About Announcing the winners of the Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition

And the winners of the 2022 Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition are … (more…)

About Times/Chicken House Competition 2022 Longlist Reveal!

The Times/Chicken House long list is here!

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About Presenting our shortlist!

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the shortlist announcement! (more…)

About Tutus and pointe shoes at the ready ...

It’s time to grand jeté into the Swan House Mysteries, a brand new middle-grade series by debut talent Helen Lipscombe. (more…)

About ONE MONTH to go ...

There is just one month left to enter the special tenth anniversary Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition, which closes on 28 February. Are you excited? (WE ARE!) (more…)

About Why YOU should enter the Chicken House competition, by FROSTFIRE author Jamie Smith

Jamie Smith is the debut author of Frostfire, out this month! He was picked up via the Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition, and here he outlines his journey to publication and explains why YOU should enter this year … (more…)

About Small, furry and born to protect: meet POG

We’re SO EXCITED to reveal the cover and title for Pádraig Kenny’s new standalone novel for middle-grade readers, Pog, which is coming out in April 2019! (more…)

About The 10th Times/Chicken House Competition is OPEN!

READY ... SET ... GO!

The summer holidays are over, but don’t worry, we have some fantastic news to brighten your day: the new Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition is now OPEN! What’s more, it’s the competition’s tenth birthday – yippee!

We’re still on a high from announcing this year’s winner, Trudi Tweedie, with The Lion and the Unicorn. And now we’re celebrating reaching double digits in four EXTREMELY exciting ways:

1. 1. We’ve just bought rights to the fantastic Jelly by Clare Rees, which was shortlisted for the 2018 competition!

We’ve bought UK/German rights to the fabulous Jelly from Claire Wilson at RCW and we can’t wait to share this incredible, one-of-a-kind story with you all. Jelly is a highly original, hilarious and completely gripping account of a post-apocalyptic world in which a group of teenagers are trapped on a giant jellyfish - you’re going to love it!

2. 2. We’re offering not one but TWO prizes this year!

Yup, that's right. Obvs we'll be offering our usual first prize of a publishing contract with a £10k advance, but there will be another publishing contract up for grabs: the 'Chairman's Choice', a book hand-picked by our very own Barry Cunningham, the author of which will get a £7.5k advance. It’s going to be awarded to a book that shows huge potential but perhaps needs a little more work than the winner.

3. 3. We're closing the competition later than ever, on 28 February 2019.

This will give you more time to polish, edit or even WRITE your fabulous children’s book before the deadline! Go on, we dare you.

4. 4. We’re coming to YOU!

We’re planning a host of promotional and outreach events across the UK – because we want the competitions to be more accessible than ever, and for EVERYONE to feel motivated to enter. In fact, we’re positively bursting to find the most diverse bunch of writers ever this year. Keep an eye on our social media for details. (And psst ... discounted entry might be a possibility for those who attend ... watch this space!)

And here’s a fun fact to motivate you even more: out of the writers who have been shortlisted or won the competition since 2008, a whopping 58% have now been published either by Chicken House or other traditional UK publishers. We’re so proud of them all!

The competition is open to writers from all over the world, as long as you write in English, are unagented and have not had a children’s book published before. For more details on the competition and instructions on how to enter, check out our submissions page.

Good luck – we can’t wait to see what stories you’ve got for us this year!

About And the winner is ...

On Wednesday 20 June, at 10.30am, we welcomed a prestigious panel of judges to the Artist’s Residence in London Victoria for our 2018 judging day. (more…)

About Meet the judges!

Sound the klaxon: the Times/Chicken House judging day is TOMORROW! We’d like to introduce the fabulous judging panel who – alongside our very own Barry Cunningham and Times Arts editor Alex O’Connell – are all set to help us pick the winner … (more…)

About Meet our third shortlistee

Just over a week until we announce this year's Times/Chicken House comp winner! Today we're introducing shortlistee number 3: Alison Padley-Woods, shortlisted for her story The Firestone of Avisriel.  (more…)

About Meet our second shortlistee

Shortlistee number two is Clare Rees, author of Jelly – a hilarious YA story unlike anything we've ever read before!  (more…)

About Meet our first shortlistee

It’s only TWO WEEKS until our panel of judges decides on the winner of this year’s Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition, and we’re super excited to find out who will win our publishing contract! (more…)

About Shortlist ahoy!

It was INCREDIBLY difficult to choose only five top manuscripts from this year’s excellent longlist. Huge congratulations to our longlisted authors on proving such a tough playing field! (more…)

About We have a longlist!

First of all, we’d like to extend a massive thank you to everyone who entered this year’s Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition. The standard of entries was incredibly high and our team of readers had a virtually IMPOSSIBLE task in whittling them down to the final eighteen. But we did it, and the wait is finally over! (more…)

About Halloween Treats

BOO!

It’s Halloween – hurray! – and to celebrate we’ve selected some perfectly spooky Chicken House books for your reading pleasure, including our two brilliant November publications, Witchborn and The Rise of Wolves, out this Thursday. Enjoy under the covers with a torch in the dead of night for that authentic Halloweeny feel…

WITCHBORN

Out on Thursday, debut author Nicholas Bowling’s brand new and totally gorgeous historical fantasy (JUST LOOK AT THAT COVER) is rich with dark magic and truly malevolent villains – not to mention a twist that will leave you reeling. Guaranteed to send shivers down your spine…

It’s 1577. When her mother is burned at the stake for witchcraft, Alyce flees to London. But it isn’t just witchfinders she has to worry about. Powerful political forces are also on her trail, dragging her into the feud between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. As Alyce struggles to understand her own powers, she is drawn into a web of secrets, lies and dark magic that will change the fate of England ...

THE RISE OF WOLVES

Also publishing this week, Kerr Thomson’s atmospheric tale of wolves and wilderness starts with a chilling howl on an island where no wolves have lived for centuries… Hey, did you hear that noise…?

Innis Munro is walking home across the bleak wilderness of Nin Island when he hears the chilling howl of a wolf. But there are no wolves on the island – not since they were hunted to extinction, centuries ago. He decides to investigate his island home and accepts an ancient challenge: he who jumps the Bonnie Laddie’s Leap wins a fortune. As the wolves rise from the darkness of history, and long-buried secrets resurface, Innis’s adventure truly begins …

We’ve dug through our backlist to find a couple of our most Halloweeny titles from yesteryear…

THE HALLOWEEDS

Veronica Cossanteli’s darkly funny mystery feels like Roald Dahl crossed with a supremely gothic horror – and it’s perfect for younger MG readers. You’ll never look at cabbages in the same way again…

Orphaned Dan’s new home is a crumbling castle. Here, horrible Aunt Eg reigns supreme, tending her mysterious graveyard garden. But why are Aunt Eg and her curious servants missing a finger – and what are the hungry ‘Cabbages’ in the greenhouse? As Dan struggles to solve the mystery, he encounters a chilling question: what’s the price of everlasting life?

THE APPRENTICE WITCH

OK, we don’t all want to be totally terrified on Halloween – but witches are still topical, right? The Apprentice Witch has plenty of thrills, but it won’t scare your socks off. Best read curled up with a hot chocolate in front of the fire…

Arianwyn fluffs her witch’s assessment. Awarded the dull bronze disc of an apprentice – to the glee of her arch-rival, Gimma – she’s sent to protect the remote, dreary town of Lull. But her new life is far from boring. Turns out Gimma is the pompous mayor’s favourite niece – and worse, she opens a magical rift in the nearby forest. As Arianwyn struggles with her spells, it’s soon clear there’s much more than her pride at stake …

Happy Halloween, everyone!

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About THE 2018 TIMES/CHICKEN HOUSE COMPETITION IS NOW OPEN!

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About The 2017 #TimesChickenHouse winner is…

On the hottest day EVER, Wednesday 21 June, our fabulous panel of judges gathered at the blissfully air-conditioned Savile Club in London. Over a table laden with tea, coffee and biscuits, our judges (pictured below) set themselves the difficult task of talking through our wonderful shortlist and ultimately deciding on a winner. (more…)

About #TimesChickenHouse Competition: The Panel

We have a very exciting #TimesChickenHouse announcement on its way tomorrow... yes, a winner! But before we start the drumroll, we wanted to say a big thank you to our judges, who did a brilliant job of debating an incredibly competitive shortlist yesterday (more on that soon). Alongside our very own Publisher, Barry Cunningham, this fantastic panel of industry experts lent their expertise to the task, and we couldn't be more grateful. Here they are - can we have a round of applause, please? (more…)

About Introducing our #TimesChickenHouse shortlistees: Part II

June is upon us - which means the winner of the 2017 Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition will be announced later this month... eek! We can't wait to find out whose novel we'll be publishing. Last week we introduced two of our five wonderful shortlisted authors, Virginia Clay and Ruth Griffiths. Now, it's time to find out about our other shortlistees – Danny Rurlander, Jasbinder Bilan and Katherine Bassford ... (more…)