Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition 2025 | Deadline: February 28, 2025

The Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition 2025 is open to all – both published and unpublished authors from all over the world

Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition 2025

The competition is open to all – both published and unpublished authors from all over the world. The competition is for short stories of up to 3,500 words, written in English. All that we ask is that the story was originally written in English, has not been previously published anywhere, and has neither been shortlisted for this competition, nor won any other competition.

Please follow Margery’s definition of a mystery to be in with the best of chance of winning the prize. According to Margery, "The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it."

The way a submitted story matches this definition is awarded greater weighting in the scoring than any other criteria.

Submission of an entry is taken as acceptance of all the terms and conditions of entry. Thus, incomplete entry forms and short stories not submitted in accordance with these terms and conditions will not be eligible for consideration and the fee will be forfeit.

Entry Fee: The entry fee is £18 and this should be paid on entry via the CWA shop here.

Prizes and Deadline

The winner receives a generous cash prize of £500.

Deadline for entries 28 February 2025.

Other Writing Competitions Open for Submissions

• Kelpies Prize for Writing 2025 | Deadline: February 28, 2025
• Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition 2025 | Deadline: February 28, 2025
• The Bournemouth Writing Prize 2025 | Deadline: January 15, 2025
• New2theScene Poetry Competition 2024 | Deadline: December 1, 2024
• The Bath Children’s Novel Award 2024 | Deadline: November 30, 2024
• Anthology Travel Writing Competition 2024 | Deadline: November 30, 2024.
• Anthology Short Story Competition 2025 | Deadline: July 31, 2025
• Anthology Flash Fiction Competition | Deadline: September 30, 2025

Eligibility Criteria for Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition 2025

Proof of any of the following conditions of eligibility may be requested from entrants at any time and will be checked at the short list stage.

This international prize is for a single, previously unpublished short story of up to 3,500 words by an author aged 18 years or over on 1 January of the competition year.

Entries must be submitted in English but the author does not need to be resident in the United Kingdom. Translations of short stories originally published in languages other than English are not eligible.

Entries will not be eligible where the author is a member of the judging panel, anyone involved in the administration of this award or a close family relative of any such person.

The submitted story must not have been previously published on any platform including digital.

A story submitted will not be eligible if the author dies prior to the deadline in any competition year.

Submission Guidelines for Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition 2025

• Entries may only be submitted online via the specific entry form on the CWA website (www.thecwa.co.uk). Entries submitted in any other form will not be accepted.
• Entries may be submitted from 1 October 2024 to 6pm GMT 28 February 2025. Entries submitted after that time will not be accepted. Entries may be submitted by the author, his/her publisher or his/her agent.
• Although the entries will be assessed anonymously, they must be submitted in the author’s own name.
• The submission of an author’s work by the publisher/agent will be taken as agreement by the author that he/she is willing for the submitted work to be considered and to comply with these terms and conditions.
• Authors may only enter individually, not as part of a team.
• The story submitted must be (and by submission is warranted by the authors and accepted by the CWA Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition to be) original, fictional and entirely the author’s own work. It must not infringe the copyright or any other rights of any third party and not be libellous, unlawful or defamatory of any living person or corporate body.
• Entry must be accompanied by the fee of £18, payable via the CWA Shop by PayPal or Stripe. If the PayPal or Stripe account name and the name of the competition entrant are different, payees should indicate when making payment the entrant’s name and the title of the story.

Further Details 

The story must not exceed 3,500 words.

The story may be on any theme but must satisfy the Margery Allingham’s definition of a mystery (above) and its chronology.

The format of the story must adhere to the following rules:

• The name of the author must not appear anywhere within the story
• The name of the story and word count (excluding title) to be included within the header on every page.
• We prefer stories to be typed in an easy-to-read font such as Arial or Times New Roman and in no smaller than 11pt. We also prefer page numbers to appear, but not adhering to these recommendations will not disqualify the entry.
• One writer can enter any number of stories provided each is accompanied by the entrance fee. However, no more than one story by the same writer can be longlisted.
• Stories which previously have been shortlisted are not eligible for re-entry, even if they have been substantially revised.

Judging

Entries will be judged anonymously; and the name of the author will not be linked to the story/made available to either the initial readers or the judges.

The judges of the CWA Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition will be looking for what they think is the best entry on the basis of quality and originality of prose, narrative voice, plausibility and storyline.

All entries will initially be read and judged by a team of readers who will score the entries to produce a smaller number of stories for the judging panel to read. The shortlist will be announced via the CWA website (www.thecwa.co.uk) and shortlisted authors will be contacted directly.

The longlist will be announced in April 2025 (date tbc) at the CWA Conference, the shortlist online only on a date to be decided in early May and the winner later the same month.

The winner will receive prize money of £500. The winning story will be published on the CWA website and submission is an acceptance of this.

The winner may be invited to have their story published in the Margery Allingham Society journal subject to timings and eligibility and at the editor’s discretion. Entry means acceptance of this publication if offered.

The judging panel will be appointed by the Margery Allingham Society with the approval of the Chair of the CWA. Its decisions will be made in an impartial and fair way and will be final. No discussion or correspondence about the result will be considered, nor will any feedback be given.

Shortlist and Winner of Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition 2025

All shortlisted entrants will be contacted personally by email using the details provided at the time of entry.

By submitting an entry, entrants of all winning or shortlisted entries agree to ensure that in the event that any winning or runner-up entry is subsequently published, including in any anthology publications, it will carry the Crime Writers’ Association logo if requested to do so and provided all materials bearing such approved credits, logos or trademarks are pre-approved by the Crime Writers’ Association.

 

Such accreditation if required will be provided to the winner and shortlisted authors.

Announcements for the 2025 Competition

Closing date for the 2025 competition is 6pm GMT 28 February 2025.

Longlist: April, date to be confirmed

Shortlist: Online in May

Winner: Date to be confirmed

Submit Here