Book Review Competition 2026

Recently, our popular review blog, Everybody’s Reviewing, passed one and a half million readers. To celebrate this milestone, Everybody’s Reviewing and the Centre for New Writing are running a book review competition. 

The competition is open to all current undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Leicester. First prize is £50 in Amazon gift vouchers. Second prize is £25 in vouchers. All entries will be considered for publication on the website. 

All you have to do is write a short book review (200-400 words) of a book you’ve read recently and enjoyed. The review should be positive overall, so choose a book you've enjoyed! The book doesn’t have to be new: it can be any work of fiction, creative non-fiction or poetry from any time, by any author. Please include a short (2-line) biography of yourself at the end of the review. 

Please send your entries (no more than one per student) to this email address: everybodysreviewing@gmail.com. You can also use the same email address for any queries you have about the competition. There is no entry fee. 

The deadline for submissions is midday on Wednesday 10 June 2026.

Competition rules are as follows:

1. Reviews should be between 200 and 400 words. All work must be in English. 
2. All entries must be submitted via email to everybodysreviewing@gmail.com.
3. All entries will be considered for publication on the Everybody's Reviewing website. 
4. Entries should not have been previously published.
5. The competition is open to all current undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Leicester up till the competition's final submission date.
6. Copyright remains with the author. Entrants give permission to have their work placed on the Everybody’s Reviewing website for an indefinite period.
7. Entries that do not comply with the rules will be disqualified.
8. Decisions of the judge(s) are final and no correspondence will be entered into regarding those decisions.

Good luck! We'll look forward to reading your reviews. 

Book Review Competition 2025: Call for Entries!

Recently, our popular review blog, Everybody’s Reviewing, passed half a million readers. To celebrate this milestone, Everybody’s Reviewing and the Centre for New Writing are running a book review competition. 

The competition is open to all undergraduate and postgraduate students in the School of Arts, Media & Communication at the University of Leicester. First prize is £100 in Amazon gift vouchers. There will also be two second prizes of £25 each in vouchers. All entries will be considered for publication on the website. 

All you have to do is write a short book review (200-400 words) of a book you’ve read recently and enjoyed. The review should be positive overall. The book you choose doesn’t have to be new: it can be any work of fiction, creative non-fiction or poetry from any time, by any author. Please include a short (2-line) biography of yourself at the end of the review. 

Please send your entries (no more than one per student) to this email address: everybodysreviewing@gmail.com. You can also use the same email address for any queries you have about the competition. 

The deadline for submissions is 9am on Monday 23 June 2025. 

Everybody's Reviewing passes 150,000 views!

 

Our sister website, Everybody's Reviewing, has now passed 150,000 readers!

Everybody's Reviewing promotes books and reading through book reviews, event reviews and author interviews. It has published 100s of reviews and dozens of author interviews over the last few years. As the name suggests, anybody and everybody can contribute reviews to the site, and the reviews can be of any book, new or old. 

To mark the milestone the site has just passed, Everybody's Reviewing is now inviting submissions for a new strand on the blog: that is, articles about "A Book That Changed Me."

For this new strand, Everybody's Reviewing is asking for short articles about any book that has had a deep impact on your life, your way of thinking, your way of seeing the world. Articles should talk about the book and the impact it had on you. As Oscar Wilde may or may not have said, "All criticism is autobiography."

Your article should be between 50-400 words in length, generally positive and sent to everybodysreviewing[at]gmail[dot]com. See also About & Submit for further information.

Finally, many thanks to everyone in our wonderful community - readers, reviewers, authors, editors - who have helped Everybody's Reviewing reach this amazing milestone.

Call for Entries: G. S. Fraser Poetry Prize 2021

Call for submissions for the 2021 competition!

Guidelines
Any student currently enrolled at the University of Leicester may enter.
Entrants may submit up to three poems.
Poems may be on any subject but must not exceed 40 lines.
Poems must not have been published or have won another prize.

How to enter

To enter please email your poem(s), one poem per page, in a Word or pdf attachment from your University email address to ngre1@le.ac.uk, with ‘G. S. Fraser Prize’ in the subject line and your name in the message.  

Deadline

The deadline for submissions is: 5 p.m. on Friday 4 June 2021.

Results and Prize
The result will be announced on Monday 28 June. 

A prize of £50 will be awarded to the author of the winning poem.

Call for Submissions for AstroPoetry Competition

 

Abell 2261

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/K. Gültekin;

Optical: NASA/STScI and NAOJ/Subaru; Infrared: NSF/NOAO/KPNO

Call for Submissions for AstroPoetry Competition!

The Centre for New Writing at the University of Leicester invites submissions of cosmologically-themed poems for a competition run in conjunction with NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory in Harvard. The competition is open to all students studying Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, and the deadline for entries is Friday 12 February 2021. The winning entry will be published on Chandra X-Ray Observatory's remarkable and world-famous blog. The competition grows out of our second-year undergraduate module, Using Stories, as part of which students explore how scientific discoveries, themes and images can inspire new writing. 

What you have to do

The challenge is to write a poem, no longer than 30 lines, inspired in some way by one of the news stories on Chandra X-Ray Observatory's blog, which you can see here. The nature of this inspiration is up to you - it might be a matter of theme, imagery, language, or a mixture of these things, just so long as it's clear that the poem is connected in some way with the original news story. You should submit your poem as an email attachment to Jonathan Taylor (jt265[at]le[dot]ac[dot]uk) by the deadline, including the weblink to the specific news story to which your poem relates. 

Some guidelines

• You need to be a student taking at least one module in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester to enter.
• You should specify which news story on Chandra's blog your poem relates to.
• Entries will be judged by Jonathan Taylor at the University of Leicester. The judge's decision is final. 
• The deadline is Friday 12 February 2021. 
• The winning entry will be published on Chandra's blog; runners-up may be published on the Creative Writing at Leicester blog. 

Previous competitions

You can read the winning poems from previous poetry competitions we have run with Chandra X-Ray Observatory in 2016 here and 2017 here. You can read the runner-up poems from the 2017 competition here. You can read some poems Jonathan Taylor wrote for Chandra here, here, here and here. 

Thanks

Thank you to Dr. Peter Edmonds and everyone at NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory for their kind help in running this unique competition. 

Call for Submissions: "Yours Faithfully, Edna Welthorpe (Mrs)" Annual Creative Writing Competition

Call for Entries: G. S. Fraser Poetry Prize 2020

This is a call for submissions for this year's G. S. Fraser Poetry Prize.

Guidelines
Any student currently enrolled at the University of Leicester may enter. Entrants may submit up to three poems. Poems may be on any subject but must not exceed 40 lines. Poems must not have been published or have won another prize.

How to enter
To enter please email your poem(s), one poem per page, in a Word or pdf attachment from your University email address to ngre1 [at] le.ac.uk, with ‘G. S. Fraser Prize’ in the subject line and your name in the message. 

Timescale
The deadline for submissions is: 5 p.m. on Friday 22 May 2020. The result will be announced on Friday 19 June. A prize of £50 will be awarded to the author of the winning poem. 

Call for Submissions: The University of Leicester Yellow Book

The University of Leicester is collaborating with rethinkyourmind to create the first ever university version of The Yellow Book - and is calling for artistic submissions. 

The Yellow Book is a positive, creative resource developed by those with experience of mental health challenges and endorsed by professionals with the aim to educate, aid and support.

The organisers are asking contributors to express well-being by submitting art, poetry and photography that relate to the theme #IFeelBetterWhen. Submissions are open until the 16 November 2018. Submissions are made via the website here. All submitted artwork will be assessed by a panel of local artists, who will select pieces that will form The UoL Yellow Book.

Submissions might be a poem, photo or other visual artwork. You can see examples from other Yellow Book projects on rethinkyourmind.co.uk.

This project is open to all abilities, students and staff alike. 

The UoL Yellow Book will launch at the Attenborough Arts Centre on 15 March 2019, with a prize ceremony for those who created the final artworks for the book. The original pieces will be displayed in the Balcony Gallery and will be open to all.

You can see a short video about the project here.

G. S. Fraser Poetry Prize: Call for Submissions

This is a call for submissions from current University of Leicester students for the annual G.S. Fraser Poetry Prize 2018.

A prize of £50 will be awarded to the author of the winning poem.

Any student currently enrolled at the University of Leicester may enter.

Entrants may submit up to three poems.

Poems may be on any subject but must not exceed 40 lines.

Poems must not have been published or have won another prize.

To enter please email your poem(s), one poem per page, in a Word or pdf attachment from your University email address to Nick Everett, with ‘G.S. Fraser Prize’ in the subject line and your name in the message. The deadline for submissions is: 5 p.m. on Friday 8 June 2018.

The result will be announced on Friday 22 June.

Good luck!