The Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition
The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it.Margery Allingham
Every year since 2014, the CWA and the Margery Allingham Society have jointly held an international competition for a short story of up to 3,500 words.
Our mission is to find the best unpublished short mystery, and not only that, but one which fits into Golden Age crime writer Margery Allingham’s definition of what makes a great mystery story.
Entries are invited from all writers, published or unpublished, writing in English.
- The 2024 competition is now closed for entries. The 2025 competition will open in autumn 2024.
- The Margery Allingham longlist will be announced at the CWA Conference in Brighton and afterwards online.
- The shortlist will be announced online in early May, exact date to be announced.
- The winner will be announced on Friday 10 May in early evening at the Daggers shortlist reception at CrimeFest
All announcements will also appear on this website.
Please address any queries to the CWA Secretary: secretary@thecwa.co.uk or Competitions Coordinator: comps@thecwa.co.uk.
How to write a winning story
We asked Martin Edwards, the inaugural winner of the CWA/Margery Allingham Short Story competition for 6 great tips and here they are:
- Read the great short stories (not just crime fiction) and ask yourself what makes them great
- Don’t kid yourself that writing a short story is much easier than writing a novel
- Think about the effect you want the story to have on the reader
- The opening needs to arrest attention
- The end must leave the reader with a sense of satisfaction
- In between the beginning and the end – don’t waste a word
Find out more about Martin here and about Crafting Crime, his online crime-writing course here.
Read winning stories
- 2023 winning story
- 2022 winning story
- 2021 winning story
- 2020 winning story
- 2020 highly commended story
- 2020 highly commended story
- 2019 winning story
- 2019 shortlisted story
- 2019 shortlisted story
- 2019 runner up
- 2018 winning story
- 2017 winning story
- 2016 winning story
- 2016 shortlisted story
- 2015 winning story
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