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This competition is now closed. Thank you so much to all entrants. The winners will be announced in the new year. The London Magazine has published short stories by some of the most well-respected literary figures over the course of long history. Our annual Short Story Competition seeks out new voices to join them. Established to encourage emerging literary talent, the award...

Social media is the root cause of all evil. You would be forgiven for thinking so at least. It has been blamed for breaking up relationships, destroying careers, disintegrating family connections, reducing attention spans, driving obesity rates, causing violence, and proliferating unemployment. That's quite a CV. Let’s not start on its effect upon literature. Critics state that people are turning...

This competition is now closed. Thanks to all who entered. The longlist, shortlist and winners will be announced over the next few months. Keep checking our ‘Competitions’ section and sign up to our newsletter for updates. Autumn is here, which means The London Magazine's Short Story Competition 2016 is upon us. The London Magazine has published short stories by some of the most well-respected...

Over the years The London Magazine has been home to some of the most prestigious poets in its long publishing history, from John Keats to Sylvia Plath and Derek Walcott. Our annual Poetry Prize seeks out new voices in poetry, providing a platform for publication in the UK’s oldest literary journal. All poems submitted must be previously unpublished and no longer than 40 lines. We have no criteria as to theme, form or style but we are looking for fresh [...]

Scotland herself is the main character in this blood-soaked reimagining of Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. So enamoured is director Justin Kurzel of his Highland landscape that it becomes his focal point: a gaping maw of brutal heights and contours before the poor players. This is a cold pagan place, where the respite from war and rain is never very long. From...

Submissions are now closed for The London Magazine's Short Story Prize 2019/20. Thank you to all who entered this year.  Update: Short Story Prize 2019/20 winners announced Read the 2019 shortlist The London Magazine has published short stories by some of the most well-respected literary figures over the course of long history, from Jean Rhys to Raymond Carver and V.S. Pritchett. Our...

We caught up with Frieda Hughes, one of this year's Poetry Prize 2017 judges. Although this prize has now closed, Frieda will begin reading your entries in the coming weeks. In this interview, she gives poets advice on how to make  tells us why she loves judging poetry competitions You’ve got an exhibition in Chichester Cathedral this summer, along with...

Update: Submissions for The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2019 are now CLOSED! Over the years The London Magazine has been home to some of the most prestigious poets in its long publishing history, from John Keats to Sylvia Plath and Derek Walcott. Our annual Poetry Prize seeks out new voices in poetry, providing a platform for publication in the UK’s oldest literary...

The London Magazine are proud to announce our inaugural Novel Writing Competition, in collaboration with Author Enterprises. As the oldest literary magazine in the UK, The London Magazine has been home to some of the most celebrated novelists in history - Evelyn Waugh, William Boyd, H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy. Author Enterprises is a company which helps authors to...

UPDATE: EXTENDED CLOSING DATE  The competition will now be open for entries until September the 7th at midnight. As the oldest literary and arts review in the UK, The London Magazine has a long history of publishing great essayists; works by the likes of T.S. Eliot and Nadine Gordimer can be found in our archives. In our second Essay Competition, we hope to...

Submissions are now open for The London Magazine Short Story Prize 2018! The London Magazine has published short stories by some of the most well-respected literary figures over the course of long history, from Jean Rhys to V. S. Pritchett. Our annual Short Story Competition seeks out new voices to join them. 

The London Magazine has been home to some of the most prestigious poets in its long publishing history, from John Keats to Sylvia Plath. Our annual Poetry Prize seeks out new voices in poetry, providing a platform for publication in the UK’s oldest literary journal. All poems submitted must be previously unpublished and no longer than 40 lines. We have no criteria as to theme,...

With just over a month until our Short Story Competition 2016 closes, we caught up with judge Angus Cargill and found out about his favourite short story, what he's currently reading and what he sees as they key elements of a short story (take note, competition entrants!).   What are you currently reading? And what specifically did you like about it? The three last...

In the perpetual twilight of the woodland world, trees loom like sinister monoliths out of the gloom. Leaf-mould partially obscures a discarded garment, or a glimpse of creamy flesh. But this isn’t the leafy bower of a Dionysian revel, the sylvan setting of some nymphic adventure or even the stag-haunted gloaming of a woodland tomb. The Poussins, Titians and...

Caoilinn Hughes On winning the Collyer Bristow Prize First thanks go to my peers—Sophie Mackintosh, Danny Denton, Samuel Fisher and Katherine Kilalea—for writing such good books that it was an intimidation and an honour to be on this shortlist with them. Thank you to the judges of this prize because, to me at least, books don’t exist without readers, and it...

Lyndsey Turner’s revival of Brian Friel’s 1979 play uses the wisdom of age to give this oft dubbed “modern masterpiece” a dark depth, comedy, and truth in flux. Es Devlin’s stage design for Faith Healer is one of the most thrilling focal points in London theatre so far this year. It is, essentially, a water feature. Framing the stage with...

This competition is now closed. Thank you so much to all entrants. The longlist, shortlist and winners will be announced over the next few months. Keep checking our 'Competitions' section here on our website for more details. 'Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance' - Carl Sandburg The London Magazine has been home to some of the most prestigious poets in...

  In just three years, Fitzcarraldo Editions have published remarkably intelligent books on everything from orientalism to football. Crucially, in our Trump/Brexit state of the world, they seem to have made it their mission to translate artists who are lauded in their home countries but aren’t that well-known elsewhere. Take Olga Tokarczuk: a Polish household name, author of eight novels and...

The London Magazine has launched its debut fiction prize, formerly known as the Collyer Bristow Prize, for a third year running. The award will be administered by the magazine’s editorial team. First launched in May 2018, the prize aims to celebrate exceptional literary fiction, inviting publishers to submit one debut work of fiction each that was published in the previous calendar year. This can include collections of fiction by a sole author, but the book must be in its original [...]

Many academic phrases, like much academic writing, are too awkward, verbose and cumbersome to find their way into common usage. Indeed, the jargon of archaeology often leaves me, a retired but still active archaeologist, speechless with frustration. But once in a blue moon, terms coined in the Ivory Towers do manage to filter into informed general writing, if not...

If you put on a production of Romeo and Juliet in Verona, how much does anyone care that the action is ostensibly set in the streets around them? My guess is that we understand when a setting is a stand in for ‘far far away’, and are happy to displace it in our heads to another similarly foreign location...

Writer, illustrator and current Children's Laureate Chris Riddell is becoming an increasingly familiar name to stumble upon in the literary world. He has collaborated on projects with Neil Gaiman, Russell Brand and is an award-winning author in his own right. From his often jaw-droppingly beautiful illustrated books to his lively social media posts of train journey doodles and illustrated...

A good bookshop can be many different things - a haven from the world, a counter-cultural space, and a meeting point for friends, as well as somewhere, to, you know, buy books. It's perhaps for this reason that despite the numerous death knells that have been called over the last 50 or so years, physical spaces to buy books...

The London Magazine has announced the 2019 shortlist for the Collyer Bristow Prize for debut fiction. Now in its second year, the prize celebrates exceptional literary fiction, inviting publishers to submit one debut work of fiction published in the calendar year 2018. The shortlist, which features outstanding, original writing published in the UK, is: The Chameleon by Samuel Fisher (Salt...