Short Story Competition 2023 - now open
The annual ChipLitFest short story competition is now open! And following the generous support of our sponsors, HW Fisher, we have increased the prize money to make it even more tempting to get involved.
All the details are here along with the rules.
Judge: literary agent, Antony Harwood
Sponsor: HW Fisher
Entry fee: £8 for stories up to 2,500 words. £10 for stories up to 5,000 words
Word Limit: 2,500 (£8) 5,000 (£10)
Free entries are available for writers on low incomes. For further details, see the rules.
Deadline (Closing Date): 12 Midnight GMT Sunday 5 February 2023
- First Prize: £1,000
- Second Prize: £250
- Third Prize: £100
WE'VE PUBLISHED A BOOK!
We've published a book! The One About the Sheep is a collection of the winning short stories from our annual competition, published by Inkspot. 21 brilliant, eclectic and diverse stories - now available via Kindle for just £1.99 and in paperback for £9.99.
We would be incredibly grateful if you not only buy a copy but you also leave a review (positive, we hope!), reviews really do a make a difference.
Copies are also available in local bookshops, Jaffé & Neale and The Woodstock Bookshop.
CHIPLITFEST 2023 - DATES
Make sure these dates are in your diary:
ChipLitFest 2023 runs from Thursday 27 to Sunday 30 April.
Events and authors appearing at ChipLitFest 2023 are now being posted, we’ll keep adding more in the run up to the launch on 5 March. So keep checking!
Festival launched on Sunday 5 March.
Priority booking for Festival Friends opens on Monday 6 March.
General booking opens on Monday 13 March.
BECOME A FESTIVAL FRIEND
The ChipLitFest Friends scheme offers members the opportunity to support the Festival and its charitable aims financially.
HELP US TO:
- Promote literacy in local schools
- Support a community project staffed entirely by volunteers
- Attract over 5,000 visitors to our town
- Celebrate an incredible range of authors
- Give children the opportunity to meet their favourite authors and illustrators
- Provide a host of inspiring writing workshops
- Join us at our annual launch party
And enjoy:
- Priority booking in return for a donation of £25 or more
Silver Apples
An Evening with Prue Leith
What a night we had with Prue Leith on 5 October. Adventures in improvised soup; salad served with a bathplug; keeping the Hollies' hash, and killing dead lobsters for Princess Margaret. The inimitable Prue Leith was in sparkling form. The tales just kept on coming and Dame Prue's home crowd was most royally entertained. So much laughter! Prue fielded audience questions about her astonishing career with wit and aplomb and then settled down to some signing of her new book Bliss on Toast, as well as her updated memoir I'll Try Anything Once (and she has!) and her novels.
Signed copies of Bliss on Toast available at Jaffé & Neale.
Silver Apples
Days Like These
On 11 October a completely packed house listened to the inimitable poetry of Brian Bilston, best-selling poet and novelist and Twitter's unofficial poet laureate. His latest collection, Days Like These: An Alternative Guide to the Year in 366 Poems, is a year’s worth of poetic treats and you’ll never look at the Hungry Caterpillar in the same way again.
Copies of Days Like These available at Jaffé & Neale. Not signed, I'm afraid, the audience bought all the copies at the event, there weren't any left over for Brian to sign, sorry!
brother do you love me
On 20 October, brothers Manni and Reuben Coe celebrated their wonderful memoir, brother do you love me. Reuben’s wish for their extraordinary book is that it will fulfil his "world mission to make everyone emotional." It certainly had that effect in Chippy! Our audience loved meeting the Coe brothers in gentle, moving and honest conversation with Saba Salman from Sibs, the charity for brothers and sisters of disabled children and adults.
You can snap up some of the special signed and stamped copies of this beautiful tale of brotherly love and deep commitment to reshaping a sibling's world from Jaffé & Neale. Give it to a sibling you love.
Laura Parker
My Pen is the Wing of a Bird
One of the highlights of ChipLitFest 2022 was the event celebrating the publication of My Pen is the Wing of a Bird, an anthology of short stories by Afghan women. The BBC's chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, wrote the introduction to the book and she found the time to come to Chipping Norton along with one of the translators, Zari Kargar. Lucy Hannah, founder of UNTOLD the organisation that had commissioned the stories, joined us via zoom from Assam. Audience members asked the speakers for their recommendations for a reading list to help their understanding about modern Afghanistan and we're delighted to include it here.
