Louise and I are excited to announce our longlisted chapters for the 2019 competition. We have read 311 chapters over the past couple of months and 40 of those have been longlisted. We will now re-read these to choose the shortlist of 10 that will go to the final judge, literary agent Sarah Hornsey (nee Manning) at The Bent Agency, to read.

Thanks to all of the writers who took part and we really enjoyed reading your entries. Well done to the authors of the longlisted novels below. readings are still anonymous at this stage so please don’t let us know what yours is called if it is shown here. Good luck for the next round!

2019 First Chapter Competition Longlist

1. A Dangerous Age
2. A Different Reality
3. A Pair Of Blue Butterflies
4. Another Truth
5. Behold the Stars
6. Caught Kissing Adam Faith
7. Cold Harbour
8. Descendants
9. Hacking At The Anchor
10. Heist Flick
11. His Other Woman
12. Middle C: A Novel
13. My Name Is Ten
14. Offerings of A Small Destiny
15. Persona (Non Grata)
16. Prohibition
17. Purple Gold
18. Red Fox Hiding
19. Ribbons Of Light
20. Ruby Sixpence Whistles Up A Storm
21. Swimming Lesson
22. The Cherry Picker
23. The Cloth of Night
24. The Contrabandist
25. The Cure
26. The Darkest Harbour
27. The Joy Divide
28. The Leopard’s Daughter
29. The Mother Of Gods
30. The Shadow Puppet
31. The War Between Us
32. The Wash
33. The Whiteout
34. There Is A Shape To Everything
35. Undercurrent
36. Unsound
37. Violet
38. We Have Ourselves
39. Women And Children First
40. Words We Should Have Said

We will make the shortlist announcement by the end of this month and the winners will be revealed in May. Details of the 2020 competition will be online later in the year.