2023 Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize

The 2023 Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize is open for submissions. The competition is funded by Brick Lane Bookshop, sponsored by Mushens Entertainment, partnering with Spread the Word.

The competition is for original short fiction between 1000 and 5000 words.

First Prize is £1000, Second Prize is £250, Third Prize is £100.

The three prize winners will each receive a development meeting with a member of the Spread the Word team, a year’s membership to their London Writers Network, plus four free places for workshops and courses on their regular programme

1st, 2nd & 3rd prize winners will also receive individual feedback on submission materials from Mushens Entertainment

Twelve longlisted stories will be published in Brick Lane Bookshop New Short Stories 2023

The competition deadline is 5pm, April 3rd 2023. The entry fee is £10.

Full info here.

Entry form here.

More on Brick Lane Bookshop here.

 

2 March 2023: World Book Day Special! Stories About Stories And Their Tellers

For World Book Day on Thurs 2 March our theme was readers, writers, texts and manuscripts, fictional characters who come to life, bookshops, libraries and anything else associated with the written word.

Check out our prompts below:

1/ Your character is an author who has given up on their current project and doesn’t know if they’ll ever complete it. One night, two dodgy characters of the author’s own creation turn up at the door wanting a word...

2/ Your character discovers an old diary (their own or someone else's) and begins to read…

3/ Take a real author (dead or alive) and make them the subject of a story. Bonus points for anything that includes time-travel or culture clash. (What would Jane Austen be like on Insta…?

4/ Someone your character went to school with has, unexpectedly, become a famous and lauded novelist. There’s a Netflix adaptation in the works. Your character reads the book and is convinced that the main character is based on them…

5/ Your character finds what looks like the completed manuscript for a novel in a bag on a bus. (For a brilliant treatment of a similar premise, see Morven Callar by Alan Warner or Lila, Lila by Martin Suter)

6/ Your character is an aspiring author. But instead of concentrating on the book they dream of writing, they have become obsessed with getting their author’s biog or cover blurb perfect…

7/ In the library you pick up a random novel and start leafing through it. Folded into the pages is an anonymously written letter that begins ‘Dear Reader, Congratulations, you have found me…’

8/ Write a piece that is somehow about a single word. It can be a real word, or you can make up your own, complete with definition and examples of usage.

9/ Your character has been given the job of ghost-writing the memoir of someone famous or notorious in their field with a reputation for not suffering fools.. Write a scene where the two of them meet for the first time…

10/ A not-very-successful novelist is picking up a bottle of wine at the self-service kiosk in Tesco when someone taps them on the shoulder and says, “Hey! I can’t believe it. Are you really…?”

New Indie Novella Writing Workshops & Ben Aaronovitch Visit to Hackney Central Library

A quick update on some writerly events coming up at Hackney Libraries in Feb and March 2023.

On Sat 25 Feb and Sat 11 March independent publishers Indie Novella will be running another edition of their full-day Creating Compelling Characters workshops. These sessions are free to attend and open to all, but places are limited.

Register for 25 Feb at Homerton Library here.

Register for 11 March at Stoke Newington Library here.

And on Mon 27 Feb at Hackney Central Library, 6.30pm, we're delighted to have novelist Ben Aaronovitch back to discuss his new book in the Rivers of London series, Amongst Our Weapons.

Register for Ben Aaronovitch here.

'New Starts' Prompts for Feb 2023

We had a spectacular turn-out of new and familiar faces for our first meeting of the year. Thanks to all who came.

Below are details on a playwriting course run by Phil Setren, who shared a brilliant piece of work in progress.





And below are the prompts we used for this session. (Or, in fact, mostly didn't use, because everyone who came already had brilliant ideas of their own.) Nevertheless, we scatter them to the internet, like seeds in the park, in the hope that they may yet bear fruit for others.

/Your character has just let themselves into a new room/flat/house for the first time. They are alone, with a single suitcase….

/Describe a chance first meeting between two characters which will lead to something profound for one of them. Don’t worry if you don’t know what happens next. Concentrate on developing the two characters…

/Your character is about to give away or destroy something of great personal significance. What and why?

/Your character HAS JUST ABOUT HAD ENOUGH OF THIS! Write about the moment something snaps and they walk away from a toxic situation...

/Your character meets an old friend. It’s the first time they have seen each other in several years. It soon becomes apparent that the friend has had some kind of transformative experience and is now a very different person from the one the other remembers.

/Imagine a movie trailer in which your character is walking casually away from a burning building holding the object of your choice. (An umbrella? A teddy bear? A tennis racket?) What’s the story? Bonus points if you can actually find a role for the object. Further bonus points for the most over-the-top Hollywood blockbuster movie title.

/A group of characters (two or more) witness something which they all know will change their relationship - and maybe their lives - forever…

/Your character is a teenager who finds themselves living as part of a new family unit with a radically different set of social or cultural expectations from those they are used to…

/Your character decides to adopt a totally new and possibly outrageous style of dress. Why are they doing this now? How do people respond?

/Describe the moments leading up to an incident that will change the course of your character’s life. Fill your piece with clues and foreshadowing, but stop before you get to the incident itself, and leave the reader guessing…

Dalston Writing Group Meets Thurs 2 Feb 2023 & Every First Thursday Thereafter

The mighty Dalston Writing Group will be back in action on Thurs 2 Feb 2023 at Dalston CLR James Library, 6.00 to 7.30pm.

For various reasons our meeting dates have been slightly peripatetic of late, so to make life easier, from now on the group will always meet on the first Thursday of each month. 

As promised, our theme for this one will be 'new beginnings.' Interpret that in any way you like. It may just be a new piece of work you've been thinking about. As usual, there will be a selection of mysteriously random carefully-honed prompts so that no one has to stare for too long into the abyss that is an empty page.

In the meantime, here are some opportunities from our friends at Spread The Word.

The Bristol Short Story Prize is currently open until 6 April. The word count is 4,000, which means that as of 27 January, you only need to write 47.619 words every day to hit the target. 

And if you're an author of commercial women's fiction, here's an early heads-up about  an opportunity in July to pitch your novel idea to publishers Simon & Schuster. 

Next Meeting - New Date: Thurs 2 Feb 2023

A bit of a last minute update: our first meeting of 2023 was scheduled to be Thurs 12 Jan. This will now be changed to Thurs 2 Feb, 6.00 to 7.30pm at Dalston CLR James Library.

Our theme will be new beginnings. 

As is traditional, there will be plenty of prompts to get us going. Stay tuned for more details, and the usual monthly email update.

The Secrets of Trees - Short Story Competition

Trees are brilliant story-starters. Think of all those roots, branches, leaves and shadows. Think of the Ents in Lord of The Rings. Think of The Overstory by Richard Powers. More on magnificent tree stories here.

The Urban Tree Festival competition runs from 4 December to 13 March. The theme is Secrets of The Trees. It is open to everyone 16+, and although it has an entry fee, it may be waived for those unable to afford it.

Find out more and enter here.

There is also a free online workshop on creative writing on the 4 December. Details here.