COMPETITION – GQ AND NORMAN MAILER COLONY
2nd February 2010; British GQ magazine and the Norman Mailer Writers Colony announce a new annual competition for non-fiction writing.
The winner will be invited to spend a month at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, a residential educational centre based at the legendary author’s former home in Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA. All travel, accommodation and expenses covered, plus a cheque for £1,000 and the chance to be published in a future issue of Britain’s leading men’s magazine. Runners-up will receive cash prizes and the chance to be published in GQ.
Dylan Jones, Editor of GQ, comments “We hear a lot of gloomy predictions these days about the future of print journalism, the crisis in old media, the shrinking possibilities for serious long-form writing and reporting on the world. But we at GQ believe, as do our friends at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, that there will always be a need and a place for brilliant narrative, non-fiction, whether that’s journalism, criticism or memoir. Mailer called writing The Spooky Art. “You go in each morning,” he said, “and there’s a blank page. Maybe it takes five minutes, maybe it takes an hour. Sooner or later you start writing, and then the words begin to flow. Where does that come from? You can’t pinpoint it. You always wonder, ‘Will it stop tomorrow?’” For that reason I urge any student who hopes to avoid a bleak future in law or medicine to stop what they’re doing and start writing now, today.”
The awards will be judged by a panel including Editor of the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT Sir Peter Stothard; award-winning novelist and critic Geoff Dyer; Canongate publisher Jamie Byng; bestselling novelist and Contributing Editor to GQ Tony Parsons; Condé Nast Managing Director and bestselling author Nicholas Coleridge; GQ Editor Dylan Jones; GQ Features Director Alex Bilmes; leading literary agent Ed Victor; publisher and investor Spas Roussev, and platinum-selling singer-songwriter Lily Allen.
We are calling for submissions of published and unpublished work completed in the twelve months from May 1 2009. Entries can be on any topic but must be no less than 2,000 and no more than 4,000 words long and submitted by email to gqmaileraward@condenast.co.uk, on or before May 1, 2010.
Entries must be submitted as Word documents, double-spaced. All entries must include name, home address, name of college / university, email address and phone number, including mobile phone.
The competition is open to all undergraduates and postgraduates at UK universities. Entrants must be over 18 years old on February 4th, 2010.
