New North Poets Mentoring Scheme Open for Entries

This year, we are delighted to once again be partnering with New Writing North to offer mentoring and professional development to five new poets through the New North Poets Mentoring Scheme. Working closely with lead tutor Clare Pollard, participants will receive a year-long mentoring programme focussing on both the craft of writing and the professional skills necessary to a working poet.

In conjunction with New Writing North, we will offer a programme of residencies, masterclasses and one-to-ones for the winners under the expert direction of Clare Pollard. Previous winners of the scheme went on to launch their own magazine (Butcher’s Dog), the most recent group of winners are just about to publish a PDF pamphlet with the Poetry School. If you’re an emerging poet in the North of England (check NWN’s detailed eligibility criteria), this competition is well worth your time.

The New North Poets scheme is part of  New Writing North’s Northern Writers’ Awards,  which offer mentoring and prize-winning opportunities for all writers, including poets. This year, there is more than £40k available in funding. See details below!

Northern Writers’ Awards 2017

The Northern Writers’ Awards 2017 are now open for entry until 2 February 2017.

The Northern Writers’ Awards were founded by New Writing North in 2000 and have a reputation for identifying some of the best unpublished writing in the UK, with recent winners including the novelist Benjamin Myers, short story writer Carys Davies, and poets Andrew McMillan and Zaffar Kunial.

The literary agent Elise Dillsworth, writer Richard T Kelly, poet Clare Pollard, YA writer Juno Dawson and journalist Peter Wilby will judge the awards in 2017.

The Northern Writers’ Awards exist to recognise talent and support new work towards publication or broadcast. In 2017 there is £40,000 worth of awards available for writers at different stages of their careers, including mentoring, developmental support and cash awards to buy time to write.

Forms supported include fiction, narrative non-fiction, short stories, children’s and YA, graphic novels, poetry, and writing for television.

Find all of this year’s opportunities at www.northernwritersawards.com