Following the success of the inaugural JLS/BSLS essay prize in 2013, The JLS and the British Society for Literature and Science would like to announce the 2014 prize for the best new essay by an early career scholar on a topic within the field of literature and science.

Essays should be currently unpublished and not under consideration by another journal. They should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words long, inclusive of references, and should be send by email to both John Holmes, Chair of the BSLS (j.r.holmes@reading.ac.uk), and Martin Willis, Editor of JLS (m.willis@westminster.ac.uk), by 12 noon on Tuesday, 1st April, 2014. The prize is open to BSLS members who are postgraduate students or have completed a doctorate within three years of this date. (To join BSLS, go to http://www.bsls.ac.uk/join-us/). The prize will be judged jointly by representatives of the BSLS and JLS.

The winning essay will be announced on the BSLS website and published in JLS. The winner will also receive a prize of £100. The judges reserve the right not to award the prize should no essay of a high enough standard be submitted.

The winning essay for 2013 was Rachel Crossland’s ‘”Multitudinous and Minute”: Early Twentieth-Century Scientific, Literary and Psychological Representations of the Mass’ which was published in issue 6.2 in December 2013. Also published in that issue was Josie Gill’s essay, ‘Science and Fiction in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth’, which received an honourable mention from the judges.