UCL Publishers' Prize for Student Writing

The 2015-2016 UCL MA Publishing Prize for Student Writing Blog

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Delivered and Ready to Read!

So thanks to the fantastic work of Clays Printing, we finally have our gorgeous book shipped and ready to go. It is so unreal to hold months of work from so many contributors in our hands, but we on the committee could not be any happier with the results.

It will still be a few weeks before the book is available and we will keep you posted on where and when. However, we are really grateful to finally have it arrive in the mail.

So thank you everyone who has helped us make it to this point. Thank you Zoë Horn Haywood for the fantastic cover design, again Clays Printing for producing the book, and to all of our sponsors, especially the main financial backer for the print run, JFIGS, who for the third year in a row has helped our books become reality. And of course, thank you authors for writing such marvellous stories to fill the pages.

We cannot wait to get them to you and to the public so that others can enjoy your work. Until then, we will keep you posted!

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It’s On Its Way!

The team has been working tirelessly (especially our fabulous editorial team) to get this year’s anthology together, so we are happy to announce that the book has finally been sent to the printer. In the next few weeks, we will be delivered our bundle of joy.

It will be wonderful to hold something that we’ve been working on for so long in our hands and, as we are weird book lovers, don’t be shocked if we inhale deeply to take in that new book smell. While their is nothing wrong with ebooks, there is something special about holding the physical object in your hands after reading it on a screen for the past five months. We hope that authors will feel even more ecstatic as they see, for the first time in many cases, their work in ink and professional binding.

While we wait for their arrival, we are busily planning the launch of the book once they are delivered and stocked on the bookshelves of Gower Street’s Waterstones. We cannot wait to officially meet the authors, whom most of the team only know through the story they wrote and email correspondence.

We will be sure to tell you more about the launch and the exact publication date, so stay tuned for the latest news on the project.

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Story by Documents

A few weeks ago, we were lucky enough to be invited by two of our judges, Lucy and Laura from Spread the Word, to the launch of their newest book Upshots and Other Stories, which is the title of the London Short Story Prize 2015 Anthology.

At the launch, many of the authors read extracts from their pieces. All of the readers were wonderful and the creativity and effort put into their stories was evident. One story struck us in a different way, however, due to its refreshingly unique way of formatting the story.

James Woolf’s “R v Sieger: additional documents disclosed by the Crown Prosecution Service” is a story about the mental breakdown of Helen Sieger, told in a typical understated, “keep calm and carry on” British fashion. What set this story apart in our minds was not the story itself (though it was a powerfully funny one in its own right), but that it was told not by the typical first or third person point of view, but through documents (transcribed phone calls, emails, newspaper clippings, etc.).

I think anyone who has taken a creative writing course has had that one classmate (or perhaps you were that classmate) who has tried to be “artsy” by writing their story in an unconventional way. While you can applaud them for trying something new and the creativity of the idea, the novelty is limited if the story behind it isn’t as powerful. What is so wonderful about Woolf’s story is that it is not only genuinely pushing the conventions of form, but it does not do so at the expense of the story. The story took a risk and succeeded beautifully. 

The rest of the stories are of course fantastic, so don’t think we are playing favourites. We only highlight “R v Siegar” because this year’s Prize strove hard to allow our writers the freedom of form and to show how stories can be told in different formats, and Woolf’s story is a perfect example of how this freedom can produce something delightfully unconventional. 

So thanks again to Lucy and Laura for the invite and congratulations to all the authors in this year’s anthology!

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We are still doing some last minute formatting, but if all goes well we will be sending the book to print. Stay tuned for any news and thanks again for your patience!  

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Frolicking at the Fair

This Tuesday-Thursday, the group took a field trip to one of the publishing industry’s biggest events of the year, the London Book Fair. 

Out in West Kensington, the Olympia convention centre was a wonderland of books from all over the world. From big companies like Penguin Random House, who were negotiating deals on possibly hundreds of books, to humble us, who had the previous years’ books as well as posters and stickers to promote our new anthology.

There were talks, readings, and discussion panels. Two of our fellow UCL publishing project groups had their own events. The first was a panel discussion called “Platform Wars,” hosted by Interscript Journal (follow at @interscriptUCL), which talked about the future of academic publishing. The second was the official launch of Colour Me In Shakespeare (follow at @colourthebard), a booklet of original Shakespeare colourable illustrations. It was an exciting week for everyone in the course and it was great to see our classmates show off their amazing work.

It was also a wonderfully overwhelming experience to go through the rows of booths that all had people with a passion for books and who are making voices and ideas heard in ever corner of the globe. While publishing is spilt by genre, corporate models, mission statements, and friendly competition, there was a real sense of solidarity to have so many companies under one roof.

Many members of the team were happy to have a little vacation from internships to attend the fair and we all hope that it won’t be our last time. We are also grateful that we were able to share our project with the wider publishing world.

Now it is back to work on this year’s anthology with a renewed sense of purpose. We are still putting the book together, so stay tuned to hear about new developments.       

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Drum Roll Please...

We are happy to announce that our wonderful judges have finally picked the winners of this year’s Publishers’ Prize! All of the stories were wonderful, but our panel found these three works to be best of the best. Congratulations to the three authors below:

Third place is awarded to “Lovey-Dovey” by Helena Schob, a thought-provoking story of a man and a wild bird.

Second place is awarded to “The School for Peculiarly-Sighted Children” by Emma Levin, a delightfully funny tale of a school of children who see things in a supernatural way.

And finally, first place goes to “Phosphenes” by Annie Warren, a heartbreaking tale of lost love and unfinished crossword puzzles.

We are so happy to be able to reward these authors for their superb stories. Of course, we wish we could give the award to all of our writers, and they will be receiving free copies and their own celebration in May. However, the judges have singled out these three as the best of the exceptional group. 

We cannot wait to share these and all the other stories as we are formatting the book now to get ready for print. And be sure to search for us at the London Book Fair next week at the Bookseller’s booth. Stay tuned for all other announcements!

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Creative Writing: More than just Short Stories

The short story has been a staple for our Prize. The first edition was made entirely of them. During the second year, however, the prize encouraged flash fiction submissions, which gave writers a chance to stretch their creative muscles. It’s hard enough to write an entire story in just a few thousand words, so try writing one in a couple of hundred. 

This success inspired us to open our prize even more, stating that we were not concerned with how the story was presented, just that the story was told in the best way the author knew how (though for the anthology format we still had to enforce a pesky word limit). We did this because while the short story is a very respectable form, it is not the end all be all for short creative writing. 

Most of the submissions were still short stories this year, but some did venture into the unknown and we were very excited to see authors trying different things. Poetry, creative essays, footnotes, crossword puzzles, etc. It makes our book stand out when there are so many anthologies that stick more strictly to one form over another.

Creative writing can be expressed in so many different packages and we want readers to see how UCL students are pushing the boundaries in more ways than just ideas and prose. Not that we don’t love our short stories, but all stories are not meant to fit that mould. We hope that next year’s committee will continue to encourage new forms of creativity and that next year’s book will have even more variety!    

As we finish the edits and start to lay out the book for print, we cannot wait to unveil the fruits of our author’s daring. More importantly, the judges results are coming in, meaning that within the next few weeks we will announce our lucky prize winners. Thank you for bearing with us and stay tuned!   

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Here is our official press release for the longlist! Shortlist announcements coming soon.

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Table of Content to be Announced

This week is an exciting one because we will be revealing which pieces will be featured in the book this year! 

As we have said before, they are all truly amazing and we cannot wait to see them in book form as we put the finishing touches on editing, lay them out in InDesign, and send them off to print.

We do apologise for any piece that we had to decline. We hope this does not discourage you from writing. It might be that the story was just not quite ready and you can fix it up to submit elsewhere (or even next year if you are going to be around.) It may have just been that we felt it did not fit with what we were looking for, which is unfortunately just up to our collective taste, which is fallible. Most writers have to deal with some rejection in their career, many of the most famous having to deal with a lot. So if a piece did not make it in, don’t take it to heart.

To the authors who will be featured, we say thank you for being part of this year’s anthology. At this point, you will not only be published, but will be invited to the book launch party, which we are organising as we speak. And maybe, just maybe, you will be awarded more if our judges find your work particularly enchanting or thrilling. Keep your fingers crossed. Remember, however, to enjoy this moment as well, especially if this is your first publication. Even if it isn’t, never let the novelty wear off. You’ve accomplished something that many will not in their lifetime, so feel free to pat yourself on the back.    

We will be sure to keep you updated with all that is going on, so please remember to watch our Twitter and Facebook. 

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Why Short Stories?

This will be the third year for the UCL Publisher’s Prize, meaning three years of validating the merits of short stories. Grant it, this year, we opened it up to other forms, but the mass majority of stories are still written in ‘short story’ format.

Short stories do not get as much attention as novels do, despite the fact that they permeate our culture in unexpected ways (for example, Breakfast at Tiffany’s started life as a Truman Capote short story). Many people think it takes less work to create a short story because, well, it has less words and therefore should take less time. It also seems like less work to read a short story and therefore less likely to immerse a reader into the deepness of the human condition. 

However, as Neil Gailman states, “a short story is an ultimate close-up magic trick– a couple thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.” As any student knows, more words does not equal richer ideas. Most times, one well-crafted sentence pierces the heart more easily than pages of beautiful prose. 

It takes incredible talent to condense a story to its essence. Novels have time to ‘waste’ words, especially if the pacing demands it. With short stories, however, you have to make someone feel or think something in 10% of the time. 

That is no easy task, but our previous authors, as well as this year’s Long List (which will be announced soon, we pinky swear!) have risen to the challenge. So again, thank you for conveying such wisdom and emotion in such a small space. 

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The Joys of Editing

Last Sunday, we sat in the UCL Science Library and would not leave until we made a strong list of stories to be added to this year’s anthology. After a (relatively) painless process, we finally came to a consensus. (We will soon be sending notification to the authors, so please be patient in the meantime.)

The next step is both a book lover’s dream and nightmare: editing. Everyone in the group loves words, but unfortunately grammar doesn’t always play nice. Typos are an easy enough fix (though they are certainly masters of hide and seek) and making changes to reflect our house style might be tedious, but not difficult.

There are two parts of editing that make the process more challenging. The first is that English isn’t math. While there are certainly rights and wrongs in English, there are those sticky issues in between. What is the correct use of a comma at this point? Can you use too many dashes? When is it a colon and when is it a semi-colon? There are guidelines, but no hard and fast rules.

The second challenge is making sure an edit does not change the voice of a piece or the writing style of an author. Every writer has a certain bias when it comes to how they write. It is important as editors to be objective about our own taste and make sure we are only changing for correctness and clarity’s sake, not for our own preferences.

It is a daunting task, but we hope to eliminate both problems by first having several eyes on every piece and second discussing all changes with the author. Wish us luck on our quest and stay tuned for more exciting news and updates. 

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First Round of Judging

With all the submissions in, we have finally finished a read through of all the lovely writing sent to us. The mix was fantastic, with poetry, short stories, and literary essays in so many different genres. We laughed, we cried, we paused in thought, so thank you to those who wrote for sharing your work.

It is now our task to go through and pick which of these great works, we feel, display the best use of theme, language, and story. This is not easy, however. We have already picked out pieces that didn’t quite fit what we were looking for. We are now going through those left standing, as a committee, and discussing which ones we want in the book.

As there are seven of us, all with different tastes, you can imagine the conversations we have about each story. Many of the pieces we can easily agree upon, but a few do split us, which causes a friendly debate on the pros and cons of the writing. These conversations tell us a lot about what a member values in their reading experience and makes us wholly aware of the subjectivity of art.

But we are optimistic that with our literary taste combined, plus the experienced eyes of our judges in the next step, we will give readers a wonderful book full of emotion and new ways of looking at life.

Thank you writers for being patient with us. We do hope to announce who will be featured in the book as soon as we hash this out, so as always, stay tuned! 

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Field Trip to Clays

On Saturday morning, we were delighted to find out that, thanks to all our wonderful writers, we had more than enough submissions to make a book!

With this sigh of relief, we celebrated with a Starbucks trip and a visit to one of London’s book printers, Clays, which has been in business for 200 years! Every year, they print 140 million books, getting orders from big shots like Penguin to humble old us.

Rebecca Souster, who also went to UCL a few years ago, met us and took us to a very official looking meeting room. There we started to hash out our cover for the book. Our cover designer, Zoë Horn Haywood, sent us over so many possible covers and we had narrowed it down to two.

You will soon get to see the winner, but getting there was a little more exciting than we expected. We had choices to make. Rebecca gave us hopeful advice, such as avoiding soft touch, which feels great, but gets smudged and scratched easily. We also stayed away from the glossy look in favour of a matte finish, which makes the book look more classy and less like a throw away novel. We had also been intending to use foil, which is what makes titles or images shiny, but are now considering using a method called embossing, which is the effect of making the image or text pop out towards you.

It was an educational and interesting visit where many of us learned what makes a book look the way it looks. We are optimistic that with this consultation, this year’s book will look just as amazing as last year’s, but for different reasons.

Stay tuned for our photos of the cover on Twitter and Facebook!

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Crunch Time

As hard as it is to believe, as all deadlines seem to be, tomorrow before midnight is the last chance to turn in your beautiful words! We’ve announced all our judges, nearly all our prizes (stay tuned for what will come soon), and we cannot wait to see who the talented winners will be. For all those who submitted or will soon submit, thank you for all your hard work.

You might be curious as to what will happen next. How will we sort them and when you will know if you have been selected. Regarding the second question, we unfortunately have to give the same response that professors give after you’ve turned in an assignment: “Not sure, stop emailing me” (Well, we’ll be nicer than that). But we will keep you posted and update you as soon as possible.

The other question is a little more distinct. Next, the committee (us) will form a long list of pieces through team selection. Then around mid-February, we will send that list off to the judges. Since these are professionals doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, patience will be necessary on our end to hear back from them, but hopefully that will be some time in March.

It’s a bit of a waiting game, but just know that we will contact you if you are accepted into the book as soon as we can. Until then, keep watching the blog, Twitter, and Facebook, where we will have updates on designs, introductions to past works and authors, and other exciting news.  

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This Year’s First Place Prize

We were pleased to announce this week that, for the third year in a row, the Faber Academy has gifted us a writing course (valued at £75!) to award to our first place winner. We will be posting other prizes soon, but we thought we would give a little expansion on what the Faber Academy is and why this is such an amazing award.

Faber and Faber has been in publishing since 1929, and is best known for having T.S. Elliot as editor as well as publishing classics such as Lord of the Flies. Many of their books line British bookshelves and their company has become a staple in British publishing. 

This Academy was launched in 2008 to give writers a place to perfect their craft. Our prize is for a day’s workshop of the winner’s choosing. Some previous classes include memoir and life writing, editing, poetry, and various levels of fiction, meaning whatever your level or genre, the winner will have plenty to choose from!

When writing can often be solitary and even lonely, it is nice to get feedback and instruction to feel like part of a literary community. And no matter how talented a writer may be, it is always useful to sharpen skills or maybe even try something new. That is what makes this prize so wonderful and we hope a nice incentive to work past writer’s block and send us the very best writing that you can.

We are so grateful for Faber to make this prize possible and we look forward to seeing who will be its lucky winner. 

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New Year, New Prize, New Writings

It is New Year’s Eve, and our team is so excited with the direction of the Publishers’ Prize. Soon to be announced (stay tuned on Twitter and Facebook!) are some of the fabulous prizes you can receive in addition to being chosen for publication. We will also be announcing our wonderful judges, who have been kind enough to offer their time and expertise.

We are most excited, however, to see what our widened writing perimeters will produce. While we always love the classic short story, we are interested to see which submissions dip into uncharted waters, such as creative nonfiction, poetry, or some original hybrid.  

With the deadline approaching (less than a month!) we have already gotten a few submissions. Come the 23rd, we will be diving in and reading all of your hard work. As writers and readers, our team knows exactly how much effort, creativity, and love you put into your stories, and we are so thrilled to see what you want to share with us. 

So much now for 2016 and we wish everyone all the success and happiness. Who knows, your New Year’s resolution to “get something published” just might be accomplished nice and early this year.

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[A collection of best books of 2015 lists - we’ll be updating continuously as more lists come out!]

Amazon Best Arts & Photography Books of 2015 

Amazon Best Audiobooks of 2015

Amazon Best Biographies & Memoirs of 2015

Amazon Best Books of 2015

Amazon Best Business & Investing Books 2015

Amazon Best Children’s Books of 2015

Amazon Best Comics and Graphic Novels of 2015

Amazon Best Cookbooks and Food & Wine Books 2015

Amazon Best Crafts, Hobby, and Home Books 2015

Amazon Best Debut Books 2015

Amazon Best Fashion Books 2015

Amazon Best Kindle Singles 2015

Amazon Best Gift Books 2015

Amazon Best History Books 2015

Amazon Best Humor and Entertainment Books 2015

Amazon Best Literature and Fiction 2015

Amazon Best Mysteries and Thrillers 2015

Amazon Best Nonfiction 2015

Amazon Best Romance Books 2015

Amazon Best Science Books 2015

Amazon Best Sports and Outdoors Books 2015

Amazon Best Young Adult Books 2015

Amazon Bestselling Books 2015

Barnes and Noble Best Nonfiction 2015

Booklist Top Art Books 2015

Booklist Top Art Books on Audio 2015

Booklist Top Art Books for Youth 2015

Booklist Top Biographies 2015

Booklist Top Biographies on Audio 2015

Booklist Top Biographies for Youth 2015

Booklist Top Books on Sustainability 2015

Booklist Top Books on Sustainability for Youth 2015

Booklist Top Business Books 2015

Booklist Top Crime Fiction Audiobooks 2015

Booklist Top Crime Fiction for Youth 2015

Booklist Top Debut Novels 2015

Booklist Top Debut Novels for Youth 2015

Booklist Top Food Books 2015

Booklist Top Graphic Novels 2015

Booklist Top Historical Fiction 2015

Booklist Top Horror Books 2015

Booklist Top Literary Travel Books 2015

Booklist Top Multicultural Fiction for Youth 2015

Booklist Top Multicultural Fiction Audiobooks 2015

Booklist Top Multicultural Fiction 2015 

Booklist Top Romance Fiction 2015

Booklist Top Romance Fiction for Youth 2015

Booklist Top Series Nonfiction 2015

Booklist Top Fantasy/Science Fiction 2015

Booklist Top Sports Books 2015

Booklist Top Sports Books for Youth 2015

Booklist Top Women’s Fiction 2015

Booklist Top Women’s Fiction on Audio 2015

Business News Daily Entrepreneurs’ Favorite Business Books 2015

Buzzfeed 24 Best Fiction Books of 2015

Flavorwire Best Books About Art 2015

Fortune’s Books That Changed CEO’s Minds 2015

Fortune’s Books That Changed Minds 2015 

Glamour Best Books of 2015

Good E Reader’s Best eBooks of 2015

Goodreads Best Books of 2015

Goodreads Best Fantasy Books 2015

Goodreads Best Fiction Books 2015

Goodreads Best Food and Cookbooks 2015

Goodreads Best Graphic Novels and Comics 2015

Goodreads Best Historical Fiction 2015

Goodreads Best History and Biography 2015

Goodreads Best Horror 2015

Goodreads Best Humor 2015

Goodreads Best Memoir and Biography 2015

Goodreads Best Middle-Grade and Children’s Books 2015

Goodreads Best Mystery and Thriller Books 2015

Goodreads Best Nonfiction 2015

Goodreads Best Picture Books 2015

Goodreads Best Poetry 2015

Goodreads Best Romance 2015

Goodreads Best Science and Technology Books 2015

Goodreads Best Science Fiction Books 2015

Goodreads Best YA Fantasy and Science Fiction Books 2015

Goodreads Best YA Fiction 2015

Guardian Best Books of 2015, Part One

Guardian Best Books of 2015, Part Two

Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2015 

Hudson Booksellers’ Best Books of 2015

Kirkus Best Book Club Fiction 2015

Kirkus Best Debut Fiction 2015

Kirkus Best Fiction 2015

Kirkus Best Fiction in Translation 2015

Kirkus Best Literary Fiction 2015

Kirkus Best Mysteries and Thrillers 2015

Kirkus Best Popular Fiction 2015

Kirkus Best Romance Novels 2015

Kirkus Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015

Kirkus Best Story Collections 2015

Library Journal Best Books 2015

Library Journal Best Cookbooks 2015

Library Journal Best Nonfiction 2015

Library Journal Best Crafts and DIY Books 2015

Library Journal Best Genre Nonfiction 2015

Library Journal Best Graphic Novels 2015

Library Journal Best Poetry Books 2015

Library Journal Best Romance Books 2015

Library Journal Best Self-Published E-books 2015

LibraryReads Favorites of Favorites 2015

Menswear Style Best Fashion Books 2015 

The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2015

The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2015

The New York Times Notable Children’s Books of 2015

Oprah’s Best Books of 2015

OverDrive’s Best Books of 2015

Parents Magazine’s Best Children’s Books of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Books of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Comics of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Fiction of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Lifestyle Books of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Middle Grade Books of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Mystery Books of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Nonfiction of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Picture Books of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Poetry of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Religion Books of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Romance Books of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 2015

Publisher’s Weekly Best Young Adult Novels of 2015

The Spectator Best Books of 2015

The Strand Magazine Best Books of 2015

Telegraph Best Books of 2015

Telegraph Best Crime Books of 2015

Telegraph Best Young Adult Novels of 2015

Washington Post Best Audiobooks of 2015

Washington Post Best Graphic Novels of 2015

Washington Post Best Mysteries of 2015

Washington Post Best Poetry Collections of 2015

Washington Post Best Romance Novels of 2015

Washington Post Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2015

Washington Post Notable Fiction of 2015

Washington Post Notable Nonfiction of 2015

The Week’s Best Selling Books of 2015

World Fantasy Awards 2015 

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Why Phosphenes?

Finding our theme for this year’s prize was not an easy task. We bounced around several terms, phrases, and Queen lyrics, but we were instantly mesmerized by the word “Phosphenes”.

What exactly is it?

Medically speaking, it is the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye. It is the spots we see when our eyes are shut. An antonym of shadows. An impression of an image completely filled in with light without the light coming from it as light usually does.

This optical illusion gave our theme one of those paradoxes we writers and reader so love. It also gave our writers a challenge. Creativity is not always born from complete freedom. Sometimes perimeters spark imagination just as much. 

That being said, we gave free range on everything else, as long as it does not exceed 3,000 words. Authors can write anything from prose to poetry, to creative non-fiction, in whatever genre they love, be it romance, fantasy, humour, etc.

We will have more inspiration soon, but if you have any questions, please tweet us @UCLPubPrize.