Applications for the 2025 DRF Writers Award are now invited. £10,000 will be presented to a first-time writer whose submission demonstrates outstanding literary talent and who needs financial support to complete their work. The two runners-up will each receive £1,000.
The judges of the 2025 DRF Writers Award will be the renowned author and literary critic Erica Wagner (chair), the award-winning playwright and poet Inua Ellams and Natalie Haynes, the acclaimed writer, broadcaster, classicist and comedian.They will announce the shortlist of three in October and the Award will be presented in November 2025.
Submissions should take the form of 15,000-20,000 words of a work in progress, fiction or non-fiction, which is not under option or contract.
Applications are open to writers who have not previously published a full-length book of their own prose writing (including self-published or published on-line) excluding a collection of their own poetry.
Entrants must write in the English language and reside within the British Commonwealth or Eire.
Full details of the award, including information about the judges, previous winners and full submission guidelines, can be found
here.
Deadline: 31 March 2025