News, Opportunities and More
Your monthly WestWord round-up
Hello there,
I hope you’re all fully settled into our new WestWord era. We haven’t let the move slow us down at all! This month’s seen competition winners, workshops, Friday Flashing and future theme announcements alongside new fiction, like Fish For Breakfast by Tony Bell and Richard D. Zboray’s There’s a Prayer For That, But You Can’t Say It and inspiring craft articles too.
Firstly, a huge congratulations to the WestWord Prize winners and shortlistees. The stories and the judge’s report will be available on 18th July but if you can’t wait that long, the winning stories are listed below.
The WestWord Prize was the first of THREE competition updates we shared in June. Another huge congratulations to our Opening Lines Spring 2025 winners! The very best of luck to these writers with the next stages of their winning manuscripts.
And to those writers who made the Folktale Flash Prize Shortlist, fingers crossed for the next stage of the competition!
Keep scrolling for July’s events, deadlines and a wild writing prompt.
As always, happy writing!
Deadlines
The deadline for our brand new Craft & Connection Short Fiction Competition is fast approaching. Amanda is bringing all of her fifteen years of experience of working with writers to offer some phenomenal prizes that all focus on development, from mentorship to detailed feedback. If you are a writer of short fiction and want meaningful development, this is the competition for you. Submit your stories of up to 2,000 words for a chance to win. Entry fee: £15. Deadline: 30th June.
The Past Times Prize is now open for entries. We want your most rip-roaring flashes (up to 500 words) set in the 1920s. Will yours be a tale of decadance and optimism, of clandestine prohibition or the hardships of railway workers’ strikes and the Spanish Flu? Entry fee: £6. Deadline: 31st August.
The November edition of WestWord is open for submissions. We are looking for stories exploring the theme of THRESHOLD. Those liminal spaces between one state and another, physical barriers holding your character’s back.
Accepting short stories up to 3000 words, flash fictions up to 1000 words, and micro fictions up to 350 words. Deadline: 30th September.
For those members who participated in the Slow Story Workshops, there will also be a special November edition of WestWord for you to submit your work to. Send your submissions of stories from 2,500-7,000 words from 1st-30th September.
The WestWord Prize
First place: Love in the Time of Bird Flu by Gill O’Halloran
Second place: He Casts His Line by Joyce Bingham
Third place: Delayed by Charlie Swailes
Shortlisted:
One Last Disappointment by E. S. Hovgaard
Heritage by Andrew Stancek
Life Lessons by Dreena Collins
Word Wounds by Bethan Crymble
Workshops
The Journey of Story
6th July - 2.30 PM - 4.30 PM BST
If you are a WestWord member and have already enjoyed the workshops this year, the next on is only a week away. After focusing on themes, the protagonist, storyline, conflict, and the world it all takes place in, now it’s time to zoom back in on the character at the heart of the story and the journey they go on throughout it to be in some way different by the end.
Writing with Song Lyrics - Finding Stories in Music
24th July 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM BST
Songs create some of the most powerful images and can transport us through time with their emotional impact. In this workshop we will be exploring how to identify and extract the strong narrative voice and the mood the lyrics create, and turn them into something new and original.
If you can’t attend the live workshops, fear not, as a WestWord member, you have access to a plethora of workshop replays. The full archive can be found here.
Community
Remember to use the chat to start conversations, ask questions and share your writing successes with other WestWord members!
Other Opportunities
The Scottish Wildlife Trust is running Words of the Wild this year, they want stories about Scottish wildlife on the theme FROM SOURCE TO SEA. Submissions can be in English, Scots or Gaelic up to 1,000 words long and written in any form: poem, letter, short story, essay, song lyrics. There are also categories for writers under 18 years of age. Deadline: 12th July.
Green Stories Project want your 500-word flash fiction on the theme EPIPHANIES. Send your story by 27th August for your chance to win £300. This competition is free to enter.
You may have noticed Amanda’s name pop up somewhere exciting… She is this year’s Mslexia Flash Fiction Competition judge. Send your stories of up to 300 words by 22 September. Entry fee: £6.
Bridport’s renowned Memoir Prize is currently open for submissions. This is for book-length work, so the initial submission is 5,000 to 8,000 words plus a 300 word overview. The prize is a whopping £1,500. Deadline: 30th September. Entry fee: £26.
Prompt
Choose an animal and place it in a traditionally human space – this could be a hospital, a school, a business meeting. What is it doing there? Does it interact with anything? Think carefully about the physicality of your chosen animal, a mouse will easily go unnoticed (yet is still able to cause quite a bit of damage!) while a rhino or hippo might not fit where you want it to. Does that matter? Why not put a shark in the school canteen!
Is your story going to be from the animal’s point of view? An omnicient narrator, or is there a human present too?
Do the humans try to control this creature, or do they simply allow it to go about its business? Or are they given no choice?
As you are writing you will have to decide whether this is actually a story about an animal where it shouldn’t be (or humans, where they shouldn’t be!) or whether it is a metaphor. Is the wolf prowling down the school corridor the embodiment of toxic masculinity, perhaps the spider monkey clinging to the rafters of a barn is a farmer’s desire for a child?