Applications call for Mslexia Fiction & Memoir Competition 2020: Short Story. The competition is open to women of any nationality from any country and welcomes stories of between 300 and 3,000 words in length (not including the title).

Prizes

• The winning writer of Mslexia Fiction & Memoir Competition will receive £3,000 and also have the prestige of being published in Mslexia, a credit shared with writers like Costa winner Angela Readman and novelist Peggy Riley.
• The winner will also have the opportunity to spend a week on an Arvon retreat, and receive a mentoring session with an editor at Virago – an experience that money can’t buy.
• Three other finalists will each receive £100. All four winning stories will be published in the December 2020 issue of Mslexia.
• In addition to that, there are lots of prizes for categories.

Categories

• Children’s & YA Novel Competition: for novels of at least 20,000 words in any genre for children and young people aged 18 and under. There is no need to define the age-group in your entry.
• Memoir & Life Writing Competition: for book-length prose of at least 50,000 words, written in the first person, that narrate events in the writer’s life and/or a quest or investigation she undertakes. There is no need to define the genre in your entry.
• Short Story Competition: for complete creative prose texts of up to 3,000 words.
• Flash Fiction Competition: for complete creative prose texts of up to 300 words.

Entries

• Please submit your work typed, double-spaced on A4 pages, single-sided, with pages numbered.
• Your entry will be judged anonymously, so do not put your name on the text pages of your entry.
• Add a separate cover page with your contact details, plus the title(s) of the work you are submitting.
• Once submitted, no alterations may be made to your entry.
• Your entry will not be returned, so please keep a copy. If you require confirmation of receipt of a postal entry, enclose an SAE labeled ‘Acknowledgement’.
• No entrant will win more than one prize in any one competition.
• Results are published in Mslexia magazine and listed on the Mslexia website.
• The winners and finalists of these four competitions will be announced in Mslexia magazine as follows:
• Short Story and Flash Fiction in the December 2020 edition; Children’s & YA and Memoir & Life Writing in the June 2021 edition.
• Copyright of any entry remains with the author, but Mslexia has the unrestricted right to publish the winning entries in its magazine, on its website, and in any related material for PR purposes.

Eligibilities

• Entries should be in English (or English dialect) and should not have been published or accepted for publication elsewhere.
• Entries that have won other competitions are not eligible.
• The Children’s & YA Novel Competition and the Memoir & Life Writing Competition are for unpublished novelists, memoirists, and biographers.
• Women who have had such a book published by a mainstream or independent publisher, for any age group, in any country, are not eligible.
• Self-published manuscripts are eligible.
• Entries should not be a translation of another author’s work.
• You do not have to subscribe to Mslexia to be eligible, but you do have to self-identify as a woman.
• The Mslexia Fiction & Memoir Competition will accept entries from women of any nationality from any country.

Read the rules before entering

See FAQs

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