Young Writer T&Cs

Updated September 2026

Registration and Applications

1. Applicants to the Young Writer Prizes must be aged 16–18 at the time of the competition submission deadline.
2. Applicants must be enrolled in a sixth-form or further education college and be studying on a full-time or part-time basis at the time of the submission deadline.
3. Applicants must be registered in order to submit their entry. Registration will be open until the submission deadline but submissions received by applicants that have not registered will not be accepted.
4. Applicants must be from the UK, or otherwise qualify as a ‘home’ student for fees purposes, according to UKCISA.

Submissions

• Submissions must be below or exactly on the stated word count (1,000 words) in each competition. Submissions that exceed the word count will not be eligible.
• All given instructions should be followed. Any entries judged by the judging panel to not have met any of the given criteria will not be eligible. Entry criteria for each competition will be revealed by email at the point of registration.
• The judges’ decision is final.
• Work submitted must be original and not plagiarised from any existing body of work, professional or otherwise. AI text-generation tools may not be used.
• Submissions to the Young Writer, Young Anthropologist and Young Psychologist competitions should be in a commonly used text-based format, such as .docx or .pdf. Links to files will be accepted if files are too large to attach to an email.
• All submitted work must be created solely by the applicant. Joint entries will not be accepted.
• Applicants are eligible to submit entries for multiple Young Writer Competitions. Applicants will only be eligible to be shortlisted in one of the competitions. In the event of an applicant being shortlisted in more than one competition, the relevant judging panels will meet and decide which competition the applicant will be shortlisted in.
• We will only accept one entry per-applicant, per-competition. Applicants will be allowed to submit an updated version of each submission, as long as this is received before the deadline. This will then be accepted as the final entry.

Prizes

1. To receive an award, students must meet all of the application and submission criteria above. Goldsmiths reserves the right to ask for proof so as to satisfy the above terms and conditions, prior to awarding any prizes.
2. All prizes are non-transferable.
3. Any financial prizes will be paid directly into the winning applicant’s bank account. The applicant must have a UK bank account in their name in order to win a financial prize.
4. Young Writer (short story) winners will be invited to a prize-giving event with a guest. Entrants under 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian as their guest. Travel expenses will be covered by Goldsmiths.
5. Winners may also be invited to Goldsmiths’ campus for promotional photoshoots/interviews. Again, reasonable travel expenses will be covered by Goldsmiths.
6. At the discretion of the relevant admissions tutors, winning entrants may also be offered unconditional offers of study in the associated subject areas.