Independent bookshop Goldfinch Books have created a new literary competition to coincide with the inaugural Alton Arts Festival.

The Goldfinch Novel Award 2024 is a prize for emerging authors (aged 16+) with completed young adult or adult novels. This competition is open to authors nationwide and will have a prize of £300 for the winning novel, chosen by judge Kiya Evans, Associate Literary Agent at Mushens Entertainment.

With a reasonable entry fee of £10, and a longlist announcement just two weeks after the competition deadline, this could be an excellent opportunity for aspiring authors.

Submission is required of the opening 5,000 words (max) of your novel for adults or young adults plus a 1-page synopsis. Your novel should be complete and be at least 50,000 words in its completed form.

Judge: Kiya Evans joined Mushens Entertainment as Juliet Mushens’ assistant in 2021. She was promoted to Associate Agent in 2023, working across Juliet’s client list, which contains multiple Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers, and is actively building her own list of authors. After graduating with a BA in History and English from Oxford, she completed two internships at Mushens Entertainment, before joining as a full-time member of the team. Kiya was a judge of last year’s Brick Lane Books Short Story Prize.

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.