Monday 9 January 2017

Deborah Arnander and Melissa Fu, the winners of our prose competition!

Congratulations to Deborah Arnander who has won our new national prize for women writers over 40 in our prose competition this year and Melissa Fu who has won our regional prize for women writers living and working in the East of England.  Deborah won for her fantastic story The Wife, and Melissa won with her elegiac non-fiction piece Suite For My Father.

Deborah Arnander
Deborah was born in Northumberland but spent her childhood in Thailand.  She has a PhD in French literature, and works as a translator.  She won an Escalator award in 2010, when she began her first, soon to be completed novel, The Cinderella Watch, which was shortlisted in 2014’s TLC/PEN Factor competition. She has published stories in Unthology One and Words and Women One and Three, all with Unthank Books, and poetry in the webzine Ink, Sweat and Tears.  She is married with two children. 

Melissa Fu
Melissa grew up in Northern New Mexico and lives in Cambridge. Her work appears in Words and Women:Two, Bare Fiction, Envoi, Right Hand Pointing, and other publications. With backgrounds in physics and English, she spent many years working in education, both as a teacher and a consultant. In 2014 Melissa combined her loves of writing and teaching to start Spilling The Ink, a small business offering creative writing courses and coaching. 

Deborah wins £1,000 and a month long writing retreat, generously sponsored by Hosking Houses Trust, and Melissa wins £600 and a mentoring session with Jill Dawson of Gold Dust.  Both will have their work published in our fourth anthology Words And Women: Four published by Unthank Books, which will be launched at our International Women’s Day celebration at the Nunns Yard Gallery in Norwich in March. (We will release more details about our celebration at the end of this month.) There are also 22 other writers whose scripts will be published in our anthology.

Our guest judge for this year was Naomi Wood, author of The Godless Boys and the bestseller Mrs. Hemingway. All entries were judged anonymously and the unveiling of the names of the winning writers at the end of the process was very exciting! ‘The chosen stories,’ says Naomi,  ‘are fresh and clever and dynamic.’

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:

NATIONAL PRIZE FOR WOMEN WRITERS OVER THE AGE OF 40 OF £1,000 & ONE MONTH’S WRITING RETREAT SPONSORED BY HOSKING HOUSES TRUST and PUBLICATION IN WORDS AND WOMEN: FOUR  = Deborah Arnander for her short story The Wife. 

REGIONAL PRIZE FOR WOMEN WRITERS BASED IN THE EAST OF ENGLAND OF £600 & A MENTORING SESSION WITH JILL DAWSON OF GOLD DUST and PUBLICATION IN WORDS AND WOMEN: FOUR  = Melissa Fu for her non-fiction piece Suite For My Father. 


PUBLICATION IN WORDS AND WOMEN: FOUR  =
Jamilah Ahmed - Leaving The Home That Made Me –  Non-Fiction
Kate Harmond Allan - Sunday Tea – Memoir
Margaret Callaghan - Pull of Distance – Fiction
Tricia Cresswell - Future Perfect – Fiction
Louise Dumayne - The Bear – Non-Fiction
Kate Feld - Dear Shadow – Non-Fiction
Lilie Ferrari - Sorry Business – Fiction
Pia Ghosh-Roy – A Tree Full of Ghosts – Non-Fiction
Guinevere Glasfurd - The Last Card – Fiction
Sara Gowen - Wedad – Non-Fiction
Anna Metcalfe - A Punch Up At The Wedding – Fiction
Clare Morgan - Thiruvega – Fiction
Helen Morris - There’s a Wee Bomb Upstairs – Fiction
Shiona Morton - The Boy in The Bivouac – Fiction
Nasrin Parvaz - The Time of Assassinations – Fiction
Marianne Picton - Memory Thief – Fiction
Ronne Randall - The Talent Show – Non-Fiction
Kate Robinson - Komodo Dragon – Non-Fiction
Cherise Saywell - Private Parts – Fiction
Victoria Shropshire - Beauregard’s Last Walk – Fiction
Penny Simpson - Winter’s Map – Fiction
Mary White – Some Adjustment Required - Fiction











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