Writing Spirit Award 2010

Writing Spirit Award 2010

Writing4all is delighted to announce the second annual Writing Spirit Award for Short Fiction and Poetry.

Fiction
First Prize: €1000
Second Prize:€200
Third Prize:€100

Poetry
First Prize: €1000
Second Prize:€200
Third Prize:€100

The competition is open to all nationalities and all genres. Entry fee is €7 per story and €7 per collection of poems (minimum of 4 poems, maximum of 10 poems). The prize winning stories, along with 17 merited stories will be published in an anthology at the end of the competition. The prize winning collections of poems, along with other merited poems will be published in a separate anthology when the competition has concluded.

Please read the full set of rules and guidelines below before entering your story or poems.

Deadline Dates
The contest opens 1st January 2010, and runs for four rounds throughout the year. The submission deadlines for both competitions are as follows:

First round:31st March
Second round:30th June
Third round:30th September
Fourth round:30th November

Each new round begins immediately after the end of the previous round (i.e. you may enter at any time from 1st Jan to 30th Nov).

At the end of each round, the best stories and collections of poems, as chosen by a panel of judges in the case of the fiction and as chosen by John W. Sexton in the case of the poetry, will be shortlisted for the Award. Each round's shortlist will be announced on the Writing4all website (www.writing4all.ie) shortly after the end of each round.

At the end of the competition, the judges will choose the six highest-ranking stories and John W. Sexton will choose the six highest ranking collections of poems from the shortlists. The top three winning stories will be chosen from these six stories by the Grand Judge, renowned author Fred Johnston. The top three winning collections of poems will be chosen from these six collections of poems by the Grand Judge, renowned poet John W. Sexton. The decisions of the judging panel, and thereafter of the Grand Judges, are final. No correspondence will be entered into in this regard.

Submission Format and Addresses
Story entries should be no more than 4,000 words (but there is no minimum word count) and must be typed, double spaced on one side of A4 (or equivalent) paper. Individual poems should be no more than 20 lines. Entries may be submitted by post to:

The Writing Spirit Award 2010
Spade EnterpriseCentre
North King Street
Smithfield
Dublin 7
Republic of Ireland

Alternatively, entrants may submit their work by e-mail to john@writing4all.ie Entries must be pasted into the body of the email; attachments will not be opened. Entries must also clearly have the words"The Writing Spirit Award 2010 - Fiction" or "The Writing Spirit Award 2010 - Poetry"in their subject lines to prevent being treated as spam.

Receipt of email submissions will be acknowledged. If you have not received an acknowledgement one week after submitting by email, please send a query to info@writing4all.ieReceipt of postal submissions will also be acknowledged (if an email address is provided in the cover letter). Please allow for the time it will take for postal entries to be received.

Multiple entries are allowed throughout the period of the contest. Entries will be judged anonymously by our judges. You may submit any number of stories and/or poems, and have any number of them on the shortlist.

Entries are allowed from ALL nationalities. Indeed, the judges are keen to see work from as many countries as possible. However, entries must be in the English language.

Story Rights and Conditions
Entries to the competition must NOT have been previously published in the English language, including electronically. However, entries CAN have been posted on the OurWritingGroup website, the Writing4all website or similar sites of a workshopping nature and do NOT need to be removed from the relevant site. Work of this nature does not qualify as 'previously published'. The work to be judged will be the version submitted to the competition as per the instructions above. Entries found to have been previously published in English will be disqualified from the contest. Stories and poems previously published in languages other than English are eligible to enter the contest.

Entries in each round must NOT be submitted or published elsewhere in any format until those stories and poems that have been chosen for the shortlist are announced on the Writing4all website after each round. If your story or poems have not been chosen for the shortlist after the round in which it was entered, you are free to submit them elsewhere.

Stories and poems that are chosen for the shortlist after each round must NOT be submitted or published elsewhere for the duration of the competition and until after the contents of the short fiction and poetry anthologies have been chosen and announced on the Writing4all website. Shortlisted stories and poems found to have been submitted or published elsewhere before the announcement will be disqualified from consideration for the Award and the anthologies.

Entry Fee Options
All stories and/or collections of poems (minimum of 4 poems, maximum of 10 poems) entered to the Writing Spirit Award 2010 must be accompanied by an entry fee of €7 (euro).

Payment may be made securely and easily via the PayPal button below this section. Note, you do NOT need a PayPal account to use this option. PayPal accepts payment from all major credit and debit cards and is internationally recognised as a fast, easy and secure way to make online payments (see www.paypal.com). Payments are made to our sister company Original Writing and your Paypal receipt will be from Original Writing Ltd.

You may use PayPal to pay for entries submitted by post or email. For entries paid by PayPal, please include your unique Transaction ID code (which will look something like 98B96318D4186023G) in your cover letter (for both postal or email entries). This code is provided to you by PayPal as you complete the payment process and allows us to validate your payment.

For entries from within the Republic of Ireland, the €7 entry fee may also be paid cheque. Cheques should be made payable to Writing4all Ltd.

Thank you for your interest in the competition and the very best of luck.