Mslexia has opened its Women’s Fiction Competition 2025, seeking short stories up to 3,000 words. The winner receives £3,000 and publication in December’s issue. Author Eley Williams will judge entries. Three finalists get £100 each. Deadline: 22 September. Entry fee: £12. Submit via mslexia.co.uk.
The Rattle Poetry Prize offers £12,000 for a single winning poem, with ten finalists receiving £400 each and publication. Open worldwide to English-language poets, the competition features anonymous judging and a unique £4,000 Readers’ Choice Award selected by the poetry community. Entry requires only a magazine subscription. Deadline: 15 July 2025.
Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka has won the eighth Émile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature for “Les sept lunes de Maali Almeida.” The Booker Prize winner’s novel beat strong competition from Chinese and Korean works. The ceremony also launched the inaugural Inalco Student Prize for Manga, expanding recognition of Asian literary forms.
Writers can compete for £5,000 in prizes across four categories: Open Poetry, Short Story, Book for Children, and Young Poets. Submit your original, unpublished work by 30 June 2025. Prize winners receive professional recognition worth its weight in gold. Visit wellsfestivalofliterature.org.uk for guidelines.
Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition opens for 2025 submissions, offering a €2,000 first prize and featured reading at Cork International Short Story Festival. Running until 31st July, the competition welcomes unpublished stories up to 3,000 words from writers worldwide, judged by acclaimed Australian author Laura Jean McKay.
Ethos Literary Festival returns on 7th June 2025 at Ambassador Hotel, featuring prestigious book launches, interactive pitch sessions with leading literary agent Suhail Mathur, and ceremonial presentations by renowned professors. The day-long poetry celebration, organised by Harwal Publishers, concludes with the coveted Ethos Literary Award 2025 presentation ceremony.
Olvens Louissaint is a Caribbean bilingual writer, Translator and Human rights defender. As an aspiring writer who used to address complex issues strategically and confidently through his work and whose work treats both personal and universal subjects, he is mainly committed to standing for the well-being of humanity and awarded with many international accolades.
Marianna Kyanovskaya’s poetry today is one of the most important voices of struggling Ukraine. Struggling for what? After February 24, 2020, we faced the threat of a world war. We understand that the heroic sacrifice made today by Ukrainians, including poets fighting on the front lines, is done not only on behalf of the freedom of the Ukrainian people, but also in the name of the civilisation of freedom.
We’re launching our inaugural global internship programme for 2026! University students worldwide can join us as moderators, reviewers, social media promoters, event curators, or editorial assistants. This fully remote, six-month programme offers invaluable literary publishing experience. Applications due 31st August 2025. Subject: “Internship 2026”. Join our literary journey!
Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who transformed African literature by writing in his native Gikuyu language, has died aged 87. The Nobel Prize contender, imprisoned and exiled for his political views, spent decades championing indigenous African voices. His revolutionary decision to abandon English challenged colonial literary dominance forever.
Arundhati Roy exists as literature’s most uncompromising truth-teller, a writer whose pen serves simultaneously as artistic instrument and political weapon. Her singular career trajectory—from Booker Prize-winning novelist to fearless activist-essayist—represents one of contemporary literature’s most compelling arguments for the writer as public intellectual, refusing comfortable boundaries between art and politics.
Salman Rushdie stands as one of contemporary literature’s most significant voices, fundamentally reshaping postcolonial narrative through magical realism. His masterpiece Midnight’s Children weaves personal and political history, creating a distinctive fusion of Eastern and Western storytelling that captures the complexity of cultural displacement and hybrid identity in our globalised world.
From Sam Selvon’s groundbreaking The Lonely Londoners to Marlon James’s epic fantasies, Caribbean authors have fundamentally transformed Commonwealth literature. Through linguistic innovation, fearless social critique, and authentic storytelling, writers from the islands have challenged colonial narratives and established new aesthetic paradigms that resonate globally, proving the margins can illuminate universal truths.
The Asian Review has achieved a remarkable milestone, ascending from 13th position in 2023 to 10th in Feedspot’s global literary magazine rankings. Competing amongst 2,500 publications worldwide, this achievement reflects genuine reader engagement from 40 million monthly visitors across 195 countries, establishing the magazine as Asia’s premier literary voice.
In a literary landscape often dominated by predictable storylines and familiar formats, “Heart Lamp” arrives like a bolt of lightning—unexpected, brilliant, and impossible to ignore. This year’s International Booker Prize winner has captivated readers worldwide with its innovative approach to storytelling and its deeply resonant themes.
Recognising publishers as by-products of writers’ work—as vessels for creative distribution rather than sources of creative legitimacy—would transform Sri Lanka’s literary landscape for the better. It would foster more equitable partnerships, diversify published voices, and ultimately enrich the country’s literary culture.
The Tanzanian-born British novelist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents,” crafts narratives that deftly navigate the complex terrain of displacement, cultural identity, and the lingering shadows of empire.
In recent decades, Korean literature has emerged from relative obscurity to claim its rightful place on the world stage, bringing with it distinctive narrative approaches, thematic concerns, and aesthetic sensibilities that have significantly expanded the palette of global literature
The Asian Book Eye is committed to amplifying the voices that have been marginalised, overlooked, or deliberately silenced across the vast tapestry of Asian literary communities, from South Asian powerhouses to East Asian markets, from Southeast Asian emerging voices to Central Asian storytellers whose narratives rarely cross borders.
The story of how South Asian writers claimed their space in global English literature represents one of the most successful cultural appropriations in literary history. By transforming a colonial imposition into a medium for decolonial expression, these writers have not merely secured recognition but have fundamentally altered the landscape of English literature itself.
The Asian Review 