Many thanks to everyone that entered the 2020 First Chapter Competition. Louise Walters and I have read a lot of novel openings to make the longlist decision. We received 308 entries and have a longlist of 36, which we’ll now be choosing a shortlist of 10 from to go to our final judge, Carrie Plitt, literary agent with Felicity Bryan Associates.
Congratulations to all the writers who stories are listed below. We’re still reading anonymously at this stage so please don’t let anymore know what your story is called if you’ve made it through!
2020 First Chapter Competition Longlist
- A Charm To Mend Lost Causes
- A Whisper In The Woods
- Boy Nightingale
- Brantwood
- Down Came A Blackbird
- Flatfoot In Fleece
- Girls Like Us
- Hush
- In Our Father’s House
- Iris Vine Remembers
- Jack
- Level 44
- Life After The End Of The World
- Love
- Love The Dark Days
- Motor City Resolve
- No Woman Is An Island
- Passing Through Fire
- Static
- Summers With My Father
- Swimming Lesson
- The Book Of Gates
- The Candidate’s Husband
- The Circle
- The Cuckoo Clock
- The History And Remarkable Life Of Octavia Swallow
- The Inquisitor’s Papers
- The Katie Experiment
- The Orchid Child
- The Pearls, The Lake, And Yoshio
- The Slighting Of Livia Rathbone
- The Slow Knife
- The Sunday Painters
- We Make Dreams
- Words We Shoud’ve Said
- Your Sorrows Rise
We’ll be re-reading these chapters now and will have the shortlist in the first week of April.
We asked our members and followers about who they would like to see judging the 2021 competition and the unanimous decision was for it to be an indie publisher. So we’ve got a very exciting one lined up, which we’ll be announcing when the new competition details go live later this year.
We’re also very excited to have partnered with Casa Ana Retreats for the 2021 competition. Find out more about Casa Ana here. I’m lucky enough to be their guest mentor for a 2-week retreat later this year, so if you fancy some writing time in the mountains in southern Spain with 1-1 support to develop your novel, short/flash fiction or memoir, then come join me!