We’ve been busy number crunching behind the scenes, and the stats for our 2022 Writers’ Award competition are simply incredible. We had a record number of entries this year, with almost 1,400 unpublished writers across the UK submitting their work.
These are voices we don’t usually hear from in the mainstream literature sector, lots of whom may struggle to be able to write, let alone get into the publishing industry.
This right here is why we do what we do – the UK’s only national writing competition for ALL underrepresented writers.
The number of writers entering our competition has hugely increased since we first began in 2013. In 2018 we had under 500 entries; this year we were just shy of 1,400.
Over 60% of entrants reported more than one barrier, with almost 40% reporting more than three barriers, and 20% of entrants had four or more barriers.
Writers reporting mental health issues made up more than half of our entrants.
We’ve been actively working to reach more writers from working class backgrounds since we began asking about this specifically in 2019.
A large number of entrants are from the LGBTQIA+ community–a 12% increase on 2019.
