A moment of fiction #3

As promised, herewith the third in the now ongoing series of posts reporting on happenings what might interest writers around and about the great Mamucium.

This month, we take a look at the various free-to-enter competitions requiring submissions right this very minute. First off, fabulous arty website Creative Tourist has teamed up with the wonderful interactive literary landscape that is Rainy City Stories to offer writers a platform for their work, two top prizes of £100 and tickets to events at October's Manchester Literature Festival. All the rules and small print are here, but basically you need to submit a short story of no more than 3,000 words by Friday 2 July.

Next, Didsbury Arts Festival, the second incarnation of which is rolled out from 25 September, has two open writing contests: one for short stories (full details here); another for poetry (full details here). In a nutshell, the closing date for both is Friday 16 July, and writers can enter two 2,500-word short stories each or six poems of 40 lines. There will be a glittering awards ceremony during the festival and, as well as glory and fame, book tokens will be yours for the taking should you win.

Finally - for this is the order in which the deadlines are rolling in - we have "creative eavesdropping" project Bugged. Listen in to conversations on Thursday 1 July, then use what you hear to inspire some writing (poems of up to 60 lines, stories up to 1,000 words, flash fiction up to 150 words, scripts up to five minutes long). The closing date for submissions is Sunday 15 August (T&Cs here), after which you may spot your words on the Bugged blog or even published in a special anthology alongside work by the likes of Manchester-based author David Gaffney and fellow Manchester Blog Awards winner and local novelist Jenn Ashworth. The book will be launched at the aforementioned Manchester Literature Festival, which takes us neatly full circle.