Our eager judges have put their heads together and come up with a theme for the 2016 Prescot Festival Short Story Competition.
To commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, the theme will be taken from the plays of the Bard himself.
Entrants are asked to write a piece of fiction inspired by the phrase ‘in a pickle,’ first recorded in one of Shakespeare’s last works, the tragicomedy The Tempest.
Keep reading for the full 2016 Prescot Festival Short Story Competition rules:
1. To enter, you must live in one of the following six boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Halton, Wirral or Liverpool. You must not have had a piece of fictional writing professionally published, ie, in return for payment. There are no age restrictions. Only one entry per person is allowed.
2. The story you submit must be inspired in some way by the following theme: IN A PICKLE. It is your choice how to interpret the theme. The story must be your own original work of fiction (no biography, poetry or nonfiction), unpublished, in English, and with no more than 1,000 words. There is no minimum word count.
3. Print or type your story on A4 paper in size 12 font. Include a page number and the title of the story in the header or footer of each page, but do not include your name or any identifying details on any of the pages. Include a separate title page containing the following information: Full name, address, telephone number, email address, title of story.
4. The closing date for the competition is Friday 27 May 2016. All entries must be received by then. Send your entry to: Prescot Festival Short Story Competition, 12 Earle Avenue, Roby, L36 4JP.
5. A panel of judges will read the stories, whose writers remain anonymous, and decide a winner. The judges’ decision is final. They may award runner-up prizes at their discretion.
6. The winner will receive a prize of £100, to be awarded in person at the Prescot Festival Folk Night at Poco Coffee, Eccleston Street, Prescot, at 7.00pm on Tuesday 21 June 2016, or shortly afterwards by post if they cannot attend. The winner will be notified before the event, and their name posted to the festival website on Wednesday 22 June.
7. You retain full copyright of your story, but by submitting it, you give the Prescot Festival permission to republish it online or in print, naming you as author.
1 Comment
We are local authors of children’s stories in which the characters, nine year old twins, are taken back in time by a magic doll.
One of our stories takes them back to Shakespeare’s time where they get into ‘a pickle’ two or three times.
Although we now live in Ashton in Makerfield, we all come from Liverpool and, in fact, I taught primary children for thirty years in Huyton. We feel that our story is so apt for the Shakespeare Anniversary and, if you feel that we are still not eligible for this competition, in light of the exciting events which are going to take place in Prescot and Knowsley, we wonder if this children’s story could be used in some other way.
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