The Manchester Fiction Prize is open internationally to anyone aged 16 or over (there is no upper age limit) and awards a cash prize of £10,000 to the writer of the best short story submitted. In addition to this, the 2009 Manchester Fiction Prize offered a bursary for study at MMU, or cash equivalent, to an entrant aged 18–25 as part of the Jeffrey Wainwright Manchester Young Writer of the Year Award.
Entrants are asked to submit a complete short story, which can be on any subject, and written in any style, but must be new work, not published (in print or online) or submitted for consideration elsewhere. In 2009 the maximum story length was 5,000 words, reduced to 3,000 for the 2011 competition.
The 2009 competition was judged by novelists and short story writers Sarah Hall (writer), M. John Harrison and Nicholas Royle. The prize-winners were announced at a gala ceremony on Friday 23 October 2009, held at Manchester Town Hall. The ceremony opened the 2009 Manchester Literature Festival 'Short Weekend' and featured readings from two of the judges (Hall and Royle) and the six short-listed stories. The evening was hosted by James Draper from the Manchester Writing School at MMU and Matthew Frost from the Manchester Literature Festival. Toby Litt took the £10,000 first prize and Michael E. Halmshaw was named the Manchester Young Writer of the Year. The runners up were Peter Deadman, Vicki Jarrett, Jennifer Mills and Alison Moore.
The Manchester Writing School launched the second Manchester Fiction Prize in January 2011 with Nicholas Royle once again acting as Head Judge. The number of judges was increased from three to four in 2011, with short story writers Heather Beck, John Burnside and Alison MacLeod joining Royle on the panel. While the main prize remained at £10,000, and the competition was still open to anyone aged 16 or over, the Young Writer of the Year element was dropped as the rise in UK university tuition fees made it financially unfeasible to offer a bursary. The 2011 Prize received a record number of entries - almost 1,900 from over 45 countries - and the judges were so impressed with the overall quality that they asked to increase the short-list from six to eight, and to commend an additional 31 stories ; the international nature of the competition was reflected in the make-up of the short-list, with four finalists from the UK, three from the USA and one from Canada. The prize was awarded at a ceremony held once again as part of the Manchester Literature Festival, this time taking place at Chetham's School of Music in the centre of Manchester on the evening of Friday 14 October; Draper and Frost returned as hosts, this time working as a comical double-act. Head Judge Nicholas Royle spoke about the difficulty of choosing a winner and announced that the panel had decided to split the prize, awarding a first prize of £7,500 to Krishan Coupland and a second prize of £2,500 to Richard Hirst. The runners up were Nicole Cullen, Garret Freymann-Weyr, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Alex Preston, Bethany Rogers and Judith Turner-Yamamoto. In 2013, the prize became an annual event .
Writers of the Future (WOTF) is a science fiction and fantasy story contest that was established by L. Ron Hubbard in the early 1980s. A sister contest, Illustrators of the Future, presents awards for science fiction art. Hubbard characterized the contest as a way of "giving back" to the field that had defined his professional writing life. The contest has no entry fee and is the highest-paying contest for amateur science-fiction and fantasy writers. Notable past winners of WOTF include Stephen Baxter, Karen Joy Fowler, James Alan Gardner, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Jay Lake, Michael H. Payne, Patrick Rothfuss, Robert Reed, Dean Wesley Smith, Sean Williams, Dave Wolverton, Nancy Farmer, and David Zindell.
Kamila Shamsie FRSL is a Pakistani and British writer and novelist who is best known for her award-winning novel Home Fire (2017). Named on Granta magazine's list of 20 best young British writers, Shamsie has been described by The New Indian Express as "a novelist to reckon with and to look forward to." She also writes for publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, Index on Censorship and Prospect, and broadcasts on radio.
Sefi Atta is a Nigerian-American novelist, short-story writer, playwright and screenwriter. Her books have been translated into many languages, radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC, and her stage plays have been performed internationally. Awards she has received include the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
Romesh Gunesekera FRSL is a Sri Lankan-born British author, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel Reef in 1994. He has judged a number of literary prizes and was Chair of the judges of Commonwealth Short Story Prize competition for 2015.
Gordon Burn was an English writer born in Newcastle upon Tyne and the author of four novels and several works of non-fiction.
Chika Nina Unigwe is a Nigerian-born Igbo author who writes in English and Dutch. In April 2014 she was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Previously based in Belgium, she now lives in the United States.
Nicholas Royle is an English novelist, editor, publisher, literary reviewer and creative writing lecturer.
Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet, fiction writer, essayist and blogger. He is also a professor of creative writing.
The Sapir Prize for Literature of Israel is a prestigious annual literary award presented for a work of literature in the Hebrew language. The prize is awarded by Mifal HaPayis, and is a part of the organization's cultural initiatives. It bears the name of the late Pinhas Sapir, a former Finance Minister of Israel, and was first awarded in 2000.
Claire Keegan is an Irish writer known for her short stories, which have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, Granta, and The Paris Review.
The Manchester Poetry Prize is a literary award celebrating excellence in creative writing. It was launched by Carol Ann Duffy and The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2008, and was the first phase of the annual Manchester Writing Competition. Open internationally to writers aged 16 or over, the Manchester Poetry Prize awards a cash prize of £10,000 to the writer of the best portfolio of poems submitted. In addition, during the 2008 and 2010 Prizes, a bursary for study at MMU was awarded to an entrant aged 18–25 as part of the Jeffrey Wainwright Manchester Young Writer of the Year Award. Entrants are asked to submit a portfolio of poetry. The poems can be on any subject but must be new work, not published elsewhere.
Ross Raisin FRSL is a British novelist.
Myriad Editions is an independent UK publishing house based in Brighton and Hove, specialising in topical atlases, graphic non-fiction and original fiction, whose output also encompasses graphic novels that span a variety of genres, including memoir and life writing, as well political non-fiction. The company was set up in 1993 by Anne Benewick, together with Judith Mackay, as a packager of infographic atlases.
The New Quarterly is a literary magazine based in Waterloo, Ontario that publishes short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction from emerging and established Canadian writers.
Leone Ross is a British novelist, short story writer, editor, journalist and academic, who is of Jamaican and Scottish ancestry.
Muslim Writers Awards is an annual British award ceremony, which aims to recognise, showcase and celebrate literary talent within the UK's Muslim community. It was established in 2006, with the Young Muslim Award category established in 2010.
Ber Anena born and previously published as Harriet Anena is a Ugandan writer and performer, whose writing includes poetry, nonfiction and fiction. She is the author of a collection of poems, A Nation In Labour, published in 2015, won the 2018 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. The Economist described her poetry performance as "an arresting evocation of love and war".
Moniack Mhor is a creative writing centre in Scotland. Based in the Scottish Highlands, Moniack Mhor is fourteen miles from Inverness. The centre is a registered charity and is supported by Creative Scotland.
The Bai Meigui Translation Prize is a translation prize awarded annually by the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing, at the University of Leeds.
The Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award was a competition for short stories in New Zealand which ran every two years from 1959 to 2003 and every year from 2004 to 2014. The competition had multiple categories, including an essay section until 1963, a supreme award for short stories, and awards for novice and young writers. It was sponsored by the Bank of New Zealand and in 2010 was renamed the BNZ Literary Awards. Since the competition's disestablishment in 2015 the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Society has presented the annual Mansfield Short Story Award to high school students in Wellington.
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