Southlands Arts Centre annual creative writing competition is open for submissions.
We are taking entries from over 18s and under 18s. There are life writing and fiction categories.
Continuing with our tradition the fiction category is themed. This year’s theme is architecture. By this we mean, buildings of all kinds — from homes to halls, castles to cabins, all structures and spaces.
You might be a Gothic aficionado, revering Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill House, or delight in the international modernist style of the De La Warr Pavilion. You might be smitten with the modern designs that are the skyline in Rotterdam, the amazing Markthal with its horseshoe-shaped food market, apartments and astonishing digital mural, or the tilted yellow cube houses. Perhaps you’re wooed by Tajikistan’s architecture, a blend of ancient tradition, Islamic artistry, Soviet legacy, and modern innovation. Who knows, the futuristic, fluid designs of Zaha Hadid could blow your mind. Or maybe, just maybe, you love the local scout hut, the local multi storey car park, or the unapologetic functionality of a corrugated iron shed behind the allotments. Buildings and structures hold memories, memories of laughter, protest, shelter, or transformation. Architecture isn’t just a style, it’s lived experience, layered with emotions, history, and possibility.
We’ve kept the general fees for entry the same but this year able to offer some free entries.
There are 7 fee free entries available to Under 18s, sponsored by Tara Edwards, who very kindly allowed us to keep her prize money after winning Highly Commended for life writing in 2025. We have set aside these entries for under 18s from low-income households.
Parent and child entries submitted simultaneously will be £5 for the pair
Free entries from Under18s if sent via school from a school email
This year Southlands is lucky to have persuaded two guest judges to join us.
Gatlin Perrin, author of Dirk Jones is NOT the Chosen One will judge the under 18s entries.
Dr Emma Filtness, author of This Savage Language, an erasure poetry project made from pages of Wuthering Heights will judge the over 18s entries.
The stories from the previous years were truly amazing and choosing winners an enormously difficult task. We’re looking forward to the voices yet to be heard and the enormously difficult task that they will set.