The QuietManDave Prize celebrates short-form writing and the life of someone who loved to experience new places, art and events and write about them.
The QuietManDave Prize, honouring theatre critic and writer Dave Murray, is now open for entries for its 2024 edition, encouraging submissions in all forms of writing.
Writers are invited to submit flash fiction and non-fiction entries until Friday 25th October, 2024.
Run by the Manchester Writing School based at Manchester Metropolitan University, the prize is named after Dave’s popular blog of the same name where he built up a portfolio of whimsical arts reviews, flash fiction and poetry.
The Prize seeks to honour Dave’s memory and achievements, in addition to encouraging and promoting new writers. It also seeks to embrace some of the core principles of Dave’s creative practice, where no forms of writing were neglected.
Previous prize winners Sara Hills and Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, demonstrated through their winning pieces the creative possibilities of reconciling strict limitations on word count with complete freedom in approaches to style and content.
Speaking ahead of this year’s Prize, Kathryn praised the QuietManDave prize values: “It is one of the best writing prizes out there for flash fiction writers! Flash is the perfect container for experimentation in prose, and in life writing – so it’s wonderful to have a competition which recognises and honours this.”
The QuietManDave competition particularly encourages submissions from new writers. Murray was trained in engineering and accountancy, getting into published writing later in life, and the prize was set up under the reality that writing can be a financially arduous feat, and often excellent writers don’t get the recognition they deserve.
It features two categories: flash fiction (up to 500 words) and flash nonfiction (up to 500 words). In both categories the first prize is £1000 and runner up prizes are £200 and £50 in each category.
Writers are prompted to write in unique and offbeat ways, with the prize asserting that forms often seen as on the periphery of prestigious writing – such as blog posts, book reviews, recipes – should be given a legitimate place in the published landscape.
For more information on the 2024 QuietManDave prize and how to enter, visit www.mmu.ac.uk/qmdprize
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