The New Media Writing Prize is an annual, juried competition in the United Kingdom awarding prizes to works of innovative digital fiction that uses interactivity, participatory elements and/or multimedia and achieves "good storytelling". Works that are shortlisted for the prize are seen as "cutting edge, exemplar works, which one might suppose demonstrate the best of everything that new-media storytelling can offer", and are archived by the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

History

The New Media Writing Prize was established in 2010 by

Bournemouth University Bournemouth University is a public university in Bournemouth, England, with its main campus situated in neighbouring Poole. The university was founded in 1992; however, the origins of its predecessor date back to the early 1900s. The univer ...

. The main prize was renamed the Chris Meade Memorial UK New Media Writing Prize in 2021. As of 2023 there is also a student award, an Opening Up Award, a Digital Journalism Award and an Interactive Digital Narrative for Social Good Award. Some years have also included a People's Choice Award.

Reception

A 2012 article in ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' described the prize with a mix of sarcasm and appreciation, starting with the tagline "It's writing, Jim, but not as we know it." The article describes the shortlisted works and encourages readers to vote, although its interviews with traditional publishers who assure the reader that it's "still OK to love real books" has been criticised. Winning and shortlisted works are archived by the

, and on establishing the archive, archivists and prize organisers co-authored a paper outlining challenges of archiving interactive, multimodal literary works. Several winning and shortlisted works were showcased in the 2023 British Library exhibition "Digital Storytelling".

Winners of the main prize

References

External links

* * {{Cite web , title=New Media Writing Prize {{! UKWA Topics and Themes , url=https://www.webarchive.org.uk/en/ukwa/collection/2912 , website=British Library, via=The Internet Archive Electronic literature British fiction awards Awards established in 2010 2010 establishments in the United Kingdom Bournemouth University