Editor left speechless by competition shortlist. Results within…

The shortlist of the 2018 Earlyworks Press short story competition is as follows:

David Burke
Lorraine Cooke
Anthony Dickens
K A Easton
David Gray-Clough
Juliet Hill
John Holland
Hilary Hopker
Susan Imgrund
Colin Johnson
Jupiter Jones
Alexander Kupfer
Clayton Lister
Helen Liston
Ben Major
David Mathews
Greg Michaelson
Geoff Nuttall
Valerie Purcell
Michael Romyn
L F Roth
Ashley Smith
Janet H Swinney

The £200 winner for 2018 is

Alexander Kupfer, for ‘The Stone’

The final decision took a while – there were half a dozen stories I would have liked to call a winner but, as we’ve never seen anything quite like ‘The Stone’, and none of the readers could stop reading it once they’d started, it had to be the one.

There are some serious and some positively hair-raising stories in this set – I was thinking of calling the anthology ‘Trigger Warning’; it’d be easier than marking out all the ones to be careful of but there are already two books called that, and Neil Gaiman got there before us. I’m not surprised, because these are, after all, ‘Interesting Times’. Still, if you can stand the heat, there is a lot of love and a lot of learning to be had from these extraordinary stories.

The anthology won’t be out until the spring now, but make a note in your brand new diary, and come looking for your copy when the new leaves start appearing on the trees – it’s not a collection to be missed! Congratulations to all the authors.

***100 word challenge in Hastings***

For anyone who can get to Hastings this week, we’ll be having a bit of a celebration of the 2018 poetry and flash fiction anthology, Records, Rivers and Rats at the Printed Matter Bookshop in Queens Road, starting 6pm on Thursday, 13th Dec.

100 word challenge event details

***Update: That’s been and gone now.  Pics of the challenge evening here.*** If you’d like regular news updates about Earlyworks Press books and doings, please sign up for the newsletter here…

Earlyworks Press Newsletter sign-up

Have a great Christmas, all the best for the New Year – and please keep writing and speaking fearlessly.

---

And here is the anthology, packed full of stories that made this seasoned editor feel a bit Roy Rogers…