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The DRF Writers Award 2021: Submissions Open 1st April - 1st July 2021

The biennial Writers Award is being brought forward from 2022 to 2021 because of the lockdown.

The DRF Writers Award gives £10,000 to a previously unpublished writer whose submission of 15,000-20,000 words demonstrates talent. The submitted work can be fiction, non-fiction, children’s or short stories. The applicant must be a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Eire.

Details of the Award are as follows:

  • Applications should be made after the opening date has been announced via the website www.deborahrogersfoundation.org.
  • An award of £10,000 is presented to a first-time prose writer whose submission demonstrates talent and work worthy of publication.  There is a shortlist of three, and the two runners-up each receive £1,000.
  • Submissions should take the form of 15,000-20,000 thousand words of a work in progress, fiction or non-fiction.
  • Applicants may not be under contract or option to any publisher for any work or title in any language, nor may they be agented.
  • Applications are only open to writers who have not previously published or self-published a full-length book (with the exception of a collection of poetry).
  • The applicant must write in the English language and be a citizen of the British Commonwealth and Eire.
  • Submissions should be accompanied by a brief synopsis and a short biographical note.
  • Applicants who submitted work for previous Writers Awards may re-apply but the work submitted must be new. 

Every submission is read at least three times by a team of readers at RCW who select a longlist of about eight entries which the Judges will read “blind”. The longlisted authors will be revealed on the website once the judges have chosen a shortlist of three. Applicants will be notified if their work is chosen for the longlist. Longlisted authors will be offered an editorial consultation with an agent at RCW.

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