Too many options when it comes to submitting your work? Here’s our top five comps and subs for March 2025.
Name: The Waxed Lemon
Deadline: 2nd March 2025
Wordcount: Short Story: up to 2000 words; Poetry: no more than 30 lines; Flash Fiction: under 500 words; Art/Photography: up to 3 pieces.
Genre: Short Story
Description: The Waxed Lemon is a literary journal that publishes short stories, flash fiction poetry, art and photography. Their current submission window is open until 2nd March 2025. You can only submit to one category: one short story, one piece of flash fiction, up to three poems, or up to three pieces of art/photography.
Entry fee: Free
Website: https://www.thewaxedlemon.com/submissions
Name: Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize 2025
Deadline: 5PM on 17th March 2025
Wordcount: Between 1,000 and 5,000 words
Genre: Short Story
Description: This short story competition is run by Brick Lane Bookshop. The winner will receive £1,000, 2nd place will receive £500 and 3rd place £250. In addition, all three winners will receive a development meeting with a Spread the Word Team member, a year’s membership to their London Writers Network, and four free places for workshops and courses on their regular programme. The twelve longlisted stories will be published in the Brick Lane Bookshop New Short Stories 2025 anthology. There are 50 free entries available for those on a low income.
Entry fee: £10
Website: https://bricklanebookshop.org/the-brick-lane-bookshop-short-story-prize-2025/
Name: The 2025 DRF Writers Award
Deadline: 31st March 2025
Wordcount: 15,000 – 20,000 words of a work in progress
Genre: Fiction and Non-fiction
Description: The Deborah Rogers Foundation (DRF) supports literary emerging talent in the literary world. The DRF Writers Award is for writers who have not previously published a full-length book of their own prose writing (self-published or online), excluding a collection of their own poetry. They are looking for works in progress of fiction or non-fiction. The winner will receive £10,000, and two runners-up will receive £1,000 each.
Entry fee: Free
Website: https://www.deborahrogersfoundation.org/writers-award
Name: The Caterpillar Poetry Prize
Deadline: 31st March 2025
Wordcount: No line limit
Genre: Poetry for children
Description: The Caterpillar Poetry prize is an annual competition for unpublished poems written by adults for children aged 7-11 years old. The winner will receive €1,000 and a week at Circle of Misse, 2nd place will receive €500, and 3rd place will receive €250. The winning poems will also be published in the Irish Times online.
Entry fee: €15 per poem
Website: https://www.thecaterpillarmagazine.com/a1-page.asp?ID=9398&page=27
Name: Libre Lit
Deadline: 1st April 2025
Wordcount: Not specified
Genre: Monologue; Personal Essay
Description: On their website, Libre describe their magazine as ‘a southern literature and arts magazine bent on brain pain and re-examining what it means to scavenge for agency in liminal states of illness.’ They are looking for pieces on the theme of ‘Cinema’ for their third issue. Here’s what they say on the submission page: ‘Issue Three wants to criticize, deconstruct, pay homage to, and place film at the center of the conversation around mental health and media. You’re welcome to pull from character archetypes, but we want to see transformation bloom from the borrowed comparison. History, theory, and gossip are suitable when placed in the correct context. We crave the well-wrought, foot-noted critical essay if you have the time and resources. Odes are fine; rewrites are always a chancy business, but give it a try if you’re feeling up to dueling with the liminality of transposed scene and altered dialogue.’
Entry fee: Free
Website: https://www.librelit.com/
