The NMWP encourages and promotes the best in new-media writing and is leading the way toward the future of the ‘written’ word and interactive storytelling.  The Competition is organised by the New Media Writing Prize CIC, with facilitation and sponsorship from the Bournemouth University Higher Education Corporation (“BU”) Faculty of Media and Communication, the University of Birmingham, One-to-One Development, Wonderbox Digital, and FIPP Media, with a generous donation from UK/Chris Meade.

Benefits of NMWP Competition

The Chris Meade Memorial UK New Media Writing Prize: £1000 donated by UK/Chris Meade, where the winner may also be a student, i.e., satisfies point d. of clause 7.

The Student Award: One year’s membership to Writers Online

The Opening Up Award: £500

The Digital Journalism Award: £500 and a year’s FIPP membership

Requirements for NMWP Competition

Whether you’re a student, a professional, an artist, a writer, a developer, a designer or an enthusiast, the competition is open to all. It’s also an international competition, open to all outside the UK. Entries do need to be in English.

New Media Writing Prize is looking for good storytelling (fiction or non-fiction) written specifically for delivery and reading/viewing on a PC or Mac, the web, or a hand-held device such as an iPad or mobile phone. It could be a short story, novel, poem, narrative game, documentary, or transmedia work using words, images, film or animation with audience interaction. Interactivity is a key element of new-media storytelling.

New Media Writing Prize is looking for creativity, so try to be imaginative to create an engaging story i.e. combining any number of media elements, such as words on a screen combined with images and video clips. New media writing can be created using a variety of tools i.e. a word processor, DV camera, social networking tools (i.e. Twitter), mobile phone/s, a scanner, Augmented Reality software – anything goes!

Criteria for all the categories:

Innovative use of new (digital) media/transmedia to create an engaging, satisfying fictional or non-fictional narrative, poem, or other story form.

Each entry should contain the following information within the text of the online form:

title of the work.

Entrant’s contact details: name, email address, telephone number, city, and country. For joint entries, all entrants’ contact details must be provided with identification of the main entrant for contact purposes.

Access details, e.g. URL. If an app, we will need 6 free access codes for the judges. If sharing from cloud storage (e.g. Google Drive), you must ensure sharing permissions are set to “public” or “anyone with a link” or equivalent; we will not follow-up for access permissions. If we cannot access the work, we will not judge it.

Entrant’s short biography (50-100 words). For joint entries, all entrants must provide their biographies.

Student entrants must provide a proof of identity which should be copied into the entry form, in the short biography section, e.g. a scan copy of entrant’s Student Union ID card or university enrolment number, which will be authenticated at the organiser’s discretion.

No attachments will be accepted.

Application Deadline

February 1, 2025

How to Apply

Interested and qualified? Go to New Media Writing Prize on newmediawritingprize.co.uk to apply