Mslexia Short Story Competition and Exercises

The Mslexia writing magazine short story competition has become an annual event and is well worth entering if you write more literary stories, as opposed to commercial women's magazine fiction. It's a hugely popular magazine, but you must be a woman to contribute to its pages or enter the competitions.

The current short story competition closes on 18th March and should be a story on any theme of up to 2,200 words. The judge is Janice Galloway, a writer I greatly admire - I wrote a review of her wonderful novel, Clara, on this blog some time ago. It's quite a steep entry fee at £10, but the prizes reflect the quality of the competition, with a first prize of £2,000 plus two optional extras of a week's writing retreat at Chawton House Library, and a day with a Virago Editor. Second prize is £500 and third prize is £250, plus three other prizes of £100.

To inspire and help entrants, Mslexia are running short story workshops and exercises on their website and you can read the first excellent advice and exercise here. The next workshop will be live on their site tomorrow, 26th February. These are useful to all short story writers, whether or not you intend entering the competition. Mslexia magazine also features a New Writing section in many of their issues which is free to enter and is usually a mixture of fiction and poetry.

Good luck if you enter!

Meanwhile, the first post in my new series of features about children's, tween, and YA books is over on my Flights of Imagination blog, where Bil and Bon Franks are talking about the inspiration behind their new YA book Running Over Rainbows, and their Twilight of Magic series.

Rosemary