Chatto & Windus launches folk horror competition for working class writers

Chatto & Windus has partnered with the author Hollie Starling on a competition for an unpublished working class writer to have their fiction featured in a new folk horror anthology publishing next year.

In autumn 2025, Chatto will publish Bog People: A Working-Class Anthology of Folk Horror. Starling, who runs @FolkHorrorMagpi, will edit and introduce the anthology as well as writing one of the stories.

There will be 10 stories in total, nine of which will be written by established working class authors. The winning writer will be published as the 10th story in the anthology. 

The judges for the prize are Starling, Chatto & Windus editorial director Rose Tomaszewska and Chatto & Windus assistant and co-chair of the Colourfull network, Asia Choudhry.  

The shortlist will be announced on 15th July 2024 and the winner will be announced on 12th August 2024. 

Starling, who wrote The Bleeding Tree (Rider), said: “With Bog People we assert a reclamation of this status – the great unwashed – as one deserving of reification. In its pages we’ll recognise the countless dead unnamed by the chroniclers of history. Stories of reaping and sowing, stories as sharp as a guillotine blade, stories that stand for all time.” 

Tomaszewska said: “Folk horror is many things. It’s protest. It’s vengeful spirits. It’s a bit of "Wicker Man", "Midsommar" or "Jerusalem", but it’s also the Peasant’s Revolt and maybe the 2011 London Riots. It’s Robin Hood, it’s the Lord of Misrule...

“Starling’s vision for Bog People caught my imagination immediately and her online following shows that folk horror fascinates and compels swathes of readers. We’re excited to publish this alternative anthology for next Halloween and Christmas.” 

Applicants – who must identify as working class or from a working class background – are asked to submit an outline of their folk-horror story along with their opening paragraph and a sample of their fiction writing in any genre. Full details of the competition can be found here.