Novel Competitions 2021 Novels & Stories

2021 was weirdly heavy on character studies that won big, which honestly made some award lists feel a bit samey. The Booker went to 'The Promise' by Damon Galgut—this slicing, mournful look at a white South African family across decades. The prose is jagged and fluid at once, almost like a camera drifting through rooms. It’s incredible but demands your full attention; I put it down twice before it clicked.

Then there's 'The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois' by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It’s a massive, generational saga that reads like an epic poem fused with a history textbook, in the best way. Not gonna lie, the sheer scope is intimidating, but the way she weaves personal and political is unmatched.

For something a bit more contained but no less devastating, 'Great Circle' by Maggie Shipstead was a finalist everywhere and won the Prix Femina. A dual timeline about a vanished female pilot and the actress playing her a century later. The historical aviation sections are so meticulously researched you can feel the cold in the cockpit.

I'm skeptical of most free contests, honestly. Too many feel like data collection or anthology-mill schemes, where you 'win' a spot in a pricey collection you have to buy. But I found one exception last year: 'The First Chapters Prize' from The London Library. No fee, open internationally, decent prize money and mentoring. I entered on a whim, didn't win, but the feedback was genuinely thoughtful—more than I got from some paid submissions. The key is vetting: if it's run by a legit literary journal, university creative writing department, or a major publisher's imprint, it's usually okay. Random websites promising 'exposure'? Run.

WordHunt (formerly Scribophile's) quarterly contests are another solid free option. You need to critique others' work to earn karma points to enter, which keeps the community serious. The prizes are small but real, and the feedback you get during the process is the real value. Helped me tighten a short story that later got published elsewhere. I'd take that over a hundred no-feedback rejections from random places.