Deadline: 30 September 2010
Eligibility: entrants must be female of any nationality and from any country
Reading Fee: £10-15
Accepts (genre): short stories
Prize/Payment: £1,000
For the first time since the Asham Award began in 1996, there will be a theme to the competition. Entrants are being invited to write a ghost story (which can be set in the past or the present) or let their imaginations run really wild, and go Gothic.
Asham 2010 sees the start of their partnership with Virago Press, and with one of their greatest storytellers, Sarah Waters, among the judges, they’ve set the mood with a few lines from her latest novel The Little Stranger (see left).
Sarah will be joined by Lennie Goodings, publisher of Virago and by novelist and short story writer Polly Samson.Polly will also contribute to the anthology, along with Naomi Alderman, who won third prize in the 2004 Asham Award and the Orange Award for New Writers with her first novel, Disobedience. Fellow contributors are Kate Clanchy, who won the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award and Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah, winner of the 2009 Guardian First Book Award.
The Asham Award is supported by Much Ado Books, the Booker Prize Foundation, the Garrick Trust and Lewes Town Council.
The 2010 ASHAM AWARD: Ghost or Gothic?
First prize: £1,000
Second prize: £500
Third prize: £300
Sponsored by Much Ado Books of Alfriston
Nine runners-up will receive £100 each
Deadline: 30 September 2010
Maximum length: 4000 words
More information here.
