Hampshire Writers' Society

Tag: competitions

  • The wind was colder than the stars in winter

    The talented Matt Wingett set and adjudicated our competition this month:

    Brief:  The phrase they should respond to is: “The wind was colder than the stars in winter.” This can be anything. A poem, flash fiction, an outline for a story, a dialogue, (400 words) 

    And the winners were…

    First place: ‘Banshee Weather’ by Sophie Hetherington

    The wind was colder than the stars in winter. And I hate the wind. Give me rain but save me from wind. Whipping my hair mockingly around my face, a blizzard of hair in my eyes, mouth, lifting hanks of it around my head like Medusa’s snakes, defying gravity. My own features set in a grimace befitting that tortured goddess. Ears ice burned, draughts funnelling up my sleeves. Invading the gaps in my too-thin scarf to chill the back of my neck. I’ve heard school teachers say the wind makes kids feral – can’t be settled once back in class after the exhilaration of being buffeted and blown like leaves around the playground. I reach the house and a gust slams the door shut after me in one last insult. It’s a little quieter in hall as I take off shoes and coat, scrape hair off my face and catch my breath. But not quiet enough. The wind still buffets the house, forcing tiny banshee screams through every minute crack around the badly sealed windows. I can’t settle either, but not from energised elemental excitement; the wind disturbs me, my nerves frayed by the erratic noise of thick swirling air that will not let up. It continues into the evening; I have terrors over the ancient chimney stack, trying to work out its trajectory if a particularly vicious gust were to topple it. My thoughts are scattered, concentration fractured by the tinny reverberations coming down the metal chimney flue. I must have dozed off because later I wake and what confronts me is the absence of sound – it is silent at last – I can feel the still space inside my skull, the tension leaves my body. Tip-toe to the window to look out, and, clean silver pin pricks in a luminous ink blue sky, I can finally see the stars.

    Second Place: ‘The Starry Night by Maggie Farran

    The picture had always been hung above the fireplace at the home, where she had been born. It was a cheap copy of ‘The Starry Night’ by Vincent Van Gogh. As a small child she had stared at it for hours, fascinated by the bright yellow stars set against the dark blue sky. She had looked at the little village in the distance and wondered what it was like to live there. Would she have attended the church with its tall steeple? Would she have climbed the mountains in the distance? She had loved the whirls around the stars and. The movement in the night sky.

    As she got older, she had tried to copy the painting. She had sat at the oak table in the living room with her felt tips and sketch book. Recreating it had been her passion, until she reached the age when she had her own paints and canvas. Then she had chosen her own subjects and style. She painted flowers in a detailed controlled way. They were beautiful and sold well. Everything about them reflected how she lived her life. Now both her parents had died, and she was back in her old childhood home, gazing up at the painting, that had meant so much to her, that had inspired her to become a painter.

    The grief for what she had lost and what she had become was wrapped around her like the most bitterly cold wind. Where was that free-spirited girl, who whirled and twirled like the stars in the painting? What had changed her into this precise, tight person? Her flower paintings were the result of painstaking work. Everything about them was perfect, from the colour of the petals to the shape of the leaves. They were treasured by collectors for their accuracy. She shivered at the coldness of how she saw herself now. She was able to appreciate the delicate beauty of the flowers she painted, and reproduce them perfectly with the gift, she had been given. Every exquisite detail was there, but the vibrant, swirling, whirling stars were just out of reach.

    Third Place: ’And Then The Wind’ by Val Harris

    but before that, you were the surest

    you’ve ever been. A brilliance in your eyes

    like all the planets had collided there.

    Air and sky as clear as a lucid mind.

    An upbeat heart, a steadfast belief,

    and then the wind.

    The relentless, flailing sod of it. A bite

    only a Yeti or a ghost, could endure,

    and even they are nowhere to be seen.

    How long will it last? How long before

    the roar and withering freeze engulf you,

    turn you into a sculpt of ice,

    unable to move your frosted lips,

    desperate for words, but too afraid

    your voice will shrivel and die?

    And then the wind, turning triumph

    over with its vicious breath,

    deadly as a breeze on Uranus.

    A huge congratulations to our winners and thank you to everyone who submitted!!

  • June Competition

    Brief:  ‘A story in which a character shows great patience?’

    (300 words)

    Due May 25th 11:59pm

    Adjudicator: Toby Litt

    Winners will be announced at our June 2025 meeting; online and in the newsletter thereafter.

    For full competition guidelines, please read our competition rules.

  • May Competition

    Brief: Throw it wide and just let them respond. The phrase they should respond to is: “The wind was colder than the stars in winter.” This can be anything. A poem, flash fiction, an outline for a story, a dialogue,

    (400 words)

    Due April 25th 11:59pm

    Adjudicator: Matt Wingett

    Winners will be announced at our May 2025 meeting; online and in the newsletter thereafter.

    For full competition guidelines, please read our competition rules.

    Good luck!

  • Experiences, discoveries, and unexpected travel moments

    The amazing Natasha Orme set and adjudicated our competition this month:

    Brief:  Travel isn’t just about places – it’s about experiences, discoveries, and unexpected moments. Sometimes, the best (or worst!) moments happen when things go completely off track.

    Maybe you got hopelessly lost and found something incredible. Maybe bad weather ruined your perfect itinerary, only for an unplanned detour to become the highlight of your trip. Or perhaps the reality of a long-dreamed-of destination didn’t match the fantasy, yet taught you something unexpected.

    It could be funny, unsettling, heartwarming, or eye-opening – just make it real. No postcard-perfect moments. I want to see the messy, unpredictable, and wonderfully human side of travel.

    (400 words)

    And the winners were…

    First place: ‘Night Watch’ by Christ Youle

    Frozen. Shivering through layers of oilskin, fleece and wool. Alone at three in the morning, in the middle of the Bay of Biscay, solely in charge. The responsibility crushes my tingling nerve endings. Can this really be happening? But I have to keep us alive.

    The forecast had been wrong. Expectations of a blissfully calm introduction to night-sailing shattered.

    My first night watch. Pitch dark, blacker than any imaginable black. Wind scorches through me, sails scream and clatter around me. Nature more violent than I’ve ever experienced. My every sinew screams with terror. Water drenches me from all directions. Waves smack and splash, rain streams. Everywhere. Muscles I didn’t know I had sear with the effort of staying upright. My only friend is my next ginger biscuit. All I can stomach to counter the waves of nausea.

    Three hours focusing on where I think the sea becomes the sky. Three hours imagining dark shadows of boats heading straight for us. Three hours of seeing odd lights appearing and disappearing, of thinking I am going mad. The longest three hours of my life.

    Finally, shift change. My new mid-life husband, Pete, appears rubbing his eyes and beaming.

    “Everything OK?”

    “Fine,” I lie. “No problems.”

    I stagger down the steps, suddenly tasting salty ginger on moistening lips. Energy magics itself from nowhere as I scamper into the still-warm sleeping bag. I burrow as far

    down as possible. Safe, hiding, not responsible. At least if we drown in the next three hours it won’t have been my fault. Sleep descends miraculously.

    Three days and nights. The relentlessness and adrenaline surges totally drain my resources. Sustained terror alternating with desperate snatched sleep. On our fourth bleary-eyed dawn, the bouncing horizon reveals the distant estuary leading to Ribadeo. It isn’t A Coruna, where we’d been planning to land, but it’s safe. To head away from the relentless raging of the sea to the blissful beckoning of the ria is heaven.

    “Where’ve you come from?” asks the woman on the next boat as we stumble around, tying up.

    “Salcombe,” Pete replies.

    “Oh wow. How long did that take you?”

    Forever, I think. “Just three days.” says Pete breezily. “It was a really good crossing. Perfect wind on the nose. Made six or seven knots most of the way. Couldn’t have been better.”

    I feel quietly proud. Then utter exhaustion takes over.

    Second Place: ‘Flamingos’ by Mike Sedgwick

    ‘There are flamingos up country in Mannar. I want to see them,’ stated my wife.

    I’m happy in Kandy, reading and watching the fish eagles over the river. The barman knows when to bring me another ice-cold beer. I must give up this leisurely life to travel the pot-holed roads in a car whose air conditioning heats the air. After six long hours, we are driven across the bridge onto Mannar Island where wild donkeys scratch themselves on baobab trees.

    At dawn the next day, we set out for where the flamingos are. At the tip of Mannar peninsular, a lone soldier with a WWII rifle defends Sri Lanka from an Indian invasion. Across the shallow seas and sandbanks of Adams Bridge, India forms a smudge on the horizon. A flock of stints run back and forth on the beach, avoiding the waves, stopping to peck at tiny crustaceans.

    Nowhere in the green scrub, the black brackish lagoons behind us, the shimmering sand and the blinding blue sky, is there a hint of the salmon pink we seek. It would be a wild goose chase if flamingos were geese.

    Back at our hotel, before breakfast, the young man on the desk explains, ‘I know where they are. I’ll take you there tomorrow morning.’

    Another dawn start when the air is cooler. We drive along tracks and around dunes and stop in an area of sand and scrub. With feet dragging in the sand, I think of my bed, checking the cricket scores on my iPad, waiting for breakfast. Instead, we creep past a dune. ‘Shush,’ whispers our guide, ‘move slowly.’

    Around another dune we see a brackish lagoon with a pink cloud of feeding flamingos, brilliant against a backdrop of dark trees. Their grunts, growls and honks float across the water and we watch their heads rise on their long necks to look around. Shuffling in reverse with their backwards-pointing knees, their feet disturb the water creatures which are gobbled up through inverted beaks. The black-tipped beaks rise up as they swallow their prey. Some know-it-all explains that their knees are actually ankles that bend that way.

    Thousands of pink rumps with black beaks are busy feeding in preparation for migration across Adams Bridge to India.

    Cricket scores? Ice-cold beers? Who cares? After this spectacle of nature, I need tea and my customary buffalo curd with thikul. I’ll come again, tomorrow.

    Third Place: ’The kindness of a stranger’ by Nicola Pritchard-Pink

    In the midst of the airport security queue, I sat crumpled on the floor, quietly crying with exhaustion, emotionally and physically defeated. How did I get here? This was not how I started.

    *                     *                     *

    Mid-afternoon one week earlier I confidently strode out of Düsseldorf airport, smiling at the prospect of my first ever lecture tour. My body fizzed and tingled with adrenaline and excitement – it was really happening. The tour took in three locations – Düsseldorf, Essen, and Münster – and in each city I would be met by locals who would show me around. I couldn’t wait.

    Ingrid was my first guide, who welcomed me to her beloved city, pointing out ancient towers, sunny riverside views, and, best of all, the gabled cream-fronted pub where she had her first kiss. The day was a whirlwind of modern art, Baroque churches, Nazi victim memorials, and local breweries, creating a sensory torrent: colourful Kandinsky contrasted with marble-white cherubs; haunting air raid shelters consumed along with frothy, dark beer. In the evening I gave my talk in a beautiful historic room, hung with chandeliers and lined with cabinets of priceless porcelain. What could be better than this?

    My magical experience continued in the next two cities, where again I was greeted at the station and again pampered by my hosts, leaving me feeling as if I were a celebrity.

    But cracks started to show on the last day. I have an auto-immune illness which means I run out of energy easily, and unfortunately my polite requests for a break were lost on my brilliantly enthusiastic hosts. By the end of my lecture I was really weary, and by the time I got to the airport the next day, I had officially run of out of juice. Dragging my heavy suitcase, which inexplicably now only had one working wheel, I slugged my body to the check-in desk. My legs felt leaden, and every step was like walking through thick treacle. No-one seemed to get what I was I saying and waving my sunflower lanyard didn’t help. By the time I got to security I had almost nothing left. I found myself collapsing down on the floor feeling desperate for someone, anyone, to help me. And it was just then, when I felt hopeless and unseen, that I heard a woman’s voice ask if I was OK, telling me she’d help me and stay with me. Tears filled my eyes with this simple but deeply profound act of kindness from a fellow traveller, beautifully proving how when we travel, we all have the potential to truly change someone’s day.

    Highly Commended: ’Rebel Rebel’ by Lowri Rylance

    Neither Mum nor Dad raised an eyebrow when I told them that I was quitting my nursing job to go travelling. I’d gained more than enough qualifications and experience to work my way around the world. There was nothing I could do to shock them, there was no rebellious teenage phase for me. Their own parents had cut them off decades earlier; the tattoos, piercings, drugs, teenage pregnancy and prison sentences had been too much for my devout Catholic grandparents, and I had never met them – we didn’t even know if they were still alive. My parents hated religion and thought that it was the cause of all that was wrong in the world, believing that the church had turned their parents against them.

    I’d thought nursing was the answer; I loved caring for others, and even though the shifts were long and arduous, the stories were harrowing, and the pay was low, I enjoyed it. But there was always something missing, and the nagging voice coming from the centre of my chest telling me to keep searching was never silenced. Mum and Dad said that I needed to find my soul mate; they believed that they had been together through numerous past lives and reincarnations and thought that the love of a partner was all that was missing from my life. I had never believed in fairy stories, and had no faith that a handsome prince or princess was out there looking for me.

    I hoped that a jaunt around the world seeing sights I couldn’t even begin to imagine, would be the answer, and I would finally feel complete. I crossed out country after country on my long list, meeting hundreds of people, experiencing the divides and chasms between the rich and poor. I was welcomed by all, especially those traumatised and hurting as they found solace in my calm manner, and the time I spent just holding their hand, unable to communicate in any other way because of the language barriers.

    Now I was on my way home, back to London, to face my parents with the news they would never expect to hear from me. I feared their reaction but knew that my newfound faith would see me through, when I told them that I had found God, and would shortly be entering a convent in Italy as a novice nun.

    A huge congratulations to our winners and thank you to everyone who submitted!!

  • Write about an animal!

    The lovely Damian Kelly-Basher set and adjudicated our March competition:

    Brief: Write about an animal. You can write from the viewpoint of the animal, yourself, or another person/thing. 

    But you cannot use the letter ‘e’ anywhere in your work. (300 words)

    And the winners were…

    First place: ‘Woof’ by Viv Smith

    Sniff. Run, run hard. Run with stick. Bark, bark again, mad, bark loudly. Sshhh!

    Man looks cross. Wait, wag. Wag lots. Told to sit. Sit. Twitch a bit. Pant, pant hard, drool. Anticipation is good. Ball thrown far away; watch it land. Told to go. Run fast and swift to ball, sniff, grab, turn, go back to im. Man happy patting, rubbing, wag lots. Drop ball. Fun, sit. Try not to twitch too much. Wait for throw two, it lands a long way away. Run hard.

    Brown dog on grass, not good. Big brown dog grabs my ball, runs to his man. His man says “No!” Brown dog should drop ball, but brown dog runs backwards and forwards, not dropping it, but crouching down, wants to play with man.

    I wait, bark, wag, look around hoping for my man to act, but still too far away, chatting. Want him to talk to brown dog’s man. Pant, drool a bit, worry. Brown dog knows it’s my ball, runs around in front with it in his mouth, wagging, taunting, still gripping it in his jaws, not putting it down. Knows this is annoying. I crouch, could I fight him for my ball? Try a growl with a bark, if brown dog barks back ball could fall. Is brown dog that stupid?

    Brown dog is dumb. Ball drops barking back. I zoom in to pick it up and dash to my man for back up support. My man is still chatting to a lady, but stoops to pat and rub fur. Both happy now.. Wag lots.

    Man stops talking, grins, turns, walks across grass, I run and sniff. Walking along path I think of food from man soon, good thought, wag again.

    Second Place: ‘Val and Anna’ by Wendy Falla

    My provision from Mum’s will didn’t hold much worth,

    ‘What was it?’ you may ask,

    Ah … with conditions and instructions, two long living and robust, grumpy old Torts! Known

    as Val and Anna (mum’s aunts), a fourth birthday gift and now my priority to spoil. Inhabiting

    an orchard run, built by dad from old scaffold planks and long nails, days pass munching

    Marigolds and pink Marshmallow blossom, oblivious to world chaos. Dinosaur jaws of horny

    rims clamp around young tomato plants and spinach sprouts, rich in iron, trailing from grow

    bags.

    A book from mum, noting habitat, habits and traits, instructs that a shallow warm oil bath

    (Virgin no doubt!) is a must in spring to sooth crusty limbs post a dormant six months. A

    vitamin shot prior to a coming out party and contacts for torty pals to ask along.

    Dusk brings both along a grassy path to an old quail shack on stilts, slowly up a ramp, in

    through an archway to a straw clad cocoon. Slow blinking at sundown, grunts turn into faint

    snoring, torty bliss. In Autumn, as days grow cold and with a chill in the night air, I must stop

    this pair burrowing into Ash and Poplar roots at our boundary, fast work for scaly nails

    digging through claggy clay soil – or Val and Anna will vanish on to common land, God

    forbid they should drown in a pond or pool!

    Flourishing and vigorously tackling anything blocking paths – cats, dogs, plant pots, humans

    – ploughing right on through with gusto! Mum (gran) is watching and waiting to haunt us,

    should Val and Anna pass away during my acquisition. My adult sons pray I outlast Val and

    Anna – although big son wants my piano and young son my sports car

    Third Place: ’A Stick, Stuck’ by Jacob Watkins

    I sprawl, stuck in this mud. A stick, stuck, so soon unstuck from that stout oak standing almost within touch of my spindly twigs, though also agonisingly afar. Afraid, I was, of such biting wind that blows through our park – and still I did strain outwards, gloating at low, land-plodding louts, till a strong gust brought a snap –

    What is that sound drawing in? A sniff, a scratch, purporting a snort. A shaking in my dirt, a shifting through this rusting mulch; thrumming, four fat paws, swishing scimitar-tail, pink, sloppy limb lolling from drooling mouth; I must run! But it is not a stuck stick’s lot to run.

    Hush – I should stay still, praying that vulgar snout won’t find out I am at risk. Old oak, why art thou so disloyal? My growth was in your honour, my triumphs your own – but now I rot amongst your roots, as this Satan-born thing of fur and fury draws towards my limp form.

    Good lord, I whiff its guttural panting. What foul concoctions must this glutton gulp down? Stay firm, my tumultuous bosom, hold fast, salvation still may show. But it shan’t! For its body has struck out sunlight and shrouds this land in dark! All is lost, within my assailant’s cold, murky domain, as it bows its skull and unlocks its nightmarish maw – my world is now fangs and spit –

    I pass out, for how long I do not know, but a touch of flowing air brings back our blissful world. Although, I am not hanging from my oak, but racing rapid as a brook across grass and rock, with only a slight pinch from my saviour’s thoughtful jaws holding my body tight. Now, I do not simply grow, but fly – I, a stick, and from mud I am truly unstuck.

    A huge congratulations to our winners and thank you to everyone who submitted!!

  • April Competition

    Brief: Travel isn’t just about places – it’s about experiences, discoveries, and unexpected moments. Sometimes, the best (or worst!) moments happen when things go completely off track.

    Maybe you got hopelessly lost and found something incredible. Maybe bad weather ruined your perfect itinerary, only for an unplanned detour to become the highlight of your trip. Or perhaps the reality of a long-dreamed-of destination didn’t match the fantasy, yet taught you something unexpected.

    It could be funny, unsettling, heartwarming, or eye-opening – just make it real. No postcard-perfect moments. I want to see the messy, unpredictable, and wonderfully human side of travel.

    (400 words)

    Due March 25th 11:59pm

    Adjudicator: Natasha Orme

    Winners will be announced at our April 2025 meeting; online and in the newsletter thereafter.

    For full competition guidelines, please read our competition rules.

    Good luck!

  • March Competition

    Brief: Write about an animal. You can write from the viewpoint of the animal, yourself, or another person/thing. 

    But you cannot use the letter ‘e’ anywhere in your work.” (300 words)

    Due Feb 25th 11:59pm

    Adjudicator: Damian Kelly-Basher

    Winners will be announced at our March 2025 meeting; online and in the newsletter thereafter.

    For full competition guidelines, please read our competition rules.

    Good luck!

  • Winter Poem

    The amazing Dr. Jean G-Owen set and adjudicated our December competition:

    For this month’s competition, write a poem (up to 30 lines) or prose poem (300 words) with Winter (not Christmas) as a theme. Set the tone to be eerie and unsettling, perhaps even uncanny, making winter itself feel sentient.  

    And the winners were…

    First place: ‘WINTER, 1536’ by Dave Sinclair

    While clouds kiss and bruise the hills with grey

    A crow and worm romance in the fields below.

    The worm smells juicy to the murderous crow, 

    A morsel to be eaten soon, unless it will obey.

    The worm is hiding in the frosty sward

    until the spring melts all the winter snow.

    Then the secrets of the worm’s burnished glow

    may be opened by the crowbeak’s rasping sword.

    For now, while winter fights its white campaign

    the worm shares her place with the bones of kings,

    and gold or souls and other buried things.

    So, crow can only caw its spiteful refrain.

    The passing time will fade the snow’s pure white

    then worm will curl up, smaller, smaller

    and ask the Maker “Pray protect your messenger,

    and hide me in another shining night,

    for I have seen so many wondrous things

    burnished, glimmering as I slither deep below

    Save me from the scraping beaks of crows

    And allow my witness to the sins of kings.”

    “Mary, you have never served me true”,

    Said crow as he addressed the worm,

    “But as in all our lives, each season’s turn, 

    and all our efforts must in death conclude.

    And though now you hide within the frigid turf

    To each of us the winters end must come,

    Yield your soul, or else your life is done,

    And that will be the end to all your work”.

    The worm replied, “So, Thomas, must I cast aside,

    the holy love of our one true lord,

    He surely knows that when I give my word,

    I know different in my heart – or else I die”.

    As fields submit to winter’s white campaign,

    clouds kiss and bruise the hills with grey,

    a queen parlays her soul for earthly pay,

    while crow caws out his rasping, cruel refrain.

    Second Place: ‘‘CRAVE’’ by Janey L Foster

    I like to think of birds, fluffling, blinking, they keep me warm under their wings. I watch the absentminded sleet swell in and out like a thought you can’t quite grasp, almost snowing, almost here, bringing the feeling close. And how my ribcage expands into the white tiles down the street, the ice crystals drawing attention to their edge like the bones underneath my muscles and I move. I may peer into the chill because it craves me, pulls me close and if my eyes and nose run in this biting air, if my cheeks turn to rose over my wool, I will be calm.

    Calm, yet bristling, feeling the blood surge around my body as though I’m still a child with hot aches in snow clumped gloves, wet wool that doesn’t care and I run out.  I seek out ice, for in this winter, it defines me, this bitter biting at my edges, makes me whole. This restless buffeting, mirroring my breath, my heartbeats, the sense that I’m alive – even now.

    I will wrap up and go now. I need to talk to birds. Where the dried-out leaves hang wet, releasing. I feel ravens nestle in my palms, pin pricks in my warm skin, I let them peck me, let me bleed. I offer them berries to burst in their beaks and if I pause, I feel the juice in their gullets, rolling down, sustaining them until they sing. I will walk until my skin cracks in the cold, until I feel the edges of my mouth where the wind gets in and if it snows, I will be safe, if the flakes prickle my face, burn into hot cheeks I will be known. Iced needles cut me, they take me home.

    Third Place: ‘MIST OF LIFE’ by Johnathan Reid

    Winter first whispers its warning

    to ice-splintered hearts of pine,

    unhealed from perpetual war.

    Blizzard and frost sweep down

    to silence bird and beast,

    smother Autumn’s leaf and branch,

    strangle stillborn bud-to-be,

    until every forest bone

    creaks and moans in

    merciless frozen symphony.

    Snap-crackled twigs signal

    rare breaths daring to break frigid air,

    each billowed cloud of life

    a strike against the bitter, silent foe.

    Antlers rise in regal pose,

    ears of warm meat twitching

    in denial of Winter’s ultimatum:

    Migrate, starve — or stampede,

    through snow-powdered blankets,

    into lupine jowls on moonlit nights.

    Ancient bowed sentinels,

    mist-cloaked skeletal ghosts,

    grasp dead soil in their last stand.

    Blind roots claw grave-deep

    into hoar-baked earth, to cradle

    Spring’s few shivering survivors.

    Numb stakes stab warm hearts,

    until Summer-starved fur succumbs,

    bright eyes dimmed to death by the

    tilt and turn of cold-blooded Winter.

    Our highly commended entries were;

    Ghazal for the Silent by Damon L. Wakes

    Winter Ways by Mary Anne Smith Sellen

    Winter Demon by Val Harris

    A huge congratulations to this months winners!!

  • January Competition

    Brief: Point of view of a painting

    300 word story told from the point of view of a non human? Eg, Plant, animal or inanimate object.

    Due December 27th 11:59pm

    Adjudicator: David Hill

    Winners will be announced at our January 2025 meeting; online and in the newsletter thereafter.

    For full competition guidelines, please read our competition rules.

    Good luck!

  • December Competition

    Brief: Winter Poem

    For this month’s competition, write a poem (up to 30 lines) or prose poem (300 words) with Winter (not Christmas) as a theme. Set the tone to be eerie and unsettling, perhaps even uncanny, making winter itself feel sentient.  

    Due November 27th 11:59pm

    Adjudicator: Jean G-Owen

    Winners will be announced at our 10th December 2024 meeting; online and in the newsletter thereafter.

    For full competition guidelines, please read our competition rules.

    Good luck!