New Writers Logline Competition 2026 – Results
We like to organise regular free-to-enter writing competitions for subscribers to our free monthly newsletter. The latest, the New Writers Logline Competition, attracted more than 120 entries.
We sought the loglines (or the ‘premise’ or ‘hook’) for original novels (whether completed or not). We received so many fascinating, intriguing, weird and wonderful loglines.
After much deliberation, the judges have selected the winner, who has been awarded the £50 prize, plus one free entry to the New Writers Novel Prize 2026 (which is open to the first 500 words of your novel or novella until 31st October 2026 and has a top prize of £1,000… DETAILS HERE).
If you’d like details of our future free-to-enter writing competitions, please sign up for our free monthly newsletter.
The winning entry is below, followed by details of the entries that made the shortlist and longlist. As always, thank you to everyone who entered.
New Writers Logline Competition 2026 – Results
Winning Entry
The Contaminant
by Claudia Plamadeala
In a sterile future where emotion is outlawed, touch is illegal and faces must stay hidden, two scientists secretly implant their son with forbidden memories of the old world. Hunted as a contaminant, he carries the one thing the system tried to erase: the memory of love.
Bio: Claudia is a London-based emerging writer with a fascination for things that have not yet come to pass, for things hidden in plain sight that can fracture the world we know. Claudia imagines dystopian worlds and populates them with ordinary people fighting to keep their humanity intact. This is the first time Claudia has won a writing competition, and it gives her the courage to begin sharing her worlds with you.
Shortlist
Here are the entries that were selected for the shortlist (in alphabetical order by entry title):
- Archives of the Abyss by Astrid Hales
- Dead Weight by Myca Angela Namocot
- Immune to Me by Rachel Claire Seeling
- The Ages of Elisabet by Anne Meale
- The Approved Version of Myself by Ugnė Balandytė
Longlist
And here are those that caught the attention of the judges enough to make the longlist (again, in alphabetical order by entry title):
- Death’s Final Warning by Grace Ward
- Freets by TV Brown
- GRAB ‘EM BY THE PUSSY (Or: How I Became a Feminist Assassin) by Lorrie Sprecher
- I was a Zombie by Luke Maloney
- Legacy of Death by Kevin Reid
- Milk and Kindness by Ruth Bradshaw
- The Accused by Heather Bingham
- The Cost of Dying by Alex Holmes
- The Ending of Joan by Layla Wren
- The Witch Glass by Susanna Callaghan
- Transformation by Stefania Lazar
Thank you once again to everyone who entered the Logline Competition. To find out about our future writing competitions, and the best writing contests run by other organisations, please sign up for our monthly newsletter. We usually send only one newsletter email each month and never share your email address or other information with anyone else.
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