You said YES PLEASE to a new Chapter Book for 5-8-year-olds competition and we’ve decided to run it. 🙂 There’s a lot to organise, and you won’t find any details on our website yet. But the competition will probably open in November and close early February. Happy writing!
Hugely excited to announce we are open for entries! Once again we have absolutely fantastic judges: Becky Bagnell of Lindsay Literary Agency (PB) and Silvia Molteni of PFD Literary Agents (Novel).
@sfmolteni
@LindsayLit
Best of luck, everyone!
If we’re quiet it’s because we’re busy reading your entries for our Novel Opening and Picture Book (text) competitions. Our readers have now selected 51 possible stories for the longlist and these stories are being read again. Hope to announce the longlist by late Nov. Good luck!
We’re thrilled to announce the longlist for the Best Novel Opening for Children or Young Adults 2021. Congratulations to everyone who entered - you are all amazing writers.
#WritingCommunity
#kidlit
#mg
#ya
We are proud to share extracts from the winning stories for Best Novel Opening for Children or YA 2021. Please join us in congratulating the authors and help them on the road to publication by sending this link far and wide. Thanks! ❤️
#kidlit
For those of you who entered Searchlight’s Best Novel Opening competition your stories are now with our reading team. I’m so impressed by the standard of writing - it’s going to be an incredible competition! Good luck, everyone.
#WritingCommunity
#kidlit
#mg
#ya
#amwriting
We will be announcing the longlists for Best Novel Opening and Best Picture Book Text 2023 this week (probably tomorrow or Wednesday). How exciting! Best of luck, everyone! 🍀🤞
At Searchlight we all write. Today, while I was typing the longlist announcement for Best Short Story, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize Anthology arrived with my own story in it. I’m reminded how vital these little moments of success are to keep writers writing.
@Oxfordflash
Drum roll please. Announcing the results of Best Short Story for Children or Young Adults 2022. Huge congratulations to our winners. Thank you to everyone who entered - your stories were fantastic. We loved them all.
#WritingCommunity
#kidlit
#pb
#mg
#ya
Our competition is now closed for judging. Wow, it’s been an exciting few days. The entries flooded in right up until midnight and on social media writer friends were cheering each other on. What an amazing writing community!
We can’t wait to read your stories. Thank you!
Expect news tomorrow! We’re ready to announce the longlist for Best Novel Opening for Children or Young Adults 2021. Exciting! (Image: pixabay).
#WritingCommunity
#kidlit
#mg
#ya
Announcing the longlist for Best Novel Opening 2022. We’ve read so many incredible entries - you’re all so talented. Our reading team now pass the baton to our brilliant judge
@AmberCaraveo
. Good luck!
Tomorrow we’ll be announcing the longlists for Best Picture Book Text and also Best Novel Opening 2022. It has been an absolute privilege and a pleasure to read your work. Thank you to our incredible reading team and to our IT partner
@zonkeyweb
. Good luck, everyone.
#kidlit
We have news! A top agency has offered representation to one of our longlistees (can’t say who), before we’ve even announced the winners of our first comp. We’re thrilled for the writer. To our other amazing longlistees and future longlistees, good things are coming!
#kidlit
We’d love to see illustrators and authors teaming up for our picture book competition. The Top 10 stories will be seen by numerous agents and we’ll be including links to illustrator portfolios, too. If you want to enter leave a comment and the hashtag
#teamsearchlightawards
.
Within hours of our agent/publisher pitch book of winning novel openings being sent out two authors received requests for full manuscripts. We’re sure there will be more requests in the coming weeks and months. Exciting times!
#WritingCommunity
#kidlit
#mg
#ya
#amquerying
Thank you to everyone who entered our Best Picture Book (text) 2022 competition. Your entries made me smile, think, laugh out loud and wish I’d come up with some of the ideas myself! They are now with our fabulous reading team. What a difficult decision it’s going to be!
#Kidlit
Wow, it’s Searchlight’s 1st birthday! Thank you to Zonkey our clever IT partner. Special thanks to our amazing reading team - your commitment to helping other writers is inspiring. And a massive thank you to all the writers who have entered stories into our competitions. ❤️
Thought you might like to see Searchlight’s new virtual ‘badge’ that you’ll be able to download and share on social media when you’ve entered one of our competitions. Let’s celebrate every single entry! 🍾 👏 An enormous thank you to illustrator
@CRedgateART
.
#WritingCommunity
Drum roll please. Announcing the results of Best Novel Opening for Children/YA 2021… A huge thank you to everyone who entered. Thanks also to our very clever IT partner
@zonkeyweb
, our dedicated reading team and our fantastic agent judge Gill McLay.
Agents, publishers, fellow writers, meet our fabulous shortlistees and winner for the Best Children’s Bedtime Story 2021 competition in our new Winners’ Gallery. So nice to put faces to voices!
#kidlit
#pb
#WritingCommunity
#writerslift
#writerslife
Announcing the longlists for Searchlight’s Best Novel Opening Competition and Best Picture Book Text 2023. Huge congratulations to everyone who entered - we loved your stories. Thank you so much for sharing them with us. 🍾🥳
Announcing the longlist for Best Picture Book Text 2022. It’s been an incredible competition and your entries have been superb. Our reading team now pass the baton to our fantastic judge
@KayleighKeam
. Good luck!
Helpful article for children’s writers.
Would love to know if you are writing a chapter book for 5 - 8 year olds? We are umming and ahing whether to run a separate competition for you… 🙂
#kidlit
#searchlightawards
#WritingCommunity
#amwriting
If you’re an aspiring children’s author, take every opportunity to get your name in front of agents, write for magazines, submit to forums, enter competitions. The industry is always on the lookout for fresh new voices, so be VISIBLE.
#kidlit
#shortstory
#pb
#mg
#ya
#WritersCafe
Announcing the results of Searchlight’s Best Picture Book Text 2022 competition. Congratulations to everyone who entered and thank you to our judge
@KayleighKeam
. What an amazing competition it has been!
Thought you might like an update on our Novel Opening Comp. Some stories now have places on the longlist, others are being championed and debated by our brilliant reading team. The standard is so unbelievably high… Hope to make a decision by end of Jan/start of Feb. Good luck!
It gives us huge pleasure to introduce the Winners’ Gallery for the Best Short Story for Children or Young Adults competition. Please join us in celebrating our authors’ achievements. Well done to everyone who entered.
#kidlit
#writingcommunity
#amwriting
We are thrilled to announce the winners of Searchlight’s Best Novel Opening for Children /YA competition and Best Picture Book Text 2023. Huge congratulations to all! 🍾🥳
If you’re an aspiring author, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Have lots of eggs in many baskets - other novels, flash fiction, poetry or short stories that you send to agents, magazines and competitions. Then you’ll have multiple chances of an egg hatching!
#Kidlit
Longlistees, we will be emailing you on Thursday to let you know the results of Best Novel Opening 2022 and Best Picture Book 2022. We LOVED these stories and wish everyone the best of luck.
Thought I’d share this little piece of advice an agent gave me re: very good stories that don’t quite make a longlist/shortlist/find representation. ‘Ask yourself, what one thing could I add or take away that could shift this to a different place?’ Don’t give up on these stories!
Whether you’re published, unpublished, a picture book/early chapter book/mg/ya/short story writer this competition is for you. We have the most fantastic judge - Chloe Seager of Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV and Film Agency. Go for it!
#kidlit
#amwriting
#WritingCommunity
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
We know that many of you are writing stories from scratch for our short story competition. This is Fantastic! We want to give you more time to work on these new creations, so we’ve decided to extend the deadline until MARCH 21st.
While our readers read and discuss your novel openings and picture book texts - we hope to announce the two longlists in early December - our illustrator
@CRedgateART
has been working on ‘virtual’ medals for our longlistees, shortlistees and winner. Here’s a sneak preview!🙂
Time to announce the results of Searchlight’s Best Novel Opening for Children or Young Adults 2022 competition. How exciting! Congratulations to everyone who entered - we loved your stories - and thank you to our judge
@AmberCaraveo
@SkylarkLit
.
We’ve sent out Searchlight’s Agent/Publisher Pitch Book of winning stories (for Best Novel Opening and Best Picture Book Text 2023). How unbelievably exciting! Good luck to our winners and shortlistees. Our fingers and toes are crossed for you. 🤞
#WritingCommunity
#kidlit
A huge thank you to all the writers who entered our 2023 competitions. You should be very proud of your stories - the standard was so high!
#searchlightawards
We want our competition winners to get not just any book deal but a GREAT book deal. Currently 18 well-respected agents/publishers have requested to read our top 10 stories for both the Best Bedtime Story Competition & Best Novel Opening for Children/YA.
As one competition closes for judging another opens. Our plan is to create lots of opportunities to help your writing get noticed. 1st prize for this competition includes a one-to-one call with our lovely literary agent judge! 😀
@BathLitAgency
#WritingCommunity
#mg
#ya
Chapter book competitions are rare, so don’t miss out!
Submit 1 chapter and a short pitch.
Work in progress is accepted.
First prize: £350 + a call with
@KatieBlagden
of The Bright Agency.
Top 10 entries: featured in our agent/publisher pitch book.
The results of our Best Children’s Bedtime Story Competition are published today. A massive well done to everyone who entered, the standard was amazingly high and you can all be very proud of yourselves.
#kidlit
LONGLISTEES FOR BEST NOVEL OPENING 2021, we will email you on Sunday ahead of the website announcement on Monday. Whatever the outcome, you are all incredible writers. We had hundreds of entries, so to be in the top 22 is an amazing achievement. Keep writing & good luck!
#kidlit
Your Novel Openings are now with members of our lovely reading team. Having read every single one of your stories I can tell you that the standard for this competition is sky high. You are all so talented and deserve success. Keep going!
#kidlit
#amwriting
#mg
#ya
#WritersCafe
Sent our very first agent/publisher pitch book out today, featuring the winning stories from our Best Children’s Bedtime Story Competition. Here’s to great stories finding homes!
#WritingCommunity
#pb
#pbchat
#kidlit
#amwriting
⭐️ Hot off the press! ⭐️ Our fabulous judge
@AmberCaraveo
of
@SkylarkLit
has offered a one-to-one phone call with the winner of Searchlight’s Best Novel Opening for Children/YA competition. How exciting! 😀You have one week left to enter.
We’ve had a few messages about dates for our competitions, so here’s a quick summary:
Best Short Story - longlisting early May. Final results 20th June.
Best Picture Book 2022. Open for entries now. Deadline 22nd August.
Best Novel Opening 2022 ( Same dates as PB).
Good luck!
While you’re waiting to hear if you’ve been longlisted for Searchlight’s Best Novel Opening 2023 Competition (expect an announcement early Dec), why not enter The Skylark Competition, too? Your manuscript is ready to go. We ❤️
@SkylarkLit
It’s such a great agency. Go for it! 🍀
Calling all aspiring authors! The Skylark competition is open for entries, with fab judges
@FictionFanatic1
@SarahLStewart_
&
@emmavrjones
helping us pick the winners! We can’t wait to see your stories so please take the plunge! 🤗 Details & entry rules at
Our competitions wouldn’t happen without our fabulous readers -
@alexandratdiaz
@LuWrites
@DarbonMel
@CGoretzka
@SarahXHen
Olivia Wakeford, Julia Hubery and Kay Leitch. They are all dedicated to helping other writers and are such nice people. Thank you! ❤️
Have been reflecting on the vital role writing communities play in helping authors achieve success with competitions. Our shortlistees for the Best Bedtime Story 2021 are members of Twitter,
@SCBWI_BI
,
@writementor
, the creative writing group at The Story Museum,
@TheGEAcademy
…
Can’t take the credit for one of our amazing entrants finding a publisher before the Best Novel Opening for Children/YA Competition even closes, but I think it shows that spending time on polishing your manuscript for a competition is always time well spent.
#kidlit
#mg
#ya
Agents and publishers are in for a real treat - we’ve just sent out our pitch book of truly outstanding novel openings. Watch this space! Our fingers and toes are crossed for our shortlistees and winner. 😊
#WritingCommunity
#kidlit
#mg
#ya
#amwriting
#amquerying
10 days to go until our competitions close.
Absolutely LOVING your ‘I’ve entered!’ tweets. It’s making the competitions so exciting! It’s also great to see you supporting each other. Twitter has such a brilliant writing community.
#WritingCommunity
The standard of all your entries is incredibly high and we know how much effort you put into crafting your stories. To celebrate this we’ve created an entrant’s badge for you to post with pride on social media. You’ll find it on our website ‘Entry Confirmation’ page. 🙂
It’s getting so exciting! 15 children’s bedtime stories now have a place on our longlist, another 10 are being championed by our readers for the remaining 5 places. These 10 are all being read again and discussed. Good luck to everyone!
#pbchat
#amwriting
#WritingCommunity
Super excited that our anthology of winning stories for our 2022 competitions has now been professionally typeset! 🙂 It arrived with a note
@TomLancaster_PB
. “I really want the Dung Beetle book for my nibling! He’d adore it.”
I started reading the entries for our 2022 Best Novel Opening competition and was delighted to see a few familiar stories, which have been developed since last year. If at first you don’t succeed, keep going! 🙂
#kidlit
#amwriting
#mg
#ya
#WritingCommunity
The proof copy arrives - it’s sooo beautiful! Special thanks to our 2021 winners for writing such amazing stories. Kay Leitch (one of our readers) proofread the anthology; Kay Coe of
@BookPolishers
professionally typeset it and
@CRedgateART
created the fab cover. Thank you!