Now in its ninth year, the PENfro Book Festival has announced exciting new plans for its annual writing competitions. We’ve teamed up with the festival so that for the first time, the winning entries – the top twenty-one poems and the top twelve stories – will each be published in celebratory anthologies! There will be one overall winner for each category and all published entrants will receive a fee (£25) and a copy of the book their writing appears in.
This year’s PENfro Festival will be held a little later than usual beginning 11th October, but promises another brilliant programme of events. The festival Chair, Sue Lewis, says, “The change of course for the competitions, and the introduction of the two anthology launches, will be an added highlight for the weekend. The radio-writing competition, which has always been a hit, will remain unchanged.”
Judging the poetry category of the competition is Rhiannon Hooson, the radio play category judge is Kate McAll, and judging the prose is author Niall Griffiths who, being a champion of new Welsh writing, is also on Parthian’s Board of Directors:
“I'm looking for stories that follow no formula and conform to no template but which stir the heart, explode the head, expand the soul and make the world a better place."
At Parthian, we’re really excited to be teaming up with PENfro in such a way. Our Director Richard Davies, who has been on the festival’s board since the beginning, says:
“You cannot underestimate the feeling of achievement when your writing has been selected for publication. At Parthian Books we pride ourselves on discovering and championing talented voices across the writing sphere and I’m really pleased that we’ll be publishing these anthologies.”
The deadline for submissions is the 1st of July, and guidelines can be found on the PENfro website. No matter your experience, we encourage everyone to give it a go!
