.
Her latest poetry collection, What Girls do in the Dark (Nine Arches Press), was shortlisted for the 2021 Polari Prize. Val McDermid has named her “one of the most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today”.
Started in 2011, Cheltenham Poetry Festival is one of the UK’s top poetry festivals. The in-Cheltenham Festival runs for 10 days in April. It also has a year round online programme of readings and workshops.
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