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 The Award is given to unpublished writers without representation.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