We had an extra meeting on Monday 23 September for the
results of our Flash Fiction competition. One of our star members, best-selling
children’s author Kate O’Hearn had pulled some strings in the publishing world
to get us two special judges. Paul Stark, from Orion publishers, and Nicola
Crossley from Random House gave us the benefit of their expertise as well as
judging a record number of entries to the competition. Needless to say, the room
in the White Rock Hotel was absolutely packed with enthusiastic HWG members.
The results of the competition were as follows.
Highly Commended were Anne Hooker
with ‘The Diet’, and Roz Balp with ‘Sea Washed’. Stephen Martin was in fourth
place with ‘Love Expired’. Third was Diana
Lock with ‘Delacroix and Dumas’, and second, Emma Boyd with a
moving and poignant piece, ‘Baby Items for Sale’. The popular winner was long-standing
member John Vallender with the
shortest piece entered for the competition, ‘Don’t Look Down’, about steeplejack
Fred Dibnah.
The judges commented on the difficulty of producing
a high-quality flash fiction piece, where a story has to be produced in 250
words or less. They felt that many of the entries were of a high quality, but
left the reader wanting more, whereas the winning pieces were complete in
themselves.
In addition to the competition results we were
treated to cakes from Anne Hooker,
who was celebrating a milestone birthday the next
day!
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