An award of £10,000 will be presented to a first-time writer whose submission demonstrates outstanding literary talent and who needs financial support to complete their work:

1. Submissions should take the form of 20-30,000 words of a work in progress, fiction or non-fiction, which is not under option or contract.
2. Applicants may not be under contract to any publisher for any work or title.
3. Applications are only open to writers who have not previously published a full-length book of their own prose writing (including self-published or published on-line) excluding a collection of their own poetry. They may have published short prose writing within a magazine/anthology.
4. Entrants must write in the English language and reside within the British Commonwealth and Eire.
5. Submissions should be accompanied by a brief synopsis and biographical note.
6. Applicants who submitted work for the 2016 Writers’ Award may re-apply but the work submitted must be new.

Submissions for the 2018 DRF Writers’ Award will open on 1st October 2017 and close on 15th December 2017.
The winner will be announced in May 2018.

The winner of the 2016 DRF Writers’ Award was Sharlene Teo for her novel-in-progress, “Ponti”. Runners up were Imogen Hermes Gower for “The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock” and Guy Stagg for “The Crossway”. All three writers have subsequently signed significant deals with major publishers.

The Deborah Rogers Foundation (DRF) has been set up in memory of Deborah Rogers (1938-2014) to continue to seek out and support emerging talent specifically by means of two biennial awards.

Check the DRF website for more information.