The Publishing House for New Voices
Fresher is a young publishing press, established at Bournemouth University to nurture the publishing talent of the future and encourage new writers everywhere. It is also central to the university’s MA in Creative Writing and Publishing.
The Fresher Writing Prize is an annual competition open to all previously unpublished, emerging writers of fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction. Judges each year include a literary agent, an author and other senior figures from the publishing industry, who offer a one-to-one or feedback on winners' work as part of their prize. We also run the Writing Wizardry Prize for children of 11 years and under.
The Fresher Writing Prize 2019 closes for entires on January 23rd 2019
This year’s optional theme for the Fresher writing prize is Peace! We are looking forward to seeing how this will be interpreted in poetry and short stories.
Please do keep in touch here, or via Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, for details of the Prize, our publications and other special writing-related events.
Please note, we do not currently accept any other work for publication. Unfortunately, as we are a very small publishing house, we are unable to offer any work experience placements.
Best wishes - Emma
Find out more
The optional theme for this year’s Fresher Writing Prize is Peace. The idea of peace can mean something different to everyone, and we are looking forward to seeing how you interpret it in your stories and poems. We hope to inspire you to explore and share what exactly it is that peace means to you. We also encourage you to think… View Post
Volume 4 Cover Reveal Before we launch the Fresher Writing Prize 2019, we are excited to reveal the front cover of the 2018 Fresher Writing Anthology. Designed by Oliver Ray, this Medusa-inspired cover perfectly represents the anthology’s theme of monsters and the entries inside are just as brilliant! The paperback edition of this volume costs just £7 including… View Post
We have returned with another winner for the first 500 words of a novel category! Sorry for the delay, but our amazing judge Madeleine Milburn, founder of the Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency, had the extremely difficult decision in choosing just one winner out of all the entries we received. Our winner of the first 500 words of… View Post
It’s Wednesday and time to announce our next Fresher Writing Prize 2018 winner! The flash fiction category took on this year’s monster theme, and it was key to make every word count so the story leapt of the page. Our judge for this category James Cole, who is an author and the Programme leader for the BA Creative Writing at… View Post
It’s our second day announcing our Fresher Writing Prize 2018 winners! Today we look at the glorious poetry category, who this year put the monster theme to the test. Our judge, who had the difficult task of choosing one winner, was award-winning poet Antony Dunn! He has come to a decision and the winner for the 2018 Poetry category is… View Post
The winner of the Fresher Writing Prize for short story has been announced. Our judge, author Claire Fuller, had a lot of amazing short story entries to sift through over the last few months, but she did finally come to a final decision on her favourite monster story! The Fresher Writing Prize 2018 winner for the Short Story category is…… View Post
