Fresher

The Publishing House for New Voices

WELCOME TO FRESHER PUBLISHING

Fresher is a publishing press, established at Bournemouth University to nurture the publishing talent of the future and support writers everywhere. It is also central to the university’s MA in Creative Writing and Publishing.

The Bournemouth Writing Prize is an annual, international competition open to any writers of fiction and poetry. Judges each year include 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.

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

Winner of the 2019 Fresher Writing Prize for Poetry

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We are delighted to announce that the winner of the Fresher Writing Prize for Poetry 2019 is Isobel Shirlaw, for her poem Gift Of Remembrance. Isobel studied English at Oxford University and has worked for the Daily Telegraph, the British Government in Bangladesh and for Refuge, a UK domestic violence charity and lives in Berkshire. Poetry judge, Antony Dunn said: ‘A Gift of… View Post

Specially Commended for the 2019 Fresher Writing Prize for Poetry

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We don’t officially have a runner-up category, but our judge, poet Antony Dunn, was keen to also commend a poem called Excavation by Elenia Graf. There’s something horribly familiar about the sentiments behind ‘excavation’ which rings true. It dismantles the pretty, the safe, the familiar, to get to some mysterious horror underneath. It doesn’t over-explain, the mystery is not resolved – and… View Post

Writing Wizardry Winners collect their prizes!

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Zoe Kilmister, The Writing Wizardry year 3/4 category winner, and Alex Kirk, the year 5/6 category winner, recently had a fabulous time selecting their choice of £150 worth of books from Waterstones, with a helping hand from staff at the store and Emma Scattergood, Editorial Director of Fresher Publishing and the Writing Wizardry Competition. Both children walked away happily with… View Post

Volume 5 Cover Reveal

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We are excited to reveal the winning cover for the latest volume of the Fresher Writing Anthology! The cover for volume 5 was designed by Tara Proudfoot, a student from the MA Creative Writing & Publishing course at Bournemouth University. Whilst there were several strong contenders for the cover design this year, we felt that Tara’s choice of colour and… View Post

Writing Wizardry Awards

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Here at Fresher, we are excited to tell you all about our Writing Wizardry Competition awards night, hosted in collaboration with local bestselling children’s author, Maz Evans. The shortlisted primary school writers, along with their families and teachers, were all invited to see Maz Evans read the winning stories and to find out who had been awarded the top prizes,… View Post

Writing Wizardry Anthology

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We are excited to announce that our Writing Wizardry anthology has been launched! The shortlisted winners of this year’s prize have all been included, with the cover design created by Bournemouth Univerity’s own students from the BA English and BA Communication & Media undergraduate courses. The Writing Wizardry Competition will return once again this October, though in the meantime, please… View Post