University of East Anglia has a reputation for creative writing spanning half a century. In collaboration with National Centre for Writing its New Forms Award was set up to identify early-career authors pushing the boundaries of literary possibility.
The prize was designed to champion bold innovation in craft, rewarding a daring new voice in fiction who might:
- Collaborate with other art-forms or in site specific/site responsive ways
- Experiment with forms of performance or print
- Challenge traditional form or experiment with theme, style, voice, structure or language
- Inhabit a digital space through online collaboration, gaming, virtual or augmented realities or other virtual ecologies
Winning writers have received a prize of £4,000 plus a bespoke period of development, including mentoring, learning opportunities and promotional platform, depending on the writer’s ambition and needs. The prize is now closed for future applications.
This is an impressive project with exciting potential, using a personal story to powerful, measured effect.
Past winners
2022
Vida Adamczewski was born in Peckham and read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University. While studying, Vida was diagnosed with Hypermobility Syndrome and Chronic Fatigue, conditions that render her frequently bed bound. Her writing has appeared in Ambit Magazine, Document Journal, The Byline Times, and The Mays. In July 2021, a staged reading of Vida’s lyric play Amphibian was performed at the Playmill New Writers Festival at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington.
Shortlist
Rachel Cleverly, Jasmine Farndon
Commended
Chris Barkley, Martin Heslop, Emily Robinson, Phoebe Stuckes, Mika Royd, Emma Gomis, Marta Bausells, Jon Stone
2021
Charlotte Geater grew up in Ipswich, and she now lives in Walthamstow in east London. She has a PhD from the University of Kent in Creative Writing: The Contemporary Novel. She is chronically ill and freelances part-time in publishing.
She won the White Review’s Poets’ Prize in 2018, and her poetry has been published in Clinic, Strange Horizons, and Perverse. In 2020 Bad Betty Press published her pamphlet Poems For my FBI Agent. She also works with AI-generated texts; she has had a pamphlet of AI-generated poetry published by if a leaf falls press, and another poetry pamphlet that is part AI-generated is forthcoming in Broken Sleep Books’ Legitimate Snack series.
She was diagnosed with Lynch syndrome-related endometrial cancer in late 2020, and had cancer surgery in early 2021. That is not her cat.
Of Geater’s entry, judge Yan Ge said:
‘Charlotte Geater is a writer of extraordinary talent and vigorous creative ambition. Her work looks into personal trauma, local history and the life and work of Byron through the prism of illness. In unfeigned and effortless prose, she enquires intensely and deeply into the pain and exhilaration of being human.’
Shortlist
I.R. Franklin, James Wilkes
Commended
Kerry Priest, Daniel Hinds, Maria Howard, Kirstie Millar, Jonathan McAloon, Rosalind Brown, Jasmine Farndon, Kieran Toms, Polly Wright
2020
A byproduct of the American Midwest, Taylor Beidler is a London-based playwright, prose, and performance artist. She holds an MA (Distinction) in Scriptwriting from the University of East Anglia, and is currently finishing her MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford, where she is working on a novel. This past year, Taylor was longlisted for the Snoo Wilson Prize for Scriptwriting, and had two creative non-fiction pieces shortlisted for the Show Me Yours Prize. She is the Resident Dramaturg for The New Collectives. She provided written material for AMC, and is under option for an original series with Silverprint Pictures.
Of Beidler’s entry, judge Peggy Hughes said:
‘This is an impressive project with exciting potential, using a personal story to powerful, measured effect.’
Shortlist
Michael Salu, James Smart
Longlist
Stephen Bernard, Tim Cooke, Sam Hacking, Kerry Hood, Lou Kramskoy, Michael Loveday, S.A MacLeod, Tessa Norton, Brenda Parker, Han Smith, Rebecca Tantony, Polly Wright
