Welcome to Meridian Writing

The art of the Short Story is, thankfully, back on a resurgence. For too long it had been considered a poor relative of the novel, but those who know better realize that to construct a well-paced, believable and entertaining story in a comparatively small number of words is an art form in its own right. When one is able to produce excellent stories in a few thousand words it is but a strop on which we can all hone our novel writing abilities.

At Meridian Writing we are looking for well written, thoughtfully constructed and entertaining short stories in any genre - the most important elements are that the stories are complete with well-rounded characters, and have a distinctive story arc.

We are not biased against any genre and welcome hard-core sci-fi as much as historical fiction or a noir thriller - it's the quality of the writing that counts. We all have to start somewhere and we would love to find the next JK, Philip Pullman or Minette Walters.

We suggest that you don't leave entering a competition too close to a deadline, but leave yourself plenty of time to work on a story and never send in your first draft! Write a story, put it away for a while then revise it - you will generally see where improvements can be made straight away. Please pay full attention to our Entry Requirements, as any entries which do not comply will be rejected and no monies returned.

Good luck, and we look forward to reading your stories soon.

Latest News

The winners have been notified and bio's have been garnered. The hotly argued over top three stories for the summer competition have been chosen and are as follows:

'The Stanley Cheetham Cup' by Paul Curver
'The Madonna of the Basement' by Lena Gazey, and
'The Inlet' by Emma Timpany

Although it looks like it, you don't have to title your story 'The ...' in order to win, sometimes it just works that way.

Congratulations to all of our winning authors.

Our autumn competition runs until 30th September.