The Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition

Every year since 2014, the CWA and the Margery Allingham Society have jointly held an international competition for a short story of up to 3,500 words.

Our mission is to find the best unpublished short mystery, and not only that, but one which fits into Golden Age crime writer Margery Allingham’s definition of what makes a great mystery story.

View past winners

The 2025 competition is now open.

Entry costs £18.
The winner receives a generous cash prize of £500.
Deadline for entries 28 February 2025, 6pm GMT.

The competition is open to all – both published and unpublished authors from all over the world. The competition is for short stories of up to 3,500 words, written in English. All that we ask is that the story was originally written in English, has not been previously published anywhere, and has neither been shortlisted for this competition, nor won any other competition.

Please follow Margery’s definition of a mystery to be in with the best of chance of winning the prize.

The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it. Margery Allingham

The way a submitted story matches this definition is awarded greater weighting in the scoring than any other criteria.

Announcements for the 2025 Competition

Closing date for the 2025 competition is 6pm GMT 28 February 2025.
The longlist will be announced on 12 April at the CWA Northern Symposium
The shortlist and winner will be announced at a date, time, and location to be determined.

Please address any queries to the CWA Secretary: secretary@thecwa.co.uk or Competitions Coordinator: comps@thecwa.co.uk.
The Margery Allingham Prize is a joint initiative between the CWA and the Margery Allingham Society.

Promote the competition

Help us champion short stories and crime writers by spreading the word. We will shortly have a 2025 A5 flyer for you to download.

How to Write a Winning Story

We asked Martin Edwards, the inaugural winner of the CWA/Margery Allingham Short Story competition for 6 great tips and here they are:

Read the great short stories (not just crime fiction) and ask yourself what makes them great
Don’t kid yourself that writing a short story is much easier than writing a novel
Think about the effect you want the story to have on the reader
The opening needs to arrest attention
The end must leave the reader with a sense of satisfaction
In between the beginning and the end – don’t waste a word

Find out more about Martin here and about Crafting Crime, his online crime-writing course here.