HOW do you fancy paying £100 to find out? The Dylan Thomas Prize is looking for entries from writers aged under 30, in a variety of categories including short stories.
With a £60,000 prize on offer, no doubt the winning entrant who has managed to scrape the fee together will consider it a very wise investment.
On a much lower paid scale, there is a current shout out for ex-pat writers for a series of books.
The countries are:
Jordan
Syria
Tunisia
Mongolia
Bosnia Herzogovena
Slovakia
Nigeria
Tanzania
Venezuela
Columbia
Ecuador
The books are said to be an 'upbeat style' and are 30,000 words long. The fee is very low, at £1,000. However, I am posting this here to help show what opportunities are out there. Please get in touch with me if you have lived in one of the countries mentioned above and would like to know more. This opportunity was originally posted on My Writers Circle.
Another opening recently posted on the Writers Wanted forum at My Writers Circle, concerned an on-going short story contest called Invisible Ink.
Organisers say the competition is "a little different from the competitions you're used to." More opportunities are mentioned on the forum, which is also a supportive community for up and coming writers.
There's an opening for what's described as a "freelance sub" on Gumtree here. It says the job can be done from home and involves "cutting down press releases".
Lastly, a trawl through the internet reveals two further opportunities - one a lot more specialist than the other. There's a call out for contributors to Self Build & Design magazine and some comprehensive advice for would-be Independent travel writers here.
Anyone wanting to stand a realitsic chance of contributing on travel may want to learn them by heart - even if they were compiled in 2005.
If you haven't done so recently, you may also want to check out Press Gazette's Perfect Pitch section. (Scroll down from this link) There's sound advice from editors on how to get commissioned by publications including Dazed and Confused, Good Housekeeping and Bizarre, plus a fair few others.
A freelance utilities writer position is advertised here.
Unfortunately, it seems it's really a question of whether you're the best published writer in the world: "To be eligible a Literary Work must have been commercially published..."
Posted by: Anne | March 05, 2008 at 11:42 AM
Thanks for digging out that Independent article on travel contributions - old but surely useful!
Posted by: Andrea Wren | March 05, 2008 at 11:49 AM
Hi Anne - thanks for pointing that out - I saw a similar opportunity posted for short stories written by anyone of any age - hardly a great way of finding 'new' talent - and completely invalidates my comment about finding the entrance fee yourself - d'oh.
Posted by: Linda | March 05, 2008 at 12:01 PM