The Newcomer Prize

for short stories

We’re always working to discover new authors and new stories to publish alongside our regular contributors. The Newcomer Prize is part of this: it’s only open to authors who have not been previously published by The Fiction Desk, and who have not yet published a novel or collection of short stories on paper.

We welcome the same range of literary and crossover genre fiction to the Newcomer Prize that we feature in the pages of our anthologies. (If you’ve not yet read us, it’s worth picking up one or two of our anthologies to see what we publish. You could always start at the beginning, with Various Authors.)

How to Enter

The Newcomer Prize is open now for entries, and the deadline is midnight (UK time) on Friday, 6 November 2015.

This year, there’s a first prize of £500 and a second prize of £250. The entry fee is £8 per story.

How to Enter

To enter the competition, please use our online form, which you can find here.

If you’d like to hear more from us about the competition, and be reminded before the deadline, you might want to consider signing up for our newsletter.

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible to enter a story or stories for the Newcomer Prize, you need to meet the following conditions:

• The story you are entering must not have been published anywhere before, including in print, digital formats, or online.
• You have not been published previously by The Fiction Desk.
• You have not had a novel or collection of short stories published in physical, printed format. (Ebook-only or website publications don’t matter, as long as they don’t include the story you’re entering.)

However, these things don’t affect eligibility:

• You can still enter if you have published short stories previously in other magazines or anthologies. (Just not with The Fiction Desk.)
• You can still enter if you have previously published novels or short story collections, as long as they are only online or in ebook formats (eg Scribd, or Kindle).
• Non-fiction publications in any format do not affect eligibility.
• Any books due for publication after January 1st, 2016, do not affect eligibility.

For full terms of entry, please see the entry form.