Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2022: Author of Tomorrow

The Author of Tomorrow is designed to find the adventure writers of the future. Part of the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2022

How To Submit To Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2022

The Author of Tomorrow is designed to find the adventure writers of the future. Part of the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, it is an annual competition open to young people across the world who have completed a short piece of adventure writing in English.

The Author of Tomorrow is open for submissions 21st February - 22nd April 2022.

 The shortlist will be announced on 13th July 2022. Find the details on how to enter by selecting the submissions tab below. 

Prizes are awarded in three categories:

11 and Under | 500 words | Prize: £100 plus £150 book tokens for your school

12-15 years | 1,500 - 5,000 words | Prize: £100 plus £150 book tokens for your school

16-21 years | 1,500 - 5,000 words |  Prize: £1,000

Each shortlisted author also has their work digitally published by our partners at global literacy charity, Worldreader.

Part of the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, the Author of Tomorrow is an annual competition designed to find the adventure writers of the future. It is open to young people, aged 21 and under, who have completed a short piece of adventure writing in English. 

The award is run in partnership with Worldreader, a charity on a mission to make everyone a reader. Written by young people, for young people to read, and judged by a panel of young readers, the Author of Tomorrow plays its part in improving global literacy levels. 

How To Enter Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize 2022

Read our definition of adventure writing here and read the details below to make sure you enter the correct age category. Please submit your entry in the category applicable to your age on the date of submission.

Category 1: age 16-21 years

Prize: £1,000

Young writers must submit a short adventure story between 1500-5000 words in length.

Category 2: age 12-15 years

Prize: £100 plus £150 in book tokens for their school, library or charity of choice

Young writers must submit a short adventure story between 1500-5000 words in length.

Category 3: age 11 and under

Prize: £100 plus £150 in book tokens for their school, library or charity of choice

Young writers must submit a short adventure story up to and including 500 words in length.

Terms & Conditions

Submission of entry is taken to be an unqualified acceptance of these rules:

• The competition is open to writers of any nationality writing in English.
• Stories entered must be in English and within the word count specified above.
• On the date of submission, stories entered must not have won another competition or have been published outside of your academic institution. You must notify us if your story is published outside of your academic institution, or you are shortlisted or win another competition with it, prior to the date that the shortlist is announced. If we believe there is a conflict of interest, we reserve the right to require you to withdraw your entry.
• You may submit multiple entries. Each entry must be submitted separately and will be considered a separate entry.
• Entries must be submitted digitally, as a word .doc or .docx. Please contact submissions@wilbur-niso-smithfoundation.org if you have any questions about file type.
• There must be no reference to the author's name or personal details in the manuscript. This is to ensure that our judges do not know the names of the authors of the entries they are reading.
• If your entry is shortlisted it will be published in an anthology by our partners at Worldreader, on the Worldreader platform. By entering the competition, you agree to your story being published by Worldreader in this way. The anthology will be online and available free of charge for readers anywhere in the world there is internet. The author still owns the story.
• We may also publish extracts of shortlisted and prizewinning entries on our website and in other publicity for the awards and the Foundation. Authors names and ages will be published if they are a winner, shortlisted or commended

We reserve the right:

• to disqualify any entry if we have reasonable grounds to believe that the entrant has breached any of these rules. We cannot accept any responsibility for any damage, loss, injury or disappointment suffered by any entrant entering the competition.
• to amend these rules where it is deemed necessary to do so or where circumstances are beyond our control.
• to not award some or all of the prizes, due to circumstances beyond our control, or if our judges decide that the level of entries is not up to the required standard.
• We will act in accordance with current UK data protection legislation in relation to your personal data.

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