EXTENDED DEADLINE – JUNE 8TH

We apologise for a recent problem which has rendered our website temporarily available. Our web hosts have been working on the problem, but have not yet completed work on the online submission form. We hope this will be enabled very shortly.

As online entry has been unavailable for over ten days, we have decided to extend the closing date to Monday 8th June and hope that you will take the opportunity to submit your entry later.

In the meantime, you do still have the option of entering by post, as detailed on the ‘Enter Now’ page.

As in previous years, we welcome stories of 1000 – 2200 words on any theme. See ‘Rules and Prize Details'(bottom right) for further information and use the ‘Enter Now’ button (top right) for submission information.

Our judge for 2026 is the novelist Claire Fuller, who won the 2021 Costa Novel Award with ‘Unsettled Ground’.

You may read last year’s winning stories by following the clicking on the titles below:

First prize:  James Lowther for ‘Seventy-two’.

Second prize: Daniel George for ‘Giles and the Alien at the Door’.

Third Prize: Janet Jones for ‘Mixed Messages’.

Local first prize: Sally Bramley for ‘Yesterday’s Newspapers’.

Please see the ‘About’ page for details of a competition for young writers in Frome and the surrounding area.