We had a wonderful launch at the Barbican on the 20th June where we were joined by readers, competition prize winners, our judges Pascale Petit and Nicholas Royle, and a whopping big audience (we didn’t have a spare seat in the house). There was a lovely, celebratory, party feel and we heard some excellent stories and poems until we ran out of time and Pimms & strawberries. We’re hoping to do some more events across the country, and we’ll let you know on our website when we do.
This issue is a bumper 140+ pages, featuring our regular magazine with its feast of new writing, columns from Wayne Burrows and Sarah Passingham (lovely Paul Blake is taking a break from this issue but will be back for the next), and articles from Hilaire & Joolz Sparkes and Robert Chandler. Plus the results of our competition.
We had almost 700 entries of poems and stories and the standard was incredibly high. Pascale Petit, our poetry judge, compared the quality to that of other competitions she’d judged this year, including the National Poetry Competition, and Nicholas Royle, our fiction judge, talked of the difficulty he had in making his final decisions, how stories kept fighting for his attention.
Poetry
First Prize: Cathy Grindrod – Surrender
Second prize: Leonardo Boix – Detail
Third Prize: María Castro Domínguez – When Stealing Water from the Sky Becomes Magic
Highly Commended
Leonardo Boix – Tree-Man
Louise Warren – He Come Up for the Day
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Commended
S M H Davies – Icebreaker
Stuart Charlesworth – Phoenix and Vulture
NJ Hynes – Wave or Particle
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Short fiction
First Prize: Sally Jubb – The Arrangement
Second Prize: Ren Watson – Sky-sions
Third Prize: Josie Turner – The Guide
..
Highly Commended
Tracy Fells – Telling
Jupiter Jones – Ready Salted
Claire Fuller – Tiny and Pointed
Commended
Jeanette Lowe – The Hat the Hat
Lucy Grace – (Hark, Now I Hear Them) Ding Dong Bell
Astra Bloom – Truth, Lies and Pastry in the Modern Age
Congratulations to all of our commended, highly commended and winning writers. Have a look from page 73 of the magazine to read the judges’ reports and the winning and commended entries.