Unpublished Women Writers Offered A Route To An Agent And £5,000

For the unpublished writer with a manuscript gathering dust in a drawer, the Women's Prize Trust has just made the case for dusting it off. Its Discoveries prize and programme for 2027 opened on Tuesday 15 September, offering the winner representation from the Curtis Brown Group and a £5,000 bursary.

Among this year's judges is Oyinkan Braithwaite, the bestselling author and screenwriter whose debut, My Sister, The Serial Killer, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019. Yorkshire readers will have the chance to hear her in person when she appears at Ilkley Literature Festival on 18 October, soon after the paperback publication of her latest novel, Cursed Daughters.

Braithwaite's own route into print makes her a fitting choice. Her darkly comic tale of a Lagos nurse repeatedly called upon to clear up after her murderous younger sister became an international success and propelled a first-time novelist onto the global stage – just the kind of journey Discoveries is designed to encourage.

The prize is only part of the offer. Since its launch in 2020, Discoveries has grown into a wider programme supporting women at every stage of their writing lives, with practical advice, industry insight, events, online content and a writing community. Crucially, these resources are not reserved for the eventual winner: longlisted and shortlisted writers benefit, and so does everyone who applies.

The results speak for themselves. The programme has encouraged tens of thousands of women to share their work for the first time, and several have gone on to publish to considerable acclaim. Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin's Ordinary Saints and Emma van Straaten's This Immaculate Body both began life in Discoveries, and a growing number of alumnae have since signed with agents and have debuts on the way.

Entry is free. The programme is run by the Women's Prize Trust, the UK charity behind the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, in partnership with Audible, the Curtis Brown Group and the Curtis Brown Creative writing school.

For the woman who has never shown her writing to anyone, the most daunting part may simply be pressing 'submit'. After that, as the Discoveries alumnae have found, a great deal can follow.

Details of how to enter are available at womensprize.com/writers/discoveries.