Sarah Evans wins our prose competition!

Congratulations to Sarah who has won Words And Women’s prose writing competition with her wonderful short story Scalpelling Through.

Sarah has had over a hundred stories published in anthologies, magazines and online, with outlets including: the Bridport Prize, Unthank Books, Lighthouse, Structo and Best New Writing. She has won a number of short story prizes, including the Winston Fletcher Prize, the Stratford Literary Festival Prize, the Glass Woman Prize, the Fylde Writers’ Circle Prize and the Rubery Prize. She has also had work performed in London, Hong Kong and New York.

Sarah wins £600 and her winning story will appear in our third anthology Words And Women: Three published by Unthank Books , which will be launched at our International Women’s Day celebration on the 7^th March this year at Norwich Arts Centre. Tickets are now available for this event by clicking here. 

Our competition was open to women living in the East of England over the age of 16. We asked for prose – fiction or non-fiction – under 2,200 words, and the scripts, like last year, covered a variety of subjects: belly-dancing, the ‘Jungle’ in Calais, the birth of a calf, virginity, drugs, house demolition, the First World War, murder and the movies. They were set not just in this region but all over the world. This year we again received more fiction than non-fiction and we attracted entries from all over the East of England, from Norfolk to Hertfordshire, from Suffolk to Essex. 

Our guest judge for this year was Emma Healey, author of the best-selling novel Elisabeth Is Missing. All entries were judged anonymously and the unveiling of the names of the winning writers at the end of the process was very exciting!

Sarah is our worthy overall winner. There are also 21 other writers whose scripts will be published in our anthology.

Over the next few days Words And Women will be posting photos and short biographies of all of our successful writers. Also Words And Women will be busily editing and shaping the anthology for publication. More news about this will be posted on our blog in due course.

Finally, Words And Women would like to say thank you to everybody who entered the competition. The quality of work, as always, was outstanding. 

The winning entries:

FIRST PRIZE OF £600 and PUBLICATION IN WORDS AND WOMEN: THREE  =

Sarah Evans for her short story Scalpelling Through. Sarah lives in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. 

PUBLICATION IN WORDS AND WOMEN: THREE =

Ann Abineri – Atacama – Fiction – (Bottisham, Cambridgeshire)

Deborah Arnander – Calentitos – Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Susan K Burton – Strictly Belly Dance – Creative Non-Fiction – (Norwich, Norfolk)

Caroline Davison – Boy With Gun – Fiction – (Norwich, Norfolk)

Sharon Eckman – Charis – Fiction – (Hitchin, Hertfordshire)

Victoria Hattersley –  Looking For Jim Morrison – Fiction – (Norwich, Norfolk)

Danusia Iwaszko - Still Life – Fiction – (Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk)

Sara Keene –The Accomplice – Fiction – (Woodbridge, Suffolk)

Julie Kemmy –  Colin – Fiction (Norwich, Norfolk)

Isabelle King – You’re In The Movies, Huni  - Fiction – (Norwich, Norfolk)

Kathy Mansfield - The Friends – Fiction – (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire)

C.G. Menon – Sacraments – Fiction – (Trumpington, Cambridgeshire)

Margaret Meyer – Leda’s Swan – Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Nicola Miller  – I’m Not Christiane – Fiction - (Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk)

Antoinette Moses - A Canary In Kabul – Memoir -  (Norwich, Norfolk)

Patricia Mullin – Folding – Fiction – (Syderstone, Norfolk )

Glenys Newton –The End Of The Line – Non-Fiction – (Chrishall, Hertfordshire)

Dani Redd –The Second First Time – Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Sarah Ridgard – Thin Walls – Fiction - (Norwich, Norfolk)

Claudine Toutoungi – Room Service – Fiction – (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire)

Louise Tree – The Colours of Snow – Fiction - ( Peterborough, Cambridgeshire)