At a time when many competitions and events have been cancelled, the Dan Davin Literary Foundation is excited to confirm its annual writing competitions are still going ahead.

“Despite not being able to host events as part of the Southland Festival of the Arts because of Covid-19 and the lockdown, there is no reason the 2020 Dan Davin Award cannot go ahead,” chairwoman Rebecca Amundsen said.

This year there will be a significant change for the two student writing competitions. Usually these competitions are limited to short story writing. This year the competitions will be broader and will be creative writing competitions instead. This means entries are not limited to a short story, they could also be poetry, script writing, song writing, graphic novels, or children’s story. Ms Amundsen said this would provide a fantastic opportunity for students to write in the area they are most interested in – especially at this time when students may have had more time to indulge their personal writing interests.

It also means the foundation will provide a range of judges to cover the various types of entries submitted and it is hoped that every entry would receive a comment from their judge, not just place-getters as has been the case in the case.

This year's adult competition will be for poetry. This follows the usual pattern of alternating each year between short story and poetry writing.

Further information can be found on the foundation's website or by emailing [email protected] or visit the Facebook page.