What's on
Pulse Issue 6 is coming out in September 2026! We’re inviting writers from the LGBTQIAP+ community to enter their short fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction for the chance to be featured and to receive a cash prize.
Issue no. 6 of Writing East Midlands’ digital and print magazine, Pulse, releases in September 2026, with our articles written by queer authors from the East Midlands and beyond, all responding to the theme of ‘Queer Writing’.
We thought it’d be fun to get our readers involved too! And so, we’re asking for queer writers to send us their own original writing so that we can feature our favourite in this upcoming edition!
To narrow down the brief for this call out, and to diversify away from our commissioned articles, we’ve decided that the competition’s theme will focus more specifically on Queer Euphoria. What day-to-day moments give you joy as a queer person, and/or as a queer writer? Has anything you’ve read or written lately resonated with your experience as a member of the LGBTQIAP+ community? We want to know!
Poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction are all accepted, at 500 words for prose and 30 lines for poetry.
The winner of this competition will be offered a prize of £50 cash as well as a full credit and biography published on our website, in the magazine itself and across our social media. If you’d like to give it a go, make sure to submit your writing by the deadline: Sunday 23rd August 2026 at 11.59 pm.
The competition is open to writers from the LGBTQIAP+ community. You do not have to be from the East Midlands to enter. Work written by AI will be immediately disqualified.
Full details available on our submissions portal. Click here to enter.
Submit your event to our directory by becoming a member of Arts Derbyshire.
Find out what’s on with the Arts Derbyshire newsletter.
Artists, creatives, cultural providers, arts and health specialists – Sign up for one of our professional mailing lists.