Manchester Writing Competition 2020
Winners and Short List
Manchester Writing Competition 2020
Winners of the 2020 Manchester Writing Competition revealed as Ian Dudley and James Pollock.
Read more about the winners on Latest News.
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Poetry Prize Short List
Caroline Bracken
Caroline Bracken’s poems have been published in The North, the Irish Times, Abridged, the Fish Anthology, Sonder Magazine, The Bangor Literary Journal, the Ogham Stone, Poetry Jukebox, Skylight 47 and forthcoming in Best New British and Irish Poets 2021 and Sentinel Literary Quarterly. She was selected for the Poetry Ireland Introductions Series 2018 by Sinead Morrissey and is the Parkinson’s Art Poet of the Year 2020. Her poems have won the iYeats International Poetry Competition, the Poetry Day Ireland Competition 2020 and have been shortlisted elsewhere including the Bridport Poetry Prize. She is working towards a first collection.
Hannah Cooper-Smithson
Hannah Cooper-Smithson is a poet from Nottingham, currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University. In 2020 she was the first Poet in Residence at Creswell Crags Museum and Heritage Centre. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and online publications, including Finished Creatures, The Interpreter’s House, Reliquiae and Mslexia. She was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Women Poets’ Prize 2020 and is currently working on her first collection.
Teresa Dzieglewicz
Teresa Dzieglewicz is an educator, Pushcart Prize-winning poet, and organizer of Further Notice Reading Series. She works with Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Wounspe at Standing Rock Reservation. She earned her MFA from Southern Illinois University, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize. She is the winner of the 2018 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, the 2020 Palette Poetry Prize and has received fellowships from New Harmony Writer’s Workshop, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, NY Mills Arts Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. Her poems appear in Pushcart Prize XLII, Best New Poets, Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere.
Joan Michelson
Joan Michelson’s collections are: The Family Kitchen, 2018, The Finishing Line Press, USA, Landing Stage, 2017, SPM Publishers, UK, Bloomvale Home, 2016, Original Plus Books, UK and Toward the Heliopause, 2011, Poetic Matrix Press, USA. She’s received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Centre for the Arts, Valparaiso, Spain, Sangam House, India and other foundations. Her poems have won the Bristol Poetry Competition, the Torriano International Poetry Competition, the Hamish Canham Prize, and others. Originally from the States, she lives in London and teaches creative writing to medical students at Kings College, University of London.
James Pollock
James Pollock’s first book, Sailing to Babylon (Able Muse Press, 2012), was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award in Poetry, and winner of an Outstanding Achievement Award in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association. His poems have appeared in The Paris Review, AGNI, Plume, The Walrus, and many other journals, and in anthologies in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. His other books include You Are Here: Essays on the Art of Poetry in Canada, and The Essential Daryl Hine. His second book of poems, Durable Goods, is forthcoming from Véhicule Press in Montreal.
Laura Potts
Laura Potts is a writer from West Yorkshire. A recipient of the Foyle Young Poets Award, her work has been published by Aesthetica, The Moth and The Poetry Business. Laura became one of the BBC’s New Voices in 2017. She received a commendation from The Poetry Society in 2018 and was shortlisted for The Edward Thomas Fellowship, The Rebecca Swift Women’s Poetry Prize and The Bridport Prize in 2020.
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Fiction Prize Short List
Neil Campbell
Neil Campbell’s third novel, Lanyards, is out now. From Manchester, England, he has appeared three times in the annual anthology of Best British Short Stories (2012/2015/2016). He has published three novels, two collections of flash fiction, two collections of short stories, two poetry chapbooks and a poetry collection, as well as appearing in numerous magazines and anthologies. He is currently working on new books and looking for an agent.
Hannah Donelon
Hannah Donelon is a writer from Manchester. She studied English Literature at University College London before training as an actor at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Hannah began writing for the stage with the Royal Exchange Young Company and is passionate about exploring the tensions within female working-class identity as well as tensions within cultural heritage. In her short stories, she is particularly interested in tapping into distinct voices and the way in which those voices reveal themselves.
Ian Dudley
Ian Dudley studied Zoology at university. He worked in market research, travelling extensively in Europe and the US. He’s had short stories broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 7, and is currently studying full time for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham.
Edward Hogan
Edward Hogan is from Derby, and now lives in Brighton. He works for the Open University. His novels include The Electric and Blackmoor. His recent short stories have been longlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and shortlisted for the V.S. Pritchett Prize.
Andrea Mason
Andrea Mason is a London-based artist and writer. She is a graduate of the UEA Creative Writing MA and recently completed her Creative Writing PhD at Goldsmiths. She is the winner of the 2020 Aleph Writing Prize. Recent and forthcoming journal and anthology publications include The Babel Tower Noticeboard, Sublunary Editions, Seen from Here: Writing in the Lockdown, Failed States, Tar Press and 3: AM magazine. Her debut novel, The Cremation Project, shortlisted for the inaugural Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize, 2018, and longlisted for the Dzanc Fiction Prize, 2018, is forthcoming with Inside the Castle, USA, in 2021.
Bernadette McBride
Bernadette McBride is a Liverpool-based writer and creative practitioner. She is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Liverpool funded by the John Lennon Memorial Scholarship. She has published short fiction and a self-help book, has appeared in several anthologies and co-edited the anthology A Spray of Hope (University of Liverpool, 2020). Shewon the Liverpool Guild 2019 award for ‘The Biggest Impact on the City of Liverpool’ for her public-facing creative writing workshops.
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Poetry Prize Judges
Mona Arshi
Mona Arshi was born in West London to Punjabi parents. She worked as a Human rights lawyer at Liberty before she started writing poetry. Her debut collection Small Hands won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2015. Her second collection Dear Big Gods was published in April 2019 (both books published by Liverpool University Press’s Pavilion Poetry list). Her poems and interviews have been published in The Times, The Guardian, Granta and The Times of India as well as on the London Underground. Her debut novel is due to be published in 2021. She has recently been appointed Honorary Professor at the University of Liverpool.
Malika Booker
Malika Booker is an award-winning poet, theatre-maker and multi-disciplinary artists, and an experienced writing competition judge. She is the founder of the Malika’s Poetry Kitchen writers’ community initiative. In 2019 she was commissioned to write and perform a poem about Mars for a BBC Science series about the solar system and was awarded a prestigious Society of Authors Cholmondley Award for her contribution to poetry. She joined Manchester Metropolitan University as Lecturer in Creative Writing in January 2019.
Mimi Khalvati
Mimi Khalvati was born in Tehran and has lived most of her life in London. She has published nine collections with Carcanet Press, including The Meanest Flower, shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2007, and Child: New and Selected Poems 1991-2011. Her awards include a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors and a major Arts Council Writer’s Award. She is the founder of The Poetry School and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her new collection, Afterwardness, is a PBS Winter Wild Card and a book of the year in The Sunday Times and The Guardian.
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Fiction Prize Judges
Tim Etchells
Tim Etchells is an artist and a writer based in the UK whose work shifts between performance, visual art and fiction. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the world-renowned Sheffield-based performance group Forced Entertainment. Exhibiting and presenting work in significant institutions all over the world, he is currently Professor of Performance & Writing at Lancaster University. Tim’s collection of short fiction Endland is published by And Other Stories, 2019 and his story ‘Strange Weather’ won the Manchester Fiction Prize in 2019.
Irenosen Okojie
Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British writer. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask award and was shortlisted for an Edinburgh International First Book Award. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Observer, The Guardian, the BBC and the Huffington Post amongst other publications. Her short stories have been published internationally including Salt’s Best British Short Stories 2017, Kwani? and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction. She was presented at the London Short Story Festival by Booker Prize winning author Ben Okri as a dynamic writing talent to watch and featured in the Evening Standard Magazine as one of London’s exciting new authors. Her short story collection Speak Gigantular, published by Jacaranda Books was shortlisted for the Edgehill Short Story Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Saboteur Awards and nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her new collection of stories, Nudibranch, published by Little Brown’s Dialogue Books, was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize and the story ‘Grace Jones’ was shortlisted for the AKO Caine Prize For Fiction.
Nicholas Royle
Nicholas Royle has chaired the judging panel for the Manchester Fiction Prize since 2009. He is Reader in Creative Writing in the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Met and the author of seven novels, including The Director’s Cut, Antwerp and First Novel. He has written more than 100 short stories, some of which feature in his collection Mortality. He has edited 20 anthologies, including six volumes of Best British Short Stories, and runs Nightjar Press, which publishes new stories in chapbook format. He lives in Manchester.