THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE!

We are still trying to produce the anthology, approaching potential patrons, sponsors, investors, and donors. (Arts organisations do not support literary competitions.)

I realise that losing crucial support right at a point of preparing for the awards in France and producing the anthology has caused a big delay. Please try to understand that there are a lot of people involved and a lot of up-front costs in producing a professionally edited paperback anthology of 550+ pages.

This has been really, really frustrating! I do appreciate the knock-on delay is very irritating for the writers and poets who want to get published.

Several of you have been in touch to ask me what the situation is. Sorry, I wasn’t ‘ghosting’ you. I’ve been holding off on commenting on an individual basis because everything was still up in the air.

Things are still very fluid. However, I want to clarify the issue of first publication rights for all those who won a place in the anthology. We normally request to be the first to publish a winning piece, but in this case, The Plaza Prizes won’t insist on that. We don’t want this delay to get in the way of you entering winning work in other competitions or placing work in other publications. All rights remain with you writers and poets (no change there).

We are aiming for April 2026 to publish the anthology, first of all in ebook form. We hope to launch it at an awards ceremony (which may have to be virtual without support from a patron or venue). We’ll contact winners via email with more details in February 2026. All of this isn’t exactly the ideal event we made happen in the first two years, so if anybody wishes to withdraw their work from the anthology, please let me know asap.

If you can help fund the anthology or the awards please do contact me to discuss making a donation. Entry fees do not cover these costs of the prizes. They never did. In years 1 and 2, I personally subsidised the awards, but there is no way I can afford to do that in year 3.

I’m doing my best to make this work. I’ve worked hard for free for three years to create these opportunities, and I’ve put my money into them because I wanted to give back to new writers. Some people think literary contests are money making machines. They aren’t, at all! The Plaza Prizes need your support so, if you value them, please do contribute.

Simon Kerr

MD The Plaza Prizes
simon@theplazaprizes.com