Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize – New Voices Award

The New Voices Award supports writers to develop an idea they’ve yet to commit to paper, or those in the very early stages of their work in progress. The Award provides mentorship and editorial guidance for aspiring authors and encourages entries from all writers, including those from underrepresented backgrounds with a new story to tell.

The prize is exclusively for unpublished writers. Writers must not be represented by a literary agent, or be under an existing or future contract to any publisher. The work submitted must not have been previously self-published, or have been published in full or in part through any publisher or other media.

To participate, writers must submit their opening three chapters totalling no more than 10,000 words and a full plot outline of no more than 1,000 words detailing where they imagine the story will go.

The competition is open to writers of any nationality writing in English.

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.