The Mogford Prize For Drink&Wine Writing

The Mogford Prize is an annual short story writing competition founded by Jeremy Mogford, owner of The Oxford Collection.

In 2013, he established the prize to honour the arts and his long-standing connection to literary Oxford. J. Mogford, the founder of The Oxford Collection, has a long history of success in the hospitality industry and decided that his competition would focus on food, drink, or both. The grand prize is £10,000. Each of the three runners-up receives £250. An actor reads the winning entry, which is then uploaded to the Storyplayer website.

What Stories Are Chosen?

The Mogford Prize is a prestigious international award for short stories that deal with food and/or alcohol.

As a result, we're only looking for short stories about food and/or drink. For example, the story could be about a food-related crime or mystery; a chance meeting over a drink; a life-changing dinner conversation; or the details of a relationship as revealed through food. While there are no genre restrictions, we are looking for fiction that will appeal to The Oxford Collection's visitors.

Submission Details

Before entering, we strongly advise you to read previous winning stories.

Because this is a short story competition, please do not submit poems or scripts. We are not looking for graphic violence or content containing racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or other hate speech. The prize is open to writers from any country who are at least 18 years old on the competition's closing date.

A story should not be longer than 2,500 words, excluding the title, and it should not have been previously published (this includes self-publication, publication on websites, blogs and online forums as well as broadcast via TV, radio or podcast). All stories must be written in English and must be the original work of the contestant. All items must be submitted as a.doc or.docx file via our online submissions form.

Entry Application

To be considered, each story must be submitted for a fee of £15 to be considered.

Ten complimentary entries are available on a first-come, first-served basis to low-income writers, with a limit of one entry per author. Please use the dropdown menu: Free Entry Application on our contact form to apply for a complimentary entry. It is not necessary for you to provide evidence in support of your request. We will not accept applications for free entry while the competition is open. On the first page, which should be double spaced, the total word count for all entries should be noted. Please do not include any information that could be used to identify you in your story, such as your name, phone number, or address.

Rather, they should only be specified on the online entry form. Any articles containing personally identifiable information will be disqualified. We regret that once your story has been submitted, we cannot accept additional edits or new versions. Please make certain that the document you submit contains the most recent version of your article.