Significant Ink: Newcastle – Eligibility, FAQs and Conditions of Entry

If you cannot attend our free workshops, you are still welcome to apply. 

Yes, you need to permanently reside in the  North East Mayoral Strategic Authority (County Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside or Sunderland).  

Winners of this award must not be in full-time education or another government programme. You may still be in education when applying, but must be sure you have left education by the time the Significant Ink programme begins in September 2026. 

You must be over 18 years of age to enter. The Young Northern Writers’ and Matthew Hale awards are for writers aged 11 to 18 years of age.   

Global majority is a shortened version of the term people of the global majority. It refers to all ethnic groups except white British and other white groups, including white minorities. Global majority includes people from black, Asian, mixed, and other ethnic groups who are often racialised as ‘ethnic minorities’.  (NCVO)   

Yes, we are supporting and encouraging new or emerging writers from the global majority. 

Please format your work as double-spaced for prose, 12-point text. You’re free to choose a font that appeals to you but avoid anything that doesn’t suit the tone of your work.  

Ideally, you should enter Chapter 1 followed by as many consecutive chapters as allowed within the word limit. If you feel strongly that you would like to enter work from different parts of the manuscript, this is acceptable as long as you provide clear context.  

No, please don’t. All our awards are judged anonymously.  

The word and page limit for each award is a guide. Don’t worry if you go slightly over (or under) the limit in order to submit a complete chapter, but please be as close as possible.  

Yes you are welcome to apply for the Northern Writing Awards. 

Yes. It’s useful for us to know if you already have an agent representing your work. Please only mention having an agent if you have actually signed a representation agreement with an agency. 

As the awards exist to support work in progress you cannot enter work that is completed and for which a publishing deal is secured.  We define a book deal as being a signed contract with a publisher.   You should so far have not published a full-length work (a novel, memoir or poetry collection) but may have published individual short stories or poems, or a poetry pamphlet.    

No. The awards are aimed at supporting new work and work-in-progress, so work that has been previously published as a book or e-book is not eligible.  

The entries are judged anonymously at all stages of the process. The reading team and judges will not see any of the monitoring information you submit, which is an important part of ensuring the judging process is fair and even. 

You will need to include your name when you register but please leave it off your application questions and don’t include it on any part of your submission, such as the title page or as a header or footer, or in the document file name.  

Submissions will be read internally at New Writing North.  A shortlist will then be passed to writers Emily Low and Ashley Thorpe to select the three winners. 

We would rather writers used awards funding to support their time to write through buying time off from work commitments, childcare or to fund creative retreats. Please do not make explicit asks for technical equipment in your submission as this will weaken your application.  

Due to the amount of submissions we receive, it is more manageable to accept digital applications. We use an online portal called Submittable which is an external company that many other organisations use. If you have submitted to any other programme that uses Submittable, you may already have an account. We advise you to submit via a computer rather than a mobile device, but if that isn’t an option for you we recommend using the Submittable app.  

Unpublished: you have never published in magazines, websites or anthologies, or your work has not been broadcast or staged yet.  

Emerging: your work has appeared online, in magazines, pamphlet form or anthologies, but you are yet to publish a full-length work. If a scriptwriter, your work has begun to be performed or broadcast.  

Published: you have published one full-length work (novel, collection of short stories or poetry collection) or you have had a full script performed or broadcast.  

Established: you have published two or more full-length works (novels, collections of short stories or poetry collections) or had two or more plays or TV episodes staged or broadcast.  

Narrative non-fiction has stylistic and structural similarities to fiction but deals instead with factual or mostly factual subject matter. For the Northern Writers’ Awards, our definition of the work that fits into this category includes biography, memoir, nature writing and non-fiction with a strong literary intent.  

By submitting work for an award you are agreeing to it being read by awards sifters, judges and staff at New Writing North. The copyright of your work stays with you at all times and New Writing North does not exert or ask for any rights over your work at any point in the process.  

Each year we produce de-personalised statistical information on entrants for the awards, which we report to Arts Council England, our funders. We look at entries by gender, ethnicity, geography and age. Undertaking this work helps us to see if we need to work harder to attract entries from any underrepresented groups or locations. No personal data is included in the reporting or used in any other way during this process.  

We use Submittable to receive your application, which allows you to maintain control over our access to your work – you can withdraw it at any time. Read more about Submittable’s data policy here 

We understand that some of the questions on the application form are detailed and personal. We ask optional evaluation research questions which are not part of the application process. They will in no way impact your application. Please see here for more information on how we may use your application data. 

You will only receive future correspondence from New Writing North if you have specifically signed up to receive our email newsletters as part of the submission process. This is not mandatory and once you have signed up you can unsubscribe at any time. We do not share your data or personal information with any other businesses or organisations and we abide by all data protection legislation. 

New Writing North has a Single Equality Scheme statement that underpins all of our activities and which is reviewed annually by our board of trustees. If you wish to obtain a copy of it, please contact [email protected].  

If you have any further questions, please contact [email protected].