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Welcome to The Literary Pig's blog - a safe haven for all those afflicted with
the unbearable urge to write.

Monday 9 April 2012

Beat the postal increase

If you enter a lot of writing competitions then the increase in postal rates due 30th April (1st class to 60p, 2nd to 50p and large letter to 90p) is not good news.  So why not search out the online / email competitions instead and ease the entry costs.  To help the budget the LitPig has rooted out some online competitions for April... and even better news some of these are even FREE to enter!

Print Express Poetry Competition: this closes TODAY 9 April, so you have to be QUICK

Click here for submission details.


  • Poem must be no more than 45 lines on the theme of HAPPINESS
  • Poem must be original and has to make the judges smile
  • Winner receives £100
  • Free entry, email your poem to poetry@printexpress.co.uk

Woman's Own Summer Short Story Competition: Closing date 30 April
For a Summer Fiction special Woman's Own have opened a competition for short stories:

  • 1000 - 1300 words, and they state the 'story can be funny, heart-warming, tear jerking or a mystery with a twist in the tale'.
  • Story must be original and unpublished
  • Winner receives £200 and story is published in summer fiction special.  Runners-up may also be published and possibly paid too.
  • There is NO FEE to enter, just email your story to wo_specials@ipcmedia.com (but there are no clear instructions as to whether story should be an attachment or embedded in the email).
Controversely when this competition was first launched in Feb the prize was simply publication i.e. no cash reward.  This prompted a tirade of comments on Woman's Own Facebook page from numerous Womag writers, many of whom threatened to boycott reading the magazine if it didn't pay for publishing stories.  Just shows the power of social networking and the number of comments left by writers in that the magazine  then backtracked and agreed to offer a cash prize of £200.

Unbound Press 2012 Short Story Award: closing date 30 April   

Click here for more submission details

  • Stories of <1500 words, any theme or genre welcome
  • 1st Prize - £500, 2nd Prize - £250, 3rd Prize - £125
  • All winners and shortlisted stories will be published in an anthology and receive free copy
  • Entry fee is £5 via paypal or cheque (both postal and email entries accepted)
  • Gust Judge is Lucy Luck
  • Stories must original and unpublished
  • Email .doc or .rtf files to unboundpress@gmail.com (cut and paste paypal transaction number along with all contact details into the email).

Good luck if you do have a go at any of the above competitions.  Let me know if you enter and how you get on.  Keep writing and keep submitting ...

2 comments:

  1. Still pretty good value, though, when you think that for less than the price of a cup of coffee you can post something at one end of the country and have it delivered to the other by the next morning. Having said that, I have no scruples about steaming off unfranked stamps to reuse them!

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  2. Good point Julia. It just seems the costs mount up quickly when submitting stories or competition entries by post, particularly if including SAEs and postcards for receipt acknowledgements. Online also saves paper!

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