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The Avril Bruten Award for Creative Writing 2026

Applications for The Avril Bruten Award 2026 are now open to all St Hugh’s students! This award, supported by the Avril Bruten Fund, is intended to foster and reward creative writing by students of St Hugh’s College.

A prize of £300 is to be awarded for the best piece of creative writing by a current St Hugh’s student. Categories of writing that are included in the scope of the Award include: poetry; short prose fiction; drama; memoir and life writing; travel writing. You can submit one short piece, or a selection, including extracts from a longer work. Entries must be no more than 3000 words – typed and in English – and should be previously unpublished. They should have a title by which they can be identified, but should not include the name of the author, so that they can be judged anonymously.

The deadline for applications is midday on Wednesday 18 February 2026 (Week 5). Please note: a student who wins the award once may not enter again. Entrants are taken to have given their permission for their entry, or an extract from it, to be printed in the College’s annual magazine Chronicle and published on the College website, should the editors wish to do so.

The Award winner will announced at an event on Thursday 5 March 2026, at which some of the students entering will have opportunity to read from their work. We will also hear from the judge and readings from Avril Bruten’s own work. Entries will be judged by writer and founder of the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, Freya Morris.