Southlands Arts & LitOct Creative Writing Competition 2026. Enter Now!

It’s that time of year again. Southlands Arts Centre and their LitOct literary festival have launched their annual Creative Writing Competition, and entries are open right now.

This year’s theme for the fiction category is Architecture — and it’s a broad one. We’re talking buildings of all kinds: homes and halls, castles and cabins, the grand and the gloriously mundane. It doesn’t need to be the centrepiece of your story, it just needs to feature somewhere. Whether you’re drawn to the drama of gothic manor houses, the quiet nostalgia of a local scout hut, or the concrete poetry of a multi-storey car park, there’s a story in there waiting to be told.

There are two categories: Fiction/Short Story and Life Writing (which must be drawn from your own life). Both adults and under-18s can enter, and you can submit to both categories if you like — with a discounted entry fee of just £5 for doing so. Single entries are £3.

There are also some really thoughtful concessions in place this year. Parent and child entries submitted together are £5 for the pair, under-18s submitting via school from a school email address enter for free, and there are seven fully sponsored free entries reserved for under-18s from low-income households — a lovely touch made possible by last year’s Highly Commended winner, Tara Edwards, who donated her prize money specifically for this purpose.

Prizes are genuinely worth going for. Adults can win up to £100 for first place in each category, while under-18s can take home up to £50. There are also second prizes and two runner-up spots per category.

This year’s guest judges are Gatlin Perrin (author of Dirk Jones is NOT the Chosen One, judging the under-18s) and Dr Emma Filtness (poet and senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Brunel University, judging the over-18s). The regular panel includes Southlands Writer’s Salon facilitator Jayne Towndrow and Southlands Arts Centre manager Paula O’Shea.

If you’re not sure where to start, Southlands and the creative writing group run workshops in the run-up to the deadline— perfect for getting ideas flowing and your writing into shape. The deadline is midnight on 31 July 2026, with winners announced at a prize-giving event on 3 October 2026.

And if you want a taste of the standard before you dive in, the 2025 Anthology — featuring winning entries from both 2024 and 2025 — is available to buy from the Southlands website. It’s a lovely read, and buying a copy helps fund the competition for future years.

Find out more and enter at southlandsarts.co.uk →