I is Another Short Story Competition. Deadline: August 31st. Free to Enter.

Holland Park Press

Paul McVeigh & Laura Del-Rivo are the judges

We’re delighted to announce that Laura Del-Rivo and Paul McVeigh are the judges for the I is Another short story competition.

Laura Del-Rivo is the author of the short story collection Where is My Mask of an Honest Man? and her first novel The Furnished Room was turned into a film West 11 by the late Michael Winner. She is also a stallholder on London’s famous Portobello Market. Read more about Laura.

Paul McVeigh has written and directed plays and comedy shows and his short stories have been published in literary magazines and read on BBC Radio 4 & 5. He is the director of the London Short Story Festival and Deputy Editor of Word Factory. His debut novel The Good Son is published in April 2015 by Salt Publishing. Visit Paul’s blog.

The competition is free to enter and open to writers from around the world. Instructions about how to submit your story can be found on this page.


For this new competition we’re taking inspiration from Arthur Rimbaud’s famous declaration ‘Je est un autre’ – ‘I is another’.

The task

We would like you to write a story in the first person about someone who is not you but which is about a subject close to year heart. Therefore the storyline will really matter to you but the story should not be autobiographical.

It should have a strong theme such as betrayal, sorrow, lust, jealousy or revenge and be under 2000 words.

Take your inspiration from:

Cathedral by Raymond Carver
Notes on Time by Laura Del-Rivo
Development by Karen Jennings

What is the prize?

The author of the winning short story will receive £200.

The winning short story and runners-up will be published in our online magazine.

The winner and runners-up will be announced at an awards ceremony in central London.

The Judges

Paul McVeigh and Laura Del-Rivo

Who can take part?

We accept stories from anywhere in the world but submissions have to comply with these guidelines:

• The short story has to be written in English
• Translations are not accepted
• The short story should be 2000 words or less
• The short story must be the original work of the entrant and must not have been previously awarded or published
• You can only send in one short story per entrant
• We only accept electronic (email) submissions

When is the closing date?

You can send in your entries from 1 February and the competition closes on 31 August 2015.

How to submit your entry

In order to enter the competition you have to email us: submissions@hollandparkpress.co.uk We regret that we cannot process entries that do not follow the guidelines set out below, so please read these instructions carefully.

• The short story must be attached as a single Microsoft Word file
• The Word file has to be named as follows: ddmmyy_firstnamesurname_another.doc, where ddmmyy is the date on which you send the email, firstname and surname are your names.
• ‘I is Another’ must appear in the subject line of the email
• The body of the email should contain your contact details
• Please do not add your name or contact details to the Word file attachment that contains your story

Good luck! We look forward to receiving your story.