Welcome to The London Library Student Prize website.

The London Library, in partnership with The Times and FreshMinds, is looking to discover the next generation of writers, thinkers and opinion formers.

Open to all final year undergraduates studying at higher education institutions across the UK, this competition is an opportunity to expose your talent to thousands of readers – and win £5000!

The Student Prize is now closed for entries and winners have been announced! Please click here for further details.

Please do continue to check this site for updates about next year’s competition, or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

If you have any further questions, please do contact us. You can email competitions@londonlibrary.co.uk

Suggested hashtag for the prize for Twitter users: #LLStudentPrize

We’re delighted to announce the winner of The London Library’s inaugural Student Prize writing competition!

Ben Mason, a final year Philosophy and German student at Trinity College, Oxford, was awarded first prize, with Caroline Criado-Perez, Sylvia Christie and Andrew McCormack named as runners-up.

READ THE WINNING ENTRY HERE

Many congratulations to our winner and three runners-up, and thank you to all those students who entered the competition. Our panel of Student Prize judges thoroughly enjoyed reading all the entries and were impressed with the quality, originality of approach and great effort demonstrated.

The Prize winner receives a cheque for £5,000 and the three runners-up receive cheques for £1,000. The winner and runners-up will also receive a year’s membership of The London Library and a year’s subscription to The Times, as well as the opportunity to take part in a mini-internship at The Times.

Download the latest Student Prize 2012 Press Release here

Students leaving university in 2012 will face an increasingly competitive job market. Employers now demand, more than ever, that applicants ‘stand out from the crowd’. In the current market, a career as a writer or in journalism may seem like an unattainable dream. Yet taking part in a competition such as The London Library Student Prize is a foundation on which you can build – the ultimate kick-start to your career.

Mike Barnard, Product Manager of graduate recruitment website Milkround, said: “The London Library Student Prize is a fantastic opportunity to showcase your writing talents. We always advise our jobseekers to seek out work experience and internships which will enable them to develop their workplace skills, and the same applies to this competition which would be hugely beneficial to appear on a CV, especially for the winner and runners up. Publication in The Times will be hugely rewarding for the winner while the offer of a mini-internship at The Times to the winner and runners-up will give them first-hand experience of a newsroom. Good luck to all entrants!”

Taking the time to enter a competition is proof that you are willing and able to challenge yourself, have your work read and critiqued by a panel of high-profile judges and test your ability to write for a different audience in a different voice. Expose your talent, creativity and originality of thought and you will reap the rewards.

Many London Library members – authors, journalists, lawyers, historians, mathematicians – have been awarded prizes in the past, highlighting particular achievements in their writing careers. Here’s what some of our members are saying about The London Library Student Prize and the theme of the competition – ‘The future of Britain lies with the right-hand side of the brain’.

“The London Library Student Prize is a unique opportunity to present your skills in writing and analysis to thousands of Times and London Library magazine readers. To have your work published, read and critiqued by so many is an excellent means by which you can improve as a writer. The chance of winning London Library membership for one-year will also provide access to a wonderfully rich and varied collection, which, as a member for more than 30 years, I have found invaluable. I’d urge you to lay briefly to one side your Tort textbooks and enter!”

Jonathan Sumption QC

“Intuitively, it seems to me that law’s home is in the left-hand side of the brain.  Words, arguments, reasons, justifications, analysis, order – these are all things which might be thought to characterize the focus and concerns of the effective legal mind.  Justice, though, a concept suffused with ideas such as mercy, compassion, discretion and empathy – this surely has its home, and finds the source of its expression, in the right.  What would a future Britain be like, I wonder, where judges were given the freedom to be truly creative and imaginative in dealing with disputes, rather than limited by the rigidities of existing rules and procedures?  Perhaps it would be chaos, perhaps it would liberating.  Either way, it would certainly be interesting!

This competition is a great opportunity for students from all disciplines to let the right-hand side of their brains loose.  I hope as many as possible do just that.”

Matthew Weait – Professor of Law and Policy

School of Law, Birkbeck College

“Wherever it may lie in the brain, taking the time to find and refine your writing voice will be what makes you stand out from the crowd.  The writing world is changing.  Whether your ambition is to become a journalist or a novelist, the landscape is radically different from how it looked a decade ago.  As an undergraduate, particularly at the moment, it may feel like a career in writing is wishing on a star.  The London Library Student Prize 2012 is a chance to shine.”

Lucy Inglis – Writer, Historian

You can also visit The London Library’s Vimeo profile http://vimeo.com/londonlibrary to see students at our Student Prize Launch Party discussing the competition.

‘Does the future of Britain lie with the right-hand side of the brain?’ Right-brains, left-brains, mathematicians, computer scientists, fine artists, English or psychology students: we invite all final year undergraduates studying any degree discipline to put forward an argument, an opinion, an answer…

Searching for inspiration? Have a listen online to Radio 4’s ‘The History of the Brain’ series, presented by Dr Geoff Bunn – a journey through 5,000 years of human understanding of the brain. It’s a fascinating cultural (rather than scientific) exploration of the purpose and function of the brain.

Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist explores ‘the divided brain’ in this thought-provoking (and beautifully animated) video on TED.

Think, question, critique… and enter The London Library Student Prize. Your opinion – your answers – could be read by thousands of Times readers.

Erica Wagner, Literary Editor of The Times and one of The London Library Student Prize judges, talks about the competition in her Saturday Review column today.

With worsening economic news, protesters occupying Wall Street and forcing the closure of St Paul’s, what, asks Erica, is the plan? We’re asking you, the next generation of writers, thinkers and opinion-formers, to ponder this premise and question its implications.

Does the future lie with the right-hand side of the brain? Will the creative economy dominate or will the left-brains provide the answers? Submit your entries by 12 January 2012 for the opportunity to tell thousands of Times readers what you think…

There’s a great call for entry in The Times (Opinion pages) today, reminding all budding writers that the Student Prize is a fantastic opportunity to be ‘published alongside award-winning writers such as Matthew Parris, David Aaronovitch and Camilla Cavendish’. Winning entries will also be published in The London Library Magazine. So, for your chance to win, get thinking and get writing! Does the future of Britain lie with the right-hand side of the brain?