News | Friday, 22nd January 2021

Manchester Writing Competition 2020: Shortlist announced for UK’s biggest unpublished writing prize

Fiction Prize and Poetry Prize reward new and emerging writers

2019 Manchester Poetry Prize winner Momtaza Mehri with Carol Ann Duffy
2019 Manchester Poetry Prize winner Momtaza Mehri with Carol Ann Duffy

Two international shortlists have been revealed for the Manchester Fiction Prize and Manchester Poetry Prize, which together make up the Manchester Writing Competition 2020, the UK’s biggest awards for unpublished writing.

Since the former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy launched the prizes in 2008 they have helped to accelerate the careers of several new and emerging writers who have gone on to become big literary names and rising stars, including Mona Arshi, Helen Mort, Alison Moore, Pascale Petit and Martin MacInnes.  

The awards are organised by the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, where Carol Ann is Creative Director.

The winner of each prize receives £10,000. This year will see the total prize money given out to winners pass £200,000. Poetry Prize finalists are judged on three to five unpublished poems, while Fiction Prize entrants submitted a short story of up to 2,500 words.

2019 Manchester Fiction Prize winner Tim Etchells

The two six-strong shortlists for the 2020 Manchester Writing Competition span the UK, Ireland and USA, and include multiple award-winning poets and writers, an actor and playwright, and the leader of a writing for wellbeing course for NHS staff and key workers during the first COVID lockdown. 

In a year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, many submissions touched on themes relating to lockdown, isolation and loss.

Manchester Fiction Prize shortlist

Manchester Poetry Prize shortlist

The Manchester Fiction Prize 2020 judging panel is chaired by novelist and short story writer Nicholas Royle, while the Poetry Prize panel is headed up by poet Malika Booker, who recently won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem.

We were drawn to poems that were grappling with difficult terrain, imagistically lush, and formally skilful.

They were joined in the Poetry Prize category by Arshi (2014 winner) and Mimi Khalvati, and for the Fiction Prize 2019 winner Tim Etchells and Irenosen Okojie.

Royle, Reader in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan, said: “We were expecting a lot of stories about isolation, disease and lockdown, and we got them, from the explicit and straightforward to the wildly imaginative. There were also, perhaps not surprisingly given the make-up of the judging panel, more experimental approaches to narrative than we usually see. We found ourselves drawn to stories that repaid repeat readings and still managed to retain mystery.”

Booker said: “The pandemic seems to have given poets permission to tackle and submit ambitious poems grappling with grief as well as addressing difficult social, environmental and political themes. We were drawn to poems that were grappling with difficult terrain, imagistically lush, and formally skilful.”

The Manchester Writing Competition has had 26 winners and dozens of other shortlisted writers through its history, with submissions from over 80 countries. The 2019 Fiction Prize was won by Tim Etchells, while Momtaza Mehri won the Poetry Prize.

The prizes are crucial in supporting emerging writers to get a foothold in the industry, providing winners with some financial security to focus on writing full-time, attract literary agents and get novels or collections published.

There were also, perhaps not surprisingly given the make-up of the judging panel, more experimental approaches to narrative than we usually see. We found ourselves drawn to stories that repaid repeat readings and still managed to retain mystery.

Previous winners include Arshi, who later won the Forward Prize, Mort, who is now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Romalyn Ante, an NHS nurse whose debut collection Antiemetic for Homesickness was The Observer’s poetry book of the month in July 2020. Alison Moore, shortlisted for the Fiction Prize in 2009, went on to be in contention for the Booker Prize in 2012.

MacInnes, winner of the 2014 Fiction Prize, had his debut novel published two years later, which won the Somerset Maugham Award. His second critically-acclaimed novel was published last year.

He said: “I'd say winning the prize was probably the most significant moment in my life. The win immediately boosted my profile, and led to writers and agents getting in touch. When I did eventually sign with an agent, in summer 2015, I'm pretty sure that having the win on my CV helped clinch it.”

Winners of the Manchester Writing Competition 2020 will be announced on February 26, including the release of a digital event featuring readings from all of the short-listed pieces and comments from the judging panels.

2020 Manchester Fiction Prize Finalists

Neil Campbell: ‘Needle in a Haystack’


 
Neil Campbell’s third novel, Lanyards, is out now. From Manchester, England, he has appeared three times in the annual anthology of Best British Short Stories (2012/2015/2016). He has published three novels, two collections of flash fiction, two collections of short stories, two poetry chapbooks and a poetry collection, as well as appearing in numerous magazines and anthologies. He is currently working on new books and looking for an agent.
 
Hannah Donelon: ‘little’


 
Hannah Donelon is a writer from Manchester. She studied English Literature at University College London before training as an actor at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Hannah began writing for the stage with the Royal Exchange Young Company and is passionate about exploring the tensions within female working-class identity as well as tensions within cultural heritage. In her short stories, she is particularly interested in tapping into distinct voices and the way in which those voices reveal themselves.
 
Ian Dudley: ‘Exit Row’


 
Ian Dudley studied Zoology at university. He worked in market research, travelling extensively in Europe and the US. He’s had short stories broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 7, and is currently studying full time for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.
 
Edward Hogan: ‘Bright Side’


 
Edward Hogan is from Derby, and now lives in Brighton. He works for the Open University. His novels include The Electric and Blackmoor. His recent short stories have been longlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and shortlisted for the V.S. Pritchett Prize.
 
Andrea Mason: ‘Dead Man’s Stuff, Especially, Is No Good’


 
Andrea Mason is a London-based artist and writer. She is a graduate of the UEA Creative Writing MA and recently completed her Creative Writing PhD at Goldsmiths. She is the winner of the 2020 Aleph Writing Prize. Recent and forthcoming journal and anthology publications include The Babel Tower Noticeboard, Sublunary Editions, Seen from Here: Writing in the Lockdown, Failed States, Tar Press and 3: AM magazine. Her debut novel, The Cremation Project, shortlisted for the inaugural Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize, 2018, and longlisted for the Dzanc Fiction Prize, 2018, is forthcoming with Inside the Castle, USA, in 2021.
 
Bernadette McBride: ‘For the man who died in the wood’

 
Bernadette McBride is a Liverpool-based writer and creative practitioner. She is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool funded by the John Lennon Memorial Scholarship. She has published short fiction and a self-help book, has appeared in several anthologies and co-edited the anthology A Spray of Hope (University of Liverpool, 2020). She won the Liverpool Guild 2019 award for ‘The Biggest Impact on the City of Liverpool’ for her public-facing creative writing workshops.
 


2020 Manchester Poetry Prize finalists


Caroline Bracken


 
Caroline Bracken’s poems have been published in The North, the Irish Times, Abridged, the Fish Anthology, Sonder Magazine, The Bangor Literary Journal, the Ogham Stone, Poetry Jukebox, Skylight 47 and forthcoming in Best New British and Irish Poets 2021 and Sentinel Literary Quarterly. She was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2018 by Sinead Morrissey and is the Parkinson’s Art Poet of the Year 2020. Her poems have won the iYeats International Poetry Competition, the Poetry Day Ireland Competition 2020 and have been shortlisted elsewhere including the Bridport Poetry Prize. She is working towards a first collection.
 
Hannah Cooper-Smithson


 
Hannah Cooper-Smithson is a poet from Nottingham, currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University. In 2020 she was the first Poet in Residence at Creswell Crags Museum and Heritage Centre. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and online publications, including Finished Creatures, The Interpreter's House, Reliquiae and Mslexia. She was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Women Poets' Prize 2020 and is currently working on her first collection.


Teresa Dzieglewicz

Teresa Dzieglewicz is an educator, Pushcart Prize-winning poet, and organizer of Further Notice Reading Series. She works with Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Wounspe at Standing Rock Reservation. She earned her MFA from Southern Illinois University, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize. She is the winner of the 2018 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, the 2020 Palette Poetry Prize and has received fellowships from New Harmony Writer's Workshop, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, NY Mills Arts Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. Her poems appear in Pushcart Prize XLII, Best New Poets, Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere.

Joan Michelson

Joan Michelson’s collections are: The Family Kitchen, 2018, The Finishing Line Press, USA, Landing Stage, 2017, SPM Publishers, UK, Bloomvale Home, 2016, Original Plus Books, UK and Toward the Heliopause, 2011, Poetic Matrix Press, USA. She’s received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Centre for the Arts, Valparaiso, Spain, Sangam House, India and other foundations. Her poems have won the Bristol Poetry Competition, the Torriano International Poetry Competition, the Hamish Canham Prize, and others. Originally from the States, she lives in London and teaches creative writing to medical students at Kings College, University of London.

James Pollock

James Pollock’s first book, Sailing to Babylon (Able Muse Press, 2012), was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award in Poetry, and winner of an Outstanding Achievement Award in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association. His poems have appeared in The Paris Review, AGNI, Plume, The Walrus, and many other journals, and in anthologies in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. His other books include You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada, and The Essential Daryl Hine. His second book of poems, Durable Goods, is forthcoming from Véhicule Press in Montreal.

Laura Potts

Laura Potts is a writer from West Yorkshire. A recipient of the Foyle Young Poets Award, her work has been published by Aesthetica, The Moth and The Poetry Business. Laura became one of the BBC’s New Voices in 2017. She received a commendation from The Poetry Society in 2018 and was shortlisted for The Edward Thomas Fellowship, The Rebecca Swift Women's Poetry Prize and The Bridport Prize in 2020.

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