About the Prize

Judged by a leading literary agent and a senior fiction editor, featuring a generous shortlist of ten entries and two prizes every year, the First Novel Prize is an annual opportunity for writers to expose their work as well as win one of the two prizes: £1,000 for the First Prize and £500 for the Shortlist Prize.

If your manuscript is in English, unpublished or self-published and of any adult genre, you are welcome to enter it in our competition. Please note that non-fiction, young adult fiction and children’s fiction will not qualify for entry. Children’s writers can enter their works of children’s fiction in the upcoming Leo Minor Prize, launching in 2024 and open to unpublished or independently published writers of picture books and middle-grade fiction.

Please check full Terms and Conditions before entering.

The three winners will be contacted at the end of August 2024 via telephone or email.

The organisers will not send notifications of the winners’ names to all entrants, however these will be made public on our website and on social media channels.