Blackwell's to sponsor The Kitschies

Blackwell's is to be the new headline sponsor of The Kitschies, the literary awards recognising the year’s "most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic". The awards will be given again in March 2018 after skipping a year.

As part of the new relationship, The Kitschies and Blackwell’s will also be working together to deliver a series of events for fans of speculative literature in many of its bookshops around the country.

The Kitschies offer financial prizes of £500 and £1,000 for the "Tentacle" awards across categories of novel (Red Tentacle), debut novel (Golden Tentacle), cover art (Inky Tentacle) and digitally native fiction (Invisible Tentacle). Previous winners of which include Margaret Atwood, Patrick Ness and China Miéville.

Kieron Smith, Blackwell’s digital director, said: "The Kitschies has a track record of highlighting some of the most exciting, and engaging fiction published over the last few years and matches our mission to support progressive intelligent and entertaining genre literature. We look forward to working with The Kitschies to introduce more great titles to readers in our shops, and online at Blackwells.co.uk, over the coming year.”

Glen Mehn, Kitschies awards director, welcomed Blackwells as “exactly the right sponsor for The Kitschies". "Not only are they one of the most recognised high street bookshop brands, they understand our mission: getting people talking about, reading, and loving books," he said.

The closing date for submissions to the 2017 Kitschies awards will be midnight on 1st November. Applications are open to works published in the United Kingdom between 1st January and 31st December.