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First prize : £10,000
Established in 1998 as the home of creative writing within the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University, the Writing School is, today, a thriving centre of creative excellence, working to benefit the literary community at large.
The School hosts a vibrant series of reading events, a leading programme of outreach activities and an ambitious MA Creative Writing programme, offering specialised routes in novel writing, poetry and writing for children. Many students and graduates have gone on to have their work accepted for publication. This success has been attributed to the quality of teaching on offer across the programme – especially the detailed editorial work that goes on in fiction and poetry workshops.
The MA programme is taught by a team of distinguished practising writers, including Simon Armitage, Sherry Ashworth, Heather Beck, Vicki Bertram, Amanda Dalton, Paul Magrs, Jennifer Mayhew, Livi Michael, Michael Symmons Roberts, Jacqeuline Roy, Nicholas Royle and Jean Sprackland working under the directorship of Andrew Biswell and Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who also teach on the course.
In 2008, funded by the University’s innovative Enterprise Fellowship scheme, the Writing School built on its ongoing work by launching the Manchester Writing Competition – a new literary prize designed to attract and celebrate the best new writing from around the world, and to establish Manchester as the focal point for a major literary award.
Each year, the competition aims to award a substantial cash prize to the overall winner, or winners, as well as a bursary for study at MMU to an entrant aged 18 to 25 as part of our Young Writer of the Year Award. The competition will alternate between Poetry and Fiction on an annual basis.
To find out more and enter, please click on the links below:
