The Aurora Prize for Writing 2025 Is Open for Entries

The Aurora Prize for Writing 2025 is now open for entries! This year, Writing East Midlands is accepting short stories of up to 2,000 words per entry and poetry of up to 60 lines per entry; in any genre, on any subject! Aurora is a national competition open to writers aged 18 and above.

Prizes for the first-place winner include £500 in cash, feedback from a leading literary agent or editor on a piece of work of their choice, a year’s free membership to the Society of Authors, an SoA advisory session and free tickets to a masterclass with one of this year’s judges! 

Our second-place winner will receive £150 in cash; third-place will be awarded a free ticket to The Writers’ Conference 2027; and the regional winner (from the East Midlands) will be offered £100 in cash. Winners will be announced in each category (poetry/prose). A longlist (of 25 in each category) and a shortlist (of 10 in each category) will be published online on the Writing East Midlands website.

We’re thrilled to reveal that our judges for the 2025 creative writing competition are none other than T.S. Eliot Prize winner Joelle Taylor, judging our poetry entries, and multi-award-winning author Irenosen Okojie, judging for prose. 

Entries to the Aurora Prize for Writing 2025 are £9 per first entry and £7 per additional entry, with a maximum of 6 entries to be submitted per writer.

The Aurora Prize is now open for entries until 6th August 2025 at 11.59 pm.

We are incredibly grateful to our partners, the Society of Authors, for their generous offer to our winners and for making the Aurora Prize a true celebration of writers and writing!

To enter your poetry or short stories, please visit the Aurora Prize for Writing webpage on the Writing East Midlands website, here:

https://writingeastmidlands.co.uk/for-writers/aurora-prize-for-writing/