11.07.2025
The Aurora Prize for Writing 2025 closes in just one month! It’s time to put the finishing touches on your short stories (2,000 words) and polish up your poetry (60 lines). Writing East Midlands is accepting writing in any genre, on any subject, from writers aged 18 and above from the UK and beyond.
Prizes for the first-place winner include £500 in cash, feedback from a leading literary agent or editor on a piece of work of their choice, a year’s free membership to the Society of Authors, an SoA advisory session and free tickets to a masterclass with one of this year’s judges!
Our second-place winner will receive £150 in cash; third place will be awarded a free ticket to The Writers’ Conference 2027; and the regional winner (from the East Midlands) will be offered £100 in cash. Winners will be announced in each category (poetry/prose). A longlist (of 25 in each category) and a shortlist (of 10 in each category) will be published online on the Writing East Midlands website.
Our judges for the 2025 creative writing competition are none other than T.S. Eliot Prize winner Joelle Taylor, judging our poetry entries, and 2020 Caine Prize winner and former Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature Irenosen Okojie, judging for prose. You can find out more about judges on the Aurora Prize webpage here.
As part of this year’s competition, both judges will each be delivering an online masterclass on their chosen craft (poetry/prose) in December 2025 after announcing the winners of the competition at the Aurora Prize for Writing Awards Ceremony (details TBC). First-place winners in each category will be offered a free ticket to the masterclass of their choosing.
For the first time ever, we’re also offering our shortlisted entrants a 20% discount code for Society of Authors membership, courtesy of the SoA. We are incredibly grateful to our partners, the Society of Authors, for their generous offer to our winners and for making the Aurora Prize a true celebration of writers and writing!
The Aurora Prize for Writing is a fantastic opportunity to get your work out there and your name recognised, while also being an eye-catching accolade to keep under your belt when approaching agents. Previous winners include saga and cosy crime author Glenda Young and HarperCollins-published literary fiction author Ella King.
Entries to the Aurora Prize for Writing 2025 are £9 per first entry and £7 per additional entry, with a maximum of 6 entries to be submitted per writer.
The Aurora Prize is now open for entries until 6th August 2025 at 11.59 pm. That’s one month to get your short stories and poems in for the chance to be considered!
To enter your poetry or short stories, please visit the Aurora Prize for Writing webpage on the Writing East Midlands website, here:
https://writingeastmidlands.co.uk/for-writers/aurora-prize-for-writing/
or
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