Blue Pencil Agency announces the First Novel Award 2019 Longlist. Our 2019 judges are literary agent Nelle Andrew and author of The Witchfinder’s Sister, Beth Underwood. Prizes for the winner and runner up include an introduction to Nelle as well as £1,250 in cash and an editorial report. The Award is given to unpublished writers without representation.

We received entries from writers throughout the UK and from as far afield as Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada as well as Europe. Entries were across all genres including YA, dystopian, fantasy, literary fiction, historical, psychological, crime and comedy.  The cast of this year’s novels come in all shapes and forms and from all walks of life: a teenager transitioning into a werewolf, an autistic biographer, a nun who investigates Marian apparitions, a girl who hears maggots, teenagers who sell their blood to an elderly elite, a lobotomist, 13th century witches, a Victorian sex cult, honey bee messengers to the spirit world, a garden full of secrets, a skeleton comprised of bones from different people and even an antique chaise longue fertility chair.

The shortlist will be announced on August 2.  Those writers shortlisted will be asked to submit an additional 15,000 words to their original 5,000 word opening extract.

The names of writers on the longlist will be announced along with the winners on September 30. In the meantime, many congratulations to the authors of the following 23 exceptional titles:

8.17

A Thousand Ways

Alice & Iris

And The Walls Came Tumbling Down

Birthrite

Blood in the Blackout

Blood Bones

Coincidence Detection

Cutting the Roses

Eighteen

Elephant Road

Tangled Roots

Tell All the Bees

The Days Are Falling In

The Dream World

The End of Men

The Girl Who Heard Maggots

The Greater Good

The Peninsula

The Price of Blood

The Triplets of Mount Sinai

The Unmaking of Eden

This is Just an Observation