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Northern Writers' Awards 2010: eligibility & how to enter
NORTHERN WRITERS’ AWARDS 2010
Welcome to the Northern Writers’ Awards. The first Northern Writers’ Awards were announced in 2000 and since then 89 writers have received support. From research undertaken in 2007 we have found that over 75% of previous winners have gone on to publish work that was supported by the awards.
The awards are run to support writers who are looking to move their work towards publication. You may enter for a Time to Write Award if you are an established writer with a history of publication; a Northern Promise Award if you are a new writer who is not yet fully published; and for the special Andrea Badenoch Fiction Award if you are a female writer over the age of 42. Read on for more information about each awards strand.
The judges for the 2010 awards are:
Julia Churchill of the Greenhouse Literary Agency. The agency operates in both the UK and the US and specialises in representing children’s authors. Julia founded her reputation as a talent-spotter and deal-maker at the Darley Anderson Agency, where she developed the agency’s prestigious children’s books list. She joined the Greenhouse in 2009 and is on the lookout for new storytelling talent.
Literary agent Madeleine Buston is Deputy Managing Director at the Darley Anderson Literary, TV & Film Agency. Madeleine handles all kinds of work with a commercial focus including accessible literary, general fiction, and women’s fiction for a wide readership. Madeleine is also the Head of Rights at the Agency, handling US, foreign, and film and TV rights.
Writer Daljit Nagra, whose first collection of poetry, Look We Have Coming to Dover!, is one of the breakthrough poetry collections of the first decade of the century. It won him the South Bank Show Decibel Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was nominated for the Costa Poetry Prize and the Guardian First Book Award.
The judges will be chaired by New Writing North’s director, Claire Malcolm.
The deadline for entries for the awards is Wednesday 10 March 2010. Work must arrive by post before this day. To enter you must download an application form and send copies of this along with your work. Entries that do not adhere to the specified entry requirements will not be considered. Please note that entries must be posted to our PO Box address to be eligible and that we are unable to accept hand-delivered submissions.
We intend that entering your work for the awards is an open and accessible process. If you would like to enter your work, please follow the guidelines below. Working through each one will help you decide which scheme you should apply for and to check that you are eligible to enter.
1. YOUR ELIGIBILITY
Geographical eligibility
You may enter for the awards if you are permanently resident in Tyne and Wear, the Tees Valley, County Durham or Northumberland and have lived here for at least one year. The awards are supported by Arts Council England North East and as such are designated for this region of the UK. You must send proof of your name and address when entering for the awards by sending a photocopy of a utility bill or other document.
Eligibility of work
We accept submissions of poetry, prose, children’s fiction, biography, creative life writing and creative literary non-fiction. We do not support factual or scientific writing, local history or self-publishing projects. If you are concerned that your work may not be eligible, please contact us before submitting your work.
Stage of development of the work
The submission that you enter for the awards must be current work in progress. For poets, this means that we expect you to be able to present work in progress from a collection of poetry and to give information about the scope of the collection that you wish to complete. For novelists and prose writers we expect to see an extract of work supported by a synopsis that fully describes the book that you are working to complete.
2. THE CATEGORIES OF AWARDS
To apply for an award you must firstly decide which category to enter your work for:
TIME TO WRITE AWARD
These awards are aimed at supporting previously published writers to complete work in progress or to spend time developing a new direction in their work (for example moving from writing prose to poetry*). The awards aim to ‘buy time’ for the writer, either by providing support to replace lost income or to enable prolonged periods of writing that would not otherwise be possible. To enter, writers must have published at least one book with a recognised publisher.
* Writers who are submitting an application to support a change of direction in their work are strongly advised that they should submit work that demonstrates their ability to write in the new form.
NORTHERN PROMISE AWARD
These awards aim to provide support for new writers whose works shows particular promise and to move their work towards publication. Writers awarded support under this category may also be offered mentoring to develop their work, detailed manuscript appraisal and feedback alongside a financial award.
Each year at the discretion of the judges, a special named award is given to a poet who receives an award in this category. Named in memory of poet Andrew Waterhouse, the Waterhouse Award will acknowledge the work of a writer whose work is making a particular contribution to the North East’s literary scene. Andrew Waterhouse died in October 2001. His published work includes the collection In (Rialto), which won the Forward First Collection Prize. Andrew received a Northern Writers’ Award in 2000. The award in his name was created in 2002 to mark his contribution to poetry in the region.
THE ANDREA BADENOCH FICTION AWARD
Andrea Badenoch was a gifted Newcastle writer who produced four novels in the last few years of her life. She died from breast cancer in 2004 at the peak of her literary career. This annual award which bears her name was established by her family and friends in association with New Writing North and is supported mainly by donations from individuals. The award seeks to provide support for women writers over the age of 42, which is how old Andrea was when she submitted her first novel. The winning writer of this award will receive a cash award and free entry to a short writing course run by Newcastle University. The winning work will also be read by Andrea’s agent, Jane Conway. This award is judged separately to the other Northern Writers’ Awards by a panel of Andrea’s friends and family.
If you meet the criteria, you can apply for The Andrea Badenoch Award as well as one of the other programmes but you must enter your work separately to each scheme. It is only possible to win one award each year.
Please note that is not possible to apply for both a Time to Write Award and Northern Promise Award.
3. THE SCALE OF AWARDS
The awards fund for 2010 is £25,000. The judges of the awards will decide how this money is awarded across all of the winning writers. Awards in the past have ranged from small bursaries of £500 to major awards of £10,000.
4. HOW TO APPLY
When you have decided which scheme to apply for, please follow the instructions below to complete your applications.
HOW TO APPLY FOR A TIME TO WRITE AWARD
You will need to submit two copies of the following documents to enter for an award:
1. Letter of application
Click here to download an outline structure for this letter to follow.
2. Synopsis of your book
A summary of the aims and ambitions of your book. For a novel or prose work, it should show the structure of the narrative and explain how the story will be told. For a collection of poetry, the synopsis should detail the scope and themes of the collection.
3. Your work in progress
Prose: Please send up to 5,000 words, ideally beginning with the first chapter.
Poetry: Please send up to 30 poems.
You will also need to submit one copy of the Equality Monitoring Form with your entry (click here to download a form to fill in).
You also need to send one photocopy of a utility bill or other document that confirms your name and address. Please do not send bank statements or other documents which may contain sensitive information.
HOW TO APPLY FOR A NORTHERN PROMISE AWARD
You will need to submit two copies of the following documents to enter for an award:
1. Letter of application
Click here to download an outline structure for this letter to follow.
2. Synopsis of your book
A summary of the aims and ambitions of your book. For a novel or prose work, it should show the structure of the narrative and explain how the story will be told. For a collection of poetry, the synopsis should detail the scope and themes of the collection.
3. Your work in progress
Prose: Please send up to 5,000 words, ideally beginning with the first chapter.
Poetry: Please send up to 30 poems.
You will also need to submit one copy of the Equality Monitoring Form with your entry (click here to download a form to fill in).
You also need to send one photocopy of a utility bill or other document that confirms your name and address. Please do not send bank statements or other documents which may contain sensitive information.
HOW TO APPLY FOR AN ANDREA BADENOCH AWARD
You will need to submit three copies of three documents to enter for an award. They are as follows:
1. Letter of application
Click here to download an outline structure for this letter to follow.
2. Synopsis of work
A summary of the aims and ambitions of the book. For a novel or prose work it should show the structure of the narrative and show how the story will be told.
3. Example of work in progress
Please send up to 5,000 words, ideally beginning with the first chapter.
You will also need to submit one copy of the Equality Monitoring Form with your entry (click here to download a form to fill in).
You also need to send one photocopy of a utility bill or other document that confirms your name and address. Please do not send bank statements or other documents which may contain sensitive information.
5. YOUR AGREEMENT
By entering your work for the awards you are confirming to us that the work that you are submitting is your own original work. New Writing North withholds the right to withdraw an award if it is discovered that a writer has fabricated any information in their application.
6. SUBMITTING YOUR WORK
The deadline for receipt of applications is Wednesday 10 March 2010.
Please note that:
1. Submissions cannot be hand delivered to our office or sent by email.
2. We will acknowledge all submissions of work by email. If you do not receive an acknowledgment, please do not assume that your work has arrived.
3. We will not pay excess postage costs for work that arrives without the correct postage.
4. Submissions received after the deadline will not be eligible.
5. Submissions that are received which do not conform to the stated entry requirements will not be eligible for entry and will be returned unread.
6. We will write to everyone who entered for an award and inform them of the outcome of their application once the judging process has concluded. You will hear from us no later than by the end of June 2010.
7. Writers who are offered awards will be required to take part in awards events and readings and participate in media activity to support the awards.
8. To be considered, work does not have to be of a ‘northern’ flavour or have a ‘northern’ theme. Writers who are writing books set in the North East but who do not live in the region do not qualify for entry.
Please send your submission to:
Northern Writers’ Awards
New Writing North
PO Box 1277
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE99 5BP
HOW TO CONTACT US
If you have any questions about how to enter for an award please contact the office via email at olivia@newwritingnorth.com.
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