Competition to find the best poets and short story writers in the region is hotting up as competition entries start coming in to the PENfro Book Festival.

Closing dates are being extended for the two competitions linked to the annual literature event – to Thursday, July 31. The winners will be announced at PENfro 2014, which is being held at Rhosygilwen, near Cilgerran, in mid-September.

“We have decided to extend the deadlines to give people more time to enter this year partly because our poetry judge, Alan Kellermann, will be reading all the poetry entries himself. This means that the filter judges, who are all volunteers, will not have to do the filtering work, which is usually very time consuming,” said PENfro’s deputy chair, Jackie Biggs. “The introduction of easy entry online this year also makes our admin task much easier and less time consuming.”

Guest judge for the Short Story contest – introduced for the first time this year – is Maria Donovan, whose work appears regularly in magazines and anthologies. Her collection, Pumping Up Napoleon, is published by Seren, and a set of very short stories, Tea for Mr Dead, by Leaf Books. She was a lecturer and senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Glamorgan for nine years and is a founder member of the Welsh Short Story Network, dedicated to the promotion of the short story form in and beyond Wales.

Poetry judge Alan Kellermann, who was born in Wisconsin, USA, and now lives in Swansea, completed a PhD at Swansea University where he now lectures in Creative Writing. His first poetry collection - You, Me and the Birds – was published in 2012. He is poetry editor for Parthian Books.

The subject is open in both competitions, but there is a maximum length of 40 lines for each poem entered, and a word limit of 3,000 for the stories. Entry fee is £4 a poem, £5 a story.

The contests are open now and the closing date is now July 31st for both. Full details are here: http://penfrobookfestival.org.uk/open-poetry-competition-2014 and http://penfrobookfestival.org.uk/short-story-competition

Prizes will be presented during the 2014 PENfro Book Festival and the top three entries in each contest will be published on the PENfro website.

*This year’s PENfro Book Festival will run from Friday, September 12, to Sunday, September 14, and will include the popular Book Fair, a varied range of workshops for writers; and guest readings, talks and discussions with leading authors.

PENfro is grateful to the Tivy-Side Advertiser for sponsorship for the 2014 Competitions.