Do You Want to Win a New Kind of Literary Award

A new kind of literary award is up for grabs and you don’t even have to have written a book to be in the running to win it.

The Nine Dots Prize is a brand new literary award and with its inaugural prize pot for the winner a staggering US$100,000 (£81,716 approx)  you would imagine one of the criteria for winning the prize would be a completed book but that’s not the case here, any of us could win this one.

Sponsored by The Kadas Foundation The Nine Dots Prize aims to ‘promote, encourage and engage innovative thinking to address problems facing the modern world. The name of the Prize references the nine dots puzzle – a lateral thinking puzzle which can only be solved by thinking outside the box.’ And this year’s inaugural prize will be awarded to the entrant who presents the best response to the question “Are digital technologies making politics impossible?”

Open to everyone over the age of 18 the only criteria is that all entries be submitted in English. Entries from multiple authors will also be accepted but they must be in the form of a single narrative and not a collected works.

The first task for entrants to complete is to send in a 3,000 response to the given question, an outline structure for their proposed book and a justification of their ability to complete the book in nine months to be submitted via an online form. Responses can critique, agree or disagree with, or reject the premise of the question, but they must engage with it fully and insightfully.
The deadline for entries is 31st January 2017.

In May of 2017 an anonymous board of 12 internationally recognised and distinguished academics, authors, journalists and thinkers, chaired by Professor Simon Goldhill, (director of CRASSH at the University of Cambridge) will select their winner who will then have just nine months to complete their book which will be published by Cambridge University Press who will also provide support and editorial assistance throughout the process and publish the finished work in May 2018.

So what are you waiting for? Get writing.