For the purposes of this Prize, the following areas fall within the North East catchment:

• Darlington
• Durham and County Durham
• Gateshead
• Hartlepool
• Middlesbrough
• Newcastle upon Tyne
• North Tyneside
• Northumberland
• Redcar and Cleveland
• South Tyneside
• Stockton-on-Tees
• Sunderland

You may reapply for the Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction if you have been shortlisted in previous years, but not if you have been a previous winner.

You must be aged eighteen at the time of entry.

Yes, the Prize is now open to writers who have previously been published, so long as the work they are submitting has not been published in any form.

The Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction is an accessible award, and its judges love to receive entries from writers and storytellers of all backgrounds. Therefore, not having written crime or thriller fiction before, or not having studied creative writing, is no barrier to entry.

‘Unpublished’ means that the work in question has never appeared in magazines, websites (including blogs), novels, short-stories or anthologies and that it hasn’t appeared in other formats such as screenplays. Therefore, submissions that have already been published online as a blog article have been published and are not eligible for entry.

Self-published print or e-books are published works, and therefore fall outside the eligibility criteria.

The Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction is intended to support works in progress, not to promote works that are already completed and for which a publishing deal has been secured / which will soon be self-published. A ‘book deal’ is defined as a contract with a publisher whereby you are paid an advance for your writing and a royalty for any book sales that follow.

A synopsis is a summary of the story you intend to write, which accompanies the first two chapters of a work in progress for the purposes of submission (unless you intend to write a short story of no more than 10,000 words, in which case no synopsis is required). It should give the judges a clear understanding of where you intend to take your story, including character development and story arc. As a guide, it should be no more than two A4 sides, and is not a blurb or a pitch; it should give the main plot of the ongoing story and describe the ending.

No, please don’t put your name on the document you attach in the entry portal (e.g. on a header or footer), as all entries are judged anonymously in the initial stages of the process. Your name will be captured and associated with your submission electronically when you register, and stored safely in our system, so there is no need to include it elsewhere.

Please format your work in double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman text.

By submitting your work, you are agreeing to it being read and considered by awards sifters, judges and staff of Dark Skies Publishing. The copyright of your submitted work stays with you at all times and we will not exert or ask for any rights over your work at any time.

Your submission will be deleted once the judging process is complete. You will only receive future correspondence from Dark Skies Publishing you have specifically signed up for, and you can unsubscribe at any time. We will never share your data or personal information with any other businesses or organisations and we abide by all relevant data protection legislation.

Dark Skies Publishing, LJ Ross and all associates of the Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction believe that all individuals should be treated fairly and on the basis of merit and without prejudice. Applications to the Prize are considered anonymously, without reference to age, cultural background, class, disability, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, faith or an individual’s health status.