Stone Soup Writing Contests

Stone Soup has published writing and art by young people since 1973. That publishing history gives its long-form competition a character quite different from a competition that begins with a one-off upload: the organiser is acting as an editor and potential book publisher as well as a contest host. The current Stone Soup Novel and Long Form Fiction Contest is the seventh annual edition, and its stated purpose is to encourage young writers to attempt work longer than they have written before. Every long-form work accepted and published by Stone Soup between 1 September 2025 and 31 August 2026 is automatically considered in the current contest. The judges have not fixed how many manuscripts they will select; they will publish as print books as many as they believe meet book-publishing standards. A useful example is the 2023 fiction winner, His Tower of the Night: A Nathalia Kitzmiller Mystery, written by Siri Nelson at age 12. Stone Soup's editors praised the novel for combining suspense and playfulness with a heroine whose family life gives the mystery both realism and warmth. CompeteMap's view is that the real achievement here is finishing and revising a substantial manuscript that can survive editorial scrutiny. The open-ended length and publication route reward stamina, control of structure, and a willingness to reread the whole work, not just polish an opening chapter. It suits a young writer already sustaining a long story; for someone still experimenting with voice or endings, Stone Soup's shorter publishing and flash opportunities may be a more useful step before committing to a book-length project.