Your Novel: How To Get Started Webinar
Discoveries is a unique writing development initiative, which invites all unpublished women writers aged 18 and up, currently residing in the UK or Ireland and writing in English, to submit their works of adult fiction to the Discoveries Prize. The prize doesn’t require writers to have finished a novel – only to have started one – and it is free to enter. We're looking for writing that shows real potential, not necessarily polished drafts.
As well as awarding the Discoveries Prize the programme includes free online content to help inspire you to start writing a novel. The first major event for Discoveries 2023 is our free Your Novel: How to Get Started webinar.
Get advice on how to write a great opening that will hook the judges and start preparing your submission to Discoveries 2023. Watch the recording of our free webinar. Tuesday 1 November, 7.00pm-8.30pm. This online event took place on 1 Nov 2022, it was chaired by author and founder of the Women's Prize Kate Mosse and featured a panel of expert speakers including Sui Annukka, winner of Discoveries 2022, author Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Curtis Brown Creative founder Anna Davis and Curtis Brown literary agent Viola Hayden.
Speakers
Insights from our expert panel on writing and finding inspiration.
Kate Mosse
Kate Mosse is the chair of the 2023 Discoveries judging panel. Kate is the author of nine novels & short story collections, including the No 1 bestselling The Joubert Family Chronicles – The Burning Chambers and The City of Tears – as well as the multimillion selling Languedoc Trilogy – Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel – and No 1 bestselling Gothic fiction including The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter, which she adapted for the stage for 2022. Her books have been translated into 38 languages and published in more than 40 countries. Her latest book, part detective story, part family history and part dictionary of 1000 women missing from history - Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World - will publish in October 2022. She has also written three others works of non-fiction – including An Extra Pair of Hands (Wellcome Collection, 2021) – four plays, contributed essays and introductions to classic novels and collections. Her novel for Quick Reads, The Black Mountain, came out in April 2022 and she’s one of twelve writers contributing a story to a new Miss Marple Collection of Short Stories – Marple – publishing in September 2022. A champion of women’s creativity, Kate is the Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction – the largest annual celebration of women’s writing in the world – and sits on the Executive Committee of Women of the World. She was awarded an OBE in 2013 for services to literature and women and was named Woman of the Year for her service to the arts in the Everywoman Awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Kiran Millwood Hargrave is the Sunday Times-bestselling author of nine novels for children and adults, including the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year The Girl of Ink and Stars, Betty Trask Award-winning The Mercies, and most recently Florence Welch's Between Two Books book club pick, The Dance Tree. Her work has been optioned for film and TV and won or been long- or shortlisted for major prizes such as the Costa Awards, Waterstones Book of the Year, the Jhalak Prize, and the Carnegie. She lives in Oxford with her husband and two cats.
Anna Davis
Anna Davis is the founder and Director of the Curtis Brown Creative writing school. She is the author of five acclaimed novels which have been published in twenty languages. She has been a journalist and Guardian columnist, as well as a Curtis Brown literary agent. She taught creative writing at the University of Manchester and in many other settings before founding Curtis Brown Creative in 2011.
Viola Hayden
Viola Hayden is a literary agent at Curtis Brown, actively building her own list and also working alongside Jonny Geller. Viola joined Curtis Brown in January 2020, having spent the previous six years as an editor. She is looking for commercial and reading group fiction, as well as narrative non-fiction and some memoir.
Sui Annukka
Sui Annukka won the 2022 Discoveries Prize for her novel-in-progress Thursday. Sui grew up in London and Colombo, Sri Lanka. Sui read Drama at the University of Bristol, and later studied Production Design at the National Film and Television School. She currently works as a Teaching Assistant in London.
Sui has had poetry and short fiction published in the following anthologies: Filigree: Contemporary Black British Poetry (Peepal Tree, 2018), Shots in the Dark (Crocus Books, 2018), Sounds Exceeding 80 Decibels (Crocus Books, 2017) and Elevator Fiction (Crocus Books, 2016). She was a participant of Manchester Commonword’s Women in the Spotlight Programme, and an Eclipse Theatre SLATE supported artist.