Text prize

I'm totally stoked to have made the shortlist of 7 out of hundreds of entrants to the Text Prize for YA and Children's Writing!

Disquiet

 

"Thank you for submitting to the 2021 Disquiet Literary Contest. We received over a thousand entries for this year's contest, many of them of exceptional quality. While we're sorry to say that your entry was not selected to be one of this year's winners, you should know that out of an impressive pool of work, yours made it all the way to the final judges on the shortlist.

In fact, our readers thought your entry skillfully wields the simplicity of its images to make for a vivid, enveloping reading experience. Rather than stretching language through syntactical feats, you trust the humble sentence to relay meaning in a way that is effective and clear. The world exists in your poems from the first line. The pacing [...] is emblematic of what these poems manage to do: make us feel, in transit, that we’ve found some stillness. We hope to see much more of your work in the future."

Fairly stoked to receive this feedback on top of my shortlisting! 

In the bath

 Astonished that my story is in the Bath Flash Fiction Award shortlist - thank you so much BFF!

Shortlisted

Stunned to learn that my poetry has been shortlisted for The Emma Press Poetry Pamphlet publication. Many thanks for the absolute labour of love that Editor Emma Wright has put into reading all of the hundreds of submissions. It's astonishing and humbling to me that my poems have made such a connection to have been selected among the final nineteen.  

In seven

I'm absolutely over-the-moon to have two stories shortlisted for the 7th Strands International Flash Fiction Competition, along with several writer pals! My thanks to Jose Varghese and the Strands Team.

Flash list

Overjoyed to have made the shortlist for the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition. It's a cracking shortlist to be on and I'm chuffed to bits.

Wack's lyrical

My lyrical poetry submission made the shortlist of 25 in the Mslexia Pamphlet Competition - many thanks to judge Amy Wack of Seren Press, and editorial director of Mslexia Debbie Taylor.

Dundee international book prize

I made the shortlist of the Dundee International Book Prize with my novel Some Things the English. I am beyond stoked.

Congratulations to my fellow shortlistees:

Sheena Lambert, Amy Mason, Veronica Birch, Rosaliene Bacchus, Jasper Dorgan, Suzy Norman, Robin Martin, Lora Hughes, and Ben East.
 
The judges for this year's prize are Kirsty Lang, Neil Gaiman, Scott Pack, Felicity Blunt and Stuart Kelly. They've now got the task of whittling the shortlist down to the final three.

Many thanks to Literary Dundee director, Anna Day. 

Best of luck to us all!

Picture entry

Smiling like a banana to have made the shortlist of the AUT Creative Writing Awards for my graphic short story "Alchemy Hour".

Mega congratulations to the other four shortlistees!