Prizes: Winner: £300 (and named Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year(; Second place: £150; Third place: £75
Word Limit: 60 lines maximum (excluding title and line breaks)
Judges: Luigi Marchini (Chair, SaveAs Writers Group), Kerry Rawlinson (Joint Winner, Poet of the Year 2024) and Gary Michael Studley (Joint Winner, Poet of the Year 2024)
Deadline: 23.59 (UK time) on Tuesday 17th June 2025
Entry Fee: FREE
Prizes: 1st Place: £50 plus one free entry to the New Writers Poetry Competition 2025, publication on the NewWriters.org.uk website and in the next New Writers Anthology
Word Limit: three lines with a total of 17 syllables (excluding title)
Theme: Hope
Category: Poetry Competitions
How to Enter: Send your entry as an attachment (Word doc or Google doc please) to: competitions@newwriters.org.uk with the email subject "Haiku Competition".
Theme: A poem, story or short essay in response to the open exhibition 'Shelter'
Criteria: Entrants must be based in the West Midlands and encounter significant barriers to the art world, such as due to health, disability, social circumstance or isolation.
Entry Fee: Early bird (until 31st March 2025): £10 for 1 story, £17 for 2 stories, £20 for 3 stories. From 1st April 2023 to 30th June 2025: £12 for 1 story, £20 for 2 stories, £24 for 3 stories
Prizes: 1st Prize: £1,000, your face on the To Hull And Back Anthology cover and a trip to Hull on a Harley Davidson; 2nd Prize: £200; 3rd Prize: £100; 3 x Highly Commended: £70; 14 x Shortlisted: £35
Word Limit: 2,500 words maximum including the title (no minimum)
Word Limit: Stories up to 2,500 words; poems up to 40 lines; creative non-fiction up to 1,000 words
Eligibility: Entrants to all competitions must be a minimum of 18 years old at time of entry, but the competition is open to all, including non-UK based writers.
Judges: Short Story, Jen Calleja (Poetry), Creative Non-Fiction
Category: James Young (Short Story), Poetry, Sam Davey (Creative Non-Fiction)
At NewWriters.org.uk, we curate the best and most trusted current and upcoming writing competitions for writers in the UK and internationally — including flash fiction, short stories, poetry, novels, and non-fiction. Each competition listing includes the deadline, prize details, word limit, entry fee, and eligibility so you can quickly decide which contests fit your writing goals.
If you find this page and our site useful, please consider making a small donation through our Ko-fi page. This will help us offer regular free-to-enter competitions and free entries to our paid-entry competitions for those on low incomes.
Please sign up to our free monthly newsletter. Subscribers gain exclusive access to our free-to-enter competitions, entrance into free prize draws, latest writing competitions and events.