Now in our 11th year of competition, we are an Edinburgh-based, international award for unpublished and self-published novelists in all genres for adults and YA. Entrants should send us their first 20 pages plus 200-word synopsis.

This year’s judge is Alice Lutyens, literary agent at Curtis Brown.

£1,500 top prize; £500 for Highly Commended novel; free place on a writing course at Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre for the writer of the best novel from the UK and Ireland.

Over 18s only. Sponsored spaces are available.

We are keen to encourage quality, so suggest writers to check their stories before submitting using Prowritingaid. They have free and paid versions and are the best writing software we know to help improve grammar, readability and check for repetition, ‘sticky’ sentences and suggest alternatives.