Last chance to enter! The 2025 Observer/ Anthony Burgess prize for arts journalism closes soon
Are you a budding culture reviewer? Do you come out of a new show or finish the last page of a book and itch to open your laptop and set down your thoughts about why you so enjoyed – or detested – it?The deadline – 28 February – is looming for the 2025 Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for arts journalism.Established in 2012 with a prize fund of £4,000, this is the UK’s leading award for emerging critics.The prize commemorates the 30-year association of author Anthony Burgess with the Observer, for much of that time as the paper’s lead literary critic.Cultural journalism is at the heart of the New Review – and was central to Burgess’s life as a professional writer.Andrew Biswell, the director of the Anthony Burgess Foundation, points out that during the 1960s Burgess was for a time “the theatre critic of the Spectator, the opera critic of Queen magazine, the television critic of the Listener, and the restaurant critic of another journal.
He joked that, on a typical evening, he would watch the first act of a play, the second act of an opera, go out for a meal, and then go home to watch TV.”The judges – Andrew Biswell, Observer arts editor Sarah Donaldson and this year’s guest judge, architecture critic Rowan Moore – are looking for unpublished reviews that demonstrate the kind of energy and enthusiasm of Burgess’s criticism.The review must be of new work, but there is no restriction on the art form covered: it could be anything from an art show to a video game.For further competition rules and details on entering, visit anthonyburgess.org.
Past shortlisted and winning enrties can be found here,Happy writing!
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