Pen To Print

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Competitions.

Pen to Print Awards 19

(Incorporating the Michael Feld Writing Competition for Young People)

Write and perform a Poem, Monologue or Short Play of no more than 3 mins long to be performed as part of our
new online Speech and Drama Festival on 25 and 26 March 2022.

The competition is now open to adults and children aged 7 and over as set out in the categories
below.

Win a Kindle Fire Tablet and the opportunity of a free coaching session with an acting professional.
Other runner-up prizes are on offer.

The competition CLOSES at 5pm on Friday 21 January 2022.

You can email your entry to pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk with the Subject Line:
Pen to Print Speech and Drama Festival
or
CLICK HERE TO ENTER

The best overall piece of writing and performance by young people aged 7 to 16 years old
living or going to school in Barking and Dagenham will be eligible to win the Michael Feld
Memorial Award.

How to Enter

 

CLICK to read full entry details along with the Rules, Terms and Conditions.

The Audio Play Competition

In Partnership with Alternative Stories

Win a Tablet PC
and
A fully produced audio drama which will go out as an Alternative Stories podcast edition to their global audience

This includes:

  • The opportunity to work with Alternative Stories actors including casting, direction and fielding their questions on character tone and delivery.
  • The opportunity to work with Alternative Stories in the design of soundscapes and the tone of music and ambient sounds we produce for their production.
  • The opportunity to play a small cameo part in the production, should you wish to.
  • To be fully credited as the writer in all branding for the production.

The competition CLOSES at 5pm on Friday 25 March 2022.

Write a 30 minute Audio Play for performance.

Email your entries to pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk with the Subject Line:
Audio Play Competition
or
CLICK HERE TO ENTER

Your Audio Play should have a running time approximately 30 minutes – the word length for this will be approximately 4,000 – 5,000 words. Your manuscript should not exceed 5,000 words.

Include a synopsis of your story of no more than 250 words.

Works must be original (not plays or films that have been produced elsewhere) and tailored specifically for audio drama (i.e., ‘stage directions’, reference sounds or tones of voice specifically not movements of actors)

Your Audio Play should have at least 2 characters but preferably 4 or 5.

Any topic is permitted but we reserve the right to reject entries on grounds of taste, decency and where the legality or morality of content is in question.

If a writer is writing substantially outside of her or his race, ethnic group, sexuality, gender or experience of disability, Alternative Stories reserve the right to work with actors or other writers from the relevant group to ensure authenticity of the work.

The overall winner is due to be announced at the Pen to Print Awards in 2022 date and time to be confirmed.

CLICK to read full entry details along with the Rules, Terms and Conditions.

Core to the Pen to Print programme are our free to enter competitions.

The Book Challenge is our premier competition with the fabulous prize of support to write and publish your own book!

We have already seen Challengers publish and win awards for their books, so if you have a story that you have always wanted to turn into a book why wait, have a go! If you don’t have a book idea but love to tell stories or are more poetic, why not enter the Poetry and Short Story Competition? Each year we will feature an additional competition which could be playwriting, screenwriting, photography or film making; so you can explore other forms of telling your story.

We are sure you will find inspiration to put pen to paper which you may be lucky enough to see in print, good luck!

Each competition has outline details and links to its specific Terms and Conditions, to make sure you are eligible please read these carefully before you enter.

Please NOTE by entering a Pen to Print competition the author is giving permission for Pen to Print to publish and/or broadcast their work, if it chooses, digitally or in print.  For these Terms & Conditions please CLICK HERE.
Any online and social media competitions may have different closing dates.
Always check the full Terms and Conditions of each competition for closing dates and entry requirements.
CLICK HERE for our How To Guide for entering competitions

COVID-19 Statement
Last updated: 09.10.2021.
All Pen to Print activity is now available online only. 
Please do not post or hand deliver your entries. We currently only accept entries sent by email or using the submission form.

Pen to Print helps you find your voice. Hear a winner's story.

If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

Toni Morrison

One should begin any work of fiction with the longest, most convoluted sentence imaginable, then try to beat that record.

Charles Dickens

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the readers.

Stephen King

You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.

Octavia E.Butler

Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly.

Agatha Christie

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Maya Angelou

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.

Louis L’Amour

It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.

James Thurber

Creativity is contagious, pass it on.

Albert Einstein

To write successfully, one requires only a sharp pencil, a piece of paper and a hot cup of tea.

Agatha Christie

Poetry is when an emotion has found it’s thought, and the thought has found words.

Robert Frost

Writing lets you break boundaries because you can go anywhere you wish.
The voice in my stories is sometimes authentic, sometimes it is foreign.
Sometimes it is old. Sometimes it is new. Sometimes my writing is Muslim, other times it is Sikh and many times, it is no one’s religion because as long as I am telling the story,
I am in control.
I am whoever I want to be.

Farzana Hakim, Book Challenge Author
Pen to Print Writer