James White Award administrator Martin McGrath announced today they will not be running a competition in 2020.

We regret to announce that the James White Award will not be running a competition this year. Due to technical issues with the current website, and problems caused by a certain global crises beyond our control, we have not been able to set a timetable for this year and, with a great deal of reluctance, we have concluded that it will not be possible to schedule the competition in 2020.

The James White Award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. In addition last year, the winner received a £200 prize. The competition in prior years has been open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers.

Award Administrator McGrath also said:

We have been put off this decision for months, hoping (perhaps increasingly foolishly) that we could come up with a fix for the problems we are facing within a timescale that would allow us to go ahead this year. Ultimately, however, it simply hasn’t been possible to get things in place in time and we have – with very great reluctance – made the decision to not hold the competition this year. We will, however, be back in 2021.

In 2019, judges Justina Robson, Chris Beckett and Donna Scott selected “Limitations” by David Maskill as the winner.

[Via Locus Online.]