Villain

Have some fun with a baddie this month

Poetry Open to all

FEBRUARY Lewis Carroll Celebrate 125 years since the

Cross My Heart

I AM WRITING SHORT STORY COMPETITION

WELCOME

Ask anyone writer-adjacent – partners, children, parents colleagues,

Welcome...

Dear Reader Welcome to our regular supplement roundup

The world of writing

SO LONG MR SNOWMAN

ONCE UPON A TIME...

Back in 1992, folklorist, writer and poet Neil

TEXTBOOK PUBLISHERS PLAN TECH TO CONTROL SECONDHAND MARKET

JT/Gary Dalkin Textbook publishers – as have all

GIANT SLAYED

Amazon customer book reviews can be erudite, surreal,

LETTERS

STAR LETTER

FLASHES

Scribble’s annual short story competition has the theme

GLOBAL CHAPBOOK MARKET

Go West PDR Lindsay-Salmon

Know your objective

Noema is a new zine and print magazine

Museum entry

The Falconer Museum is celebrating its 150th anniversary

Spooktacular stories

The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award Fall 2022

GLOBAL FAITH MARKET

Christian times

NOTHING TO LOSE

Nihilist Poet Militia: West is a fierce new

Find common ground

The theme for the Waltham Forest Poetry Competition

Novel Ideas

Words add up

FLASHES

Win a £100 prize for green-themed Santa stories

UK CHILDREN’S MARKET

Young writers wanted

HELPING WRITERS BLOOM

Kallisto Gaia Press is ‘a non-profit literary organisation

Ink out a short play

Leading short play company INK stages fifty new

New prize from new writers

The inaugural New Writers Flash Fiction Competition 2022

INTERNATIONAL ZINE SCENE

PDR Lindsay-Salmon

FLASHES

Bath Magg, a magazine of new poetry published

GLOBAL LITERARY MARKET

Find a safe home PDR Lindsay-Salmon

Nature matters

The three shortlists for the James Cropper Wainwright

Get Bookshop Day booked in!

Booklovers, get 8 October bookmarked in your diaries.

UK POETRY MARKET

Poetry with hidden potential

The write kind of love

For the 2023 Writers’ & Artists’ Short Story

Give it a thrilling twist

The new Crime Essays Short Story Contest 2022

Time flies

Make travelling time into productive time, urges Patrick Forsyth

UK SPECFIC MARKET

A lush haunt for writers Tina Jackson

High-flying Society prizes

The Society of Authors 2023 Awards are open

Contracted out (of cash)

From the OTHE R SIDE OF THE DESK

Setting out your synopsis

A lot of writers fear putting their synopsis together, but Cornerstones’ Sarah Conkerton has sound advice on how to craft this crucial part of a submission package

Social media

Tarja Moles looks at using social media as a research tool

Behind the tape

Expert advice to get the details right in your crime fiction from serving police officer Lisa Cutts

IDEA-ZAPPING

Maria Joannou offers strategies for going with your flow and coping with distractions that have helped her as a writer with ADHD

Get reeled into bookstagram

Award-wining bookstagrammer Julia Mitchell explores the advantages of creating content on Instagram in 2022

GENRE SHIFTING

Just because you’re a non-fic author doesn’t mean you can’t also be a novelist, right? Why can’t we be both, argues Rosalind Moody.

Fillers & finance

As Simon Whaley explains, the letter and filler market can produce a useful income stream for your writing business.

Not splashing the cash?

Try not to take it personally when your nearest and dearest don’t buy your books, says Gillian Harvey

IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE DARK WOODS TODAY...

Acclaimed gothic novelist Lauren Owen talks to Tina Jackson about folk horror, Victorian vampires and the comforting nature of supernatural tales

SAARA EL-ARIFI

The debut epic fantasy writer describes how she fulfilled her childhood dream of creating magic by subverting genre tropes

Shelf life

Thriller author Ruth Ware describes the five books that drew her into the world of dark academia that she explores in her latest novel, The It Girl

RUTH WARE

‘A closed community. Passionate friendships. The pressure-cooker stress

Phoenix Writing Group

It is said that time passes quickly when

SUBSCRIBERS’ NEWS

SHARE YOUR NEWS To feature in subscribers’ news contact: tjackson@warnersgroup.co.uk

JANE McPARKES

The debut writer of green cosy crime tells Adrian Magson how illness spurred her on to achieve her publishing dream

Jack Jewers

The filmmaker and historical thriller writer tells Lynne Hackles how spending time in the 17th century is a welcome respite from the 21st-century pressures

COMMA chameleon

Comma abuse is one of the most frequent errors made by rookie writers. Author and grammar guru James McCreet provides a guide to correct usage.

Work experience

There’s only one way to find out if you can write something worth reading, and it’s learning on the job, says Adrian Magson

Your writing critiqued

James McCreet applies his forensic criticism to the first 300 words of a reader’s dark fantasy manuscript

NEED PROMPTING?

Anything can work as a writing prompt if you’re looking for inspiration, says Margaret James

Five quick 5 questions

When and where did your journey as an

Bird watching

Helen M Walters explores the way character informs plot via a short story by Katherine Mansfield

Darker legends

Alex Davis explores urban legends and using them in your horror fiction

Historical fiction

WIN! £500 IN CASH PRIZES & PUBLICATION

Always In Memory

James Perkin has been an avid reader for

Get the write idea

Get under the skin of your characters with these prompts and exercises to try right now

Get inventive

Be inspired by the innovative ideas of inventors in these writing group exercises from Julie Phillips

EYES ON THE PRIZE

Amy Sparkes introduces the revamped Writing Magazine Children’s Book Prize

In the post

FREE RANGE writing

Unveiling the villanelle

The winners of WM’s latest poetry competition made a striking impression on its judge, Alison Chisholm

Soul mining

Alison Chisholm explores an uplifting self-help poem

PICTURE A POEM

Alison Chisholm launches WM’s Ekphrastic Poetry Competition with advice about responding to art in verse

WRITERS’ NEWS

Your essential monthly round-up of competitions, paying markets, opportunities to get into print and publishing industry news.

Keep it green

The Orna Ross Green Stories Novel Prize is

Aim for the top

Whitefish Review publishes ‘distinctive literature, art, and photography

Divine inspiration

TDotSpec is a team of writers and editors

ONLINE NON-FICTION MARKET

Top rates for no names

Connect your script with a global audience

The Studio21 Drama Series Script Competition is open

Are you a Northern playwright?

Open to playwrights in the north of England

Write for the busy person to read

Stories of 100-5,000 words are invited for Pocket

FLASHES

Poems are invited for The Speculative Cat, an

ONLINE NON-FICTION MARKET

Explore with Longreads

Kindle changes

Here’s a warning that when you buy an

UK FICTION MARKET

Peepal get ready

ONLINE FOOD MARKET

Write with taste

For the younger set

A literary journal founded in 2020 Paper Lanterns

Fantasy faves

The shortlists for the 2022 British Fantasy Awards

Digital whispers

The Secret Life of Data short story competition

FLASHES

First prize is £1,000 in the next Bath

UK MAGAZINE MARKET

Characters at the heart of features

More prizes for funny women

Now in its fourth year Helen Lederer’s Comedy

ONLINE NON-FICTION MARKET

Get into the Huff

Big wins from Le Guin

The Ursula K Le Guin Prize for Fiction

Don’t myth out

The SaveAs Writers 2022 competition celebrates the centenary

Making good use

Think about the best uses to put author copies of your books, says Patrick Forsyth

FLASHES

The next quarterly Flash 500 Flash Fiction competition

UK MAGAZINE MARKET

Celebrate the Celtic

Comic creatives wanted for Komedia

The Treason Show began life at Brighton’s Komedia

Blocking the Penguin empire

In the US a federal antitrust trial began

UK CHILDREN’S MARKET

Crow gets graphic

GLOBAL LITERARY MARKET

A safe space for loud voices

Looking for a Booker

The longlist for the 2022 Booker Prize has

Music, and all that jazz

The Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction 2023

Short and strange

For its first competition, PulpFictional.com is inviting entries

FLASHES

WriteTime’s quarterly Mature Stories competition for writers over

ONLINE NON-FICTION MARKET

Real news wanted

GLOBAL LITERARY MARKET

Own words

INTRODUCTIONS

Writing Magazine presents a selection of current novella submission calls. We strongly recommend that you read back issues, familiarise yourself with their guidelines before submitting and check websites for submission details.

GLOBAL NON-FICTION MARKET

Chicken Soup topping up

COMPETITION GUIDE 2022-23

Pick your favourites and start scheduling your entries, with over 900 competitions to enter. Could this be the year you win big?

PARK’N’RIDE

SWANWICK WRITERS SUMMER SCHOOL COMPETITIONS

Always Andy

FIRST PLACE WRITING FOR CHILDREN

Parish

FIRST PLACE POETRY