First prize is a worldwide publishing contract with Chicken House with a royalty advance of £10,000

Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition 2024

They offer unpublished and unagented writers of children’s fiction the chance to submit their work to the annual Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition. They are looking for original ideas, a fresh voice, a diverse range of entries and stories that children will love.

First prize is a worldwide publishing contract with Chicken House with a royalty advance of £10,000, plus an offer of representation by this year’s agent judge, Lydia Silver of Darley Anderson Children’s Book Agency.

The second prize, the Lime Pictures New Storyteller Award, is a publishing contract with a royalty advance of £7,500 plus an offer of representation by Lydia Silver. The prize will be awarded to a manuscript that shows great potential for film and TV development.

To enter, you must have written a completed full-length novel suitable for children/young adults aged somewhere between 7 and 18 years. By full-length we suggest a minimum of 30,000 words and a maximum of 80,000 words.

Submission Dates and Fees

Our annual competition opens on 1 December 2023. The deadline for entries will be at 23:59 UK time on 1 June 2024. Any entries received after the deadline will be disqualified, unless you have experienced technical difficulties which prevented you from submitting successfully before the deadline. Please ensure you enter in good time!

The standard submission fee has risen to £20 – however, if you are in financial hardship, please email competitions@chickenhousebooks.com by midday (UK time) on 29 May to request a reduced fee of £15. You do not need to provide proof or justification when requesting the reduced fee.

How To Enter 

The only way to enter the competition is through the submissions portal on our website. Please follow the instructions below.

You will need to create a single Word document containing the following submission materials:

• A page-long covering letter explaining why you believe your novel would appeal to children and telling us a bit about yourself.
• A page-long synopsis of your story. Please include all the main points of your plot in your synopsis, including ‘spoilers’ – we need to know what happens at the end!
• The full manuscript.
• Please note that all materials submitted online will be read digitally on e-readers so exact formatting will not be retained.

Submit

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