Competition

WriteWords

Longlist

The following entries to WriteWords 2021 have made it through to the longlist - congratulations:

Flash Fiction:

When First We Met, We Did Not Guess

Seven Times Larger than Earth

Snakes

The Tragedy of Tomorrow

Follicles

Jenny was a Friend of Mine

Toothpicks

My Dad Built a Time Machine

Be Thou My Ally

Platform's Edge

Poetry:

My Personal Botany

The Shoebox

Zap

Angle Shades

Domestic Poem: After Reading Omens by Danusha Laméris

Family Tree

Snow in October

Dusk at Oxwich Bay

Pakistani Postal Collapse

For a Spell

Short Stories:

Just Passing Through

The Others

Lost in Zektoria

Trick or Treat

A hot summer of crocodiles

The Egg Donor

Consolations in the Forest

For the Life of Names

What Comes Next

Winners of each category will:

win £100
appear in our competition issue to launch on Friday February 5th 2021.
be invited to record their entry for our Podcast page
appear in our printed 2021 Anthology
invitation to take part in The Phare's WriteLines online writing retreat for free
take part in on-going publicity

Runners-up of each category will:

win £50
appear in our competition issue to launch on Friday February 5th 2021.
appear in our printed 2021 Anthology
take part in on-going publicity

Prizes will be paid through PayPal or direct bank transfer.

All winners, runners-up and long-listed will be published in The Phare’s competition issue 5th February 2021

No correspondence can be entered into. Judges’ decisions are final.

Prizes

Meet the Judges

Philip Rush

Poetry

Philip Rush lives in Stroud where he reads, and sometimes writes, poetry every day. His poems have featured in journals in UK, Ireland and USA, and have been anthologised by Carcanet and Bloodaxe publications. He runs the poetry imprint Yew Tree Press https://www.yewtreepress.co.uk/

Mary-Jane Holmes

Flash Fiction

Mary-Jane has won the Bath Novella-in-Flash Prize, the Bridport Poetry prize, Dromineer, Reflex Fiction and Mslexia Flash Prize. In 2020, she was shortlisted for the Beverley International Prize. Mary-Jane’s debut poetry collection Heliotrope with Matches and Magnifying Glass is published by Pindrop Press. Her Novella-in Flash Don’t Tell the Bees will be published shortly by Ad Hoc Fiction. Her poetry pamphlet Dihedral is published by Live Canon in November. She was listed in the Biffy top fifty writers 2020.

Ken Elkes

Short Stories

K.M. Elkes is the author of the short fiction collection All That Is Between Us (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019), which was shortlisted for a 2020 Saboteur Award. His short stories have won, or been placed, in international writing competitions including the Manchester Fiction Prize, Royal Society of Literature Award, Bath Short Story Award and the Bridport Prize. He was longlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2019. His work has appeared in more than 30 literary anthologies and journals. He is a short story tutor for Comma Press and lives near Bristol, UK.

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