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The 2013-14 International Playwriting Competition is open to original one-act play for young performers or teenage audiences. The competition, now in its fourth year, is open to writers of any age, any level of experience and from any country. It aims to encourage new writing for young performers and audiences around the world.

The winning playwrights in each category will be awarded a cash prize of £1,000, and will travel to London to see their play headline the International Festival of Playwriting and Performance, which will take place in May 2014. The best plays entered into the competition will be published in a collection with international distribution. For more information and details of how to apply click here.

Closing date: 13 December 2013
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The competition is open to unpublished women novelists writing in any genre for adults, including literary fiction, women’s fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction, fantasy, chick-lit, crime fiction, thriller, historical fiction. To constitute a novel, books must total at least 50,000 words. This is a bi-annual competition. The next one will be in 2015.

1ST PRIZE: £5,000. Judging Panel: Kirsty Lang, arts journalist and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, Val McDermid, award-winning novelist, journalist and short story writer, and Charlotte Robertson, literary agent at Aitken Alexander Associates.

Closing date: 23 September 2013. More details of how to enter on the Mslexia site.

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The publishers Faber & Faber and University College London (UCL) have launched a new scholarship in memory of Faber’s former finance director, David Tebbutt, who was killed in a gang attack while on holiday in Kenya in 2011. The annual prize will sponsor one person each year, beginning in 2013, to undertake UCL’s MA in publishing. It will be funded by the David Tebbutt Trust, which is jointly administered by the publishers and the Tebbutt family. As well as funding the full fees for the course, the scholarship will also include a work placement with Faber.

Details on how to apply for the scholarship in 2013 are available from this UCL website

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Gerry Byrne (who took part in LWW’s weekend workshop on character and dialogue in 2010)  has organized a series of talks in Oxford this autumn. Between the Lines brings poets and psychotherapists together in conversation, interspersed with readings from the poets’ work.

The first talk on Thursday October 11^th features poet, author and translator David Constantine (pictured left) in conversation with child psychotherapist Gerry Byrne.

On Thursday November 8^th, the poet Bernard O’Donoghue will be in conversation with psychoanalyst David Morgan and on  Thursday November 29^th, the poet Jane Draycott talks to  psychoanalyst Caroline Garland. All events: 7.30 – 9.30pm.

Venue: Friends Meeting House, 43 St. Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LW. Cost:  £10 per talk/£25 for the series of 3 events

Tickets available online or by telephone from OxBoffice.co.uk  /  www.oxboffice.co.uk. Telephone:   0845 680 1926 (Mon to Fri 9 – 5pm, Sat 10 – 1pm).

More information coming soon on Bolam and Byrne website: http://www.bolamandbyrne.co.uk/

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The bookshop Shakespeare and Company was established in the Latin Quarter in Paris in 1951 by American George Whitman as a tribute to Sylvia Beach’s 1920s bookshop of the same name.

Last year, in association with the de Groot Foundation, the bookshop established a Literary Prize to champion the novella form and to discover new writers. Judges of the 2011 prize included Times literary editor Erica Wagner, novelist Breyten Breytenbach, Darin Strauss and Dennis Loy Johnson. Over 450 novellas were submitted for the prize and the winner was Rosa Rankin-Gee.

This year, the prize will run again and the closing date is 1 September.

Novellas  (17,000 – 35,000 words) on any subject by previously unpublished writers are eligible.

For more details visit their website:The Paris Literary Prize .

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James Joyce has been in the news recently. N. Quentin Woolf has launched Big Reads, a (free-to-participate) multimedia project designed to tackle ‘one massive book each year’ – beginning with James Joyce’s Ulysses. There will be a monthly podcast, as well as an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to contribute via social media.

Woolf says: “At the end of it all we might just know a little more about the book in question, or we might have more questions than answers – but at least we’ll have read the book.” For more information: email contact@bigreads.co.uk or visit his blog www.nquentinwoolf.com

Also, the Bookseller reports that independent publishers Alma Books are launching a new imprint to make classic titles available via print on demand. Having taken over the Calder Books list in 2007 they already have 300 titles by authors including Raymond Queneau, Dante and F Scott Fitzgerald. Publisher Alessandro Gallenzi promises that the initiative will ‘rediscover more neglected classics and try to bring them to readers inventively and in a new way’.

One hundred of the books are already available via print-on-demand, and Alma aim to have 150 titles available in PoD format by the end of the year. Among the first titles to be published in September –  James Joyce’s Ulysses.

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The Bookseller reports that  Bloomsbury is to launch a new imprint called Bloomsbury Circus. The new  list  will be a mix of debuts and more established names:  “mostly fiction, unashamedly literary, always fresh and sometimes surprising”. In the first year there will be  nine titles, and after that  they will build up to publishing four books a month.

Alexandra Pringle, Bloomsbury’s editor-in-chief, is quoted as saying: “With fiction, you can’t successfully publish more than four titles a month because, selling into the fiction buyer, you have to have your lead, second lead, dark horse and a crime title. If you do more, you lose the focus. If we are going to grow, we have to do it in an exciting, imaginative way. This is a way we can grow, and continue to offer the service we do.”

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The Bookseller reports that Good Housekeeping has launched a £25,000 competition for budding novelists in association with Orion and agent Luigi Bonomi.  The competition is announced in the magazine’s January issue, which goes on sale today (1st December).

Good Housekeeping is looking for previously unpublished writers in any genre apart from children’s, with first prize a £25,000 advance, help from the Orion editorial team and Bonomi, and the chance to have the winning book published with coverage in the magazine. Judges will include Kate Mosse, Bonomi, Orion fiction publishing director Kate Mills and Good Housekeeping editorial director Lindsay Nicholson.

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Throwaway Lines is a lovely idea – short stories inspired by discarded notes and messages. The  project was initiated by Andy Hayes, who attended last year’s short story workshop with me and Alexei Sayle. It’s produced in association with the writers’ collective 26 –  also a site worth investigating if you don’t know about them.

For 26 days this month, they’ll be publishing stories based on scraps of handwritten paper that Andy has been collecting from London’s streets over the past couple of years. There are three stories to read so far, including one by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg – an example of early 20th-century flash fiction: ‘Half a sheet of foolscap’.

It’s live right now at this link: Throwaway Lines. Take a look!

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The Short Review, a website devoted to the short story form, is currently celebrating its 3rd birthday. It’s a wonderful place to discover new stories and to read interviews with writers, including a recent one with the American author Lydia Davis. At the moment its Twitter feed focuses on ‘Story Sunday’, so it’s a rich source of recommendations for great  stories to read online.  Happy Birthday Short Review!