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 The Award is given to unpublished writers…
Gill Thompson was shortlisted for the inaugural First Novel Award in 2017. Her novel The Oceans Between Us was published by Headline Press in March on the same day as The Conviction of Cora Burns by Carolyn Kirby, our 2017 winner! “I had wanted to write a novel for as long as I can remember. But…
2018 First Novel Award runner up Mandy Robotham has signed with agent Broo Doherty of DHH Literary Agency. Sales of her first book A Woman of War have surpassed expectations – e.book and paperback sales in UK are now at 81,000, with the paperback edition titled The German Midwife launching in the US and Canada on…
Mandy Robotham is the author of “Breeder”, the story that was awarded the runner-up prize in the BPA First Novel Award Competition 2018. After completing a masters in creative writing at Oxford Brookes University, Mandy has won several prizes for her short stories. Our judges particularly enjoyed the tension and structure of Mandy’s writing and so we…
Jules Lampshire is the winner of the Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award 2018 for her novel My Poor Deluded Girl which she wrote while attending the six month Faber Academy Writing a Novel programme in 2017. Our judges praised her work as being “one of those real moments in fiction where a reader can put themselves…
BPA client, Damhnait Monaghan is shortlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award. We’re keeping our fingers crossed!
We asked author Fiona Mitchell, author of The Maids Room to give some tips to writers entering the 2018 competition: What will you be looking for in the competition line up? I’d love to see a brilliant character-led novel with a dynamic, original voice. I adore uplifting fiction, but am also a sucker for a book…
The Award is open to unrepresented and unpublished authors for a novel in any adult fiction genre Following on from the success of our inaugural First Novel Award in 2017, we are asking for submissions for the 2018 Award. Winner: £1,000 + introduction to literary agent, Madeleine Milburn Runner Up: £250 + manuscript review from…
Our judges, literary agent Eve White and best selling author Saskia Sarginson have shortlisted six great stories from our longlist of 20. Congratulations to the authors of the following: Super Tech White Stock The Wrong Guy The Accidental Time Traveller Hannah Backwards Half of You The six authors will now submit a further 15,000 words…
20 novels are on the longlist. We are delighted with the calibre of entries received. They’ve come in from all over the British Isles as well as further afield from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Africa and Europe. A wide range of genres: literary, psychological suspense, historical, Y/A, crime, fantasy and…