Past Winners
Since the UoG Novel Writing Contest has now become an annual feature of our course, we thought it only fair that we create a separate page to commemorate our past winners, as well as the worthy finalists and shortlisted entries. So so page will serve as a trophy room of sorts, and grow every year as more names are added – very similar to those odd plaques you see in the halls of secondary schools, which you can (should you wish) return to check out, and revel in past glories…
2016 Contest
Selected by our in-house judges, the shortlisted entrants for the 2016 UoG Novel Writing Contest were:
- All The Things We Knew by Senja Andrejevic (MA)
- The Enlightenment Effect by Loz Apperly (2nd year)
- Half-Life by Heather Cripps (3rd year)
- Winter and Spain by Sam James (2nd year)
- Mayflies by Pamela Keevil (MA)
- Mama by Mark Webber (MA)
These were sent to our judge, literary agent Becky Thomas of Johnson & Alcock, who chose the following three finalists:
- All The Things We Knew by Senja Andrejevic (1st Prize)
- Mayflies by Pamela Keevil (2nd Prize)
- Mama by Mark Webber (3rd Prize)
2015 Contest
The fiercely contested 2015 shortlist, selected by our in-house judges, consisted of:
- Eva by Phil Bowne
- Year One by Heather Cripps
- The Masterpiece by Rod Griffiths
- Paper Boats by Keely O’Shaughnessy
- Claro by Meg Paul
- All the Things We Knew by Senja Andrejevic
From there, literary agent Becky Thomas chose the following finalists, with Phil Bowne winning the £100 1st prize for his wonderful extract of Eva (which incidentally also won the prize for best BA dissertation of the year):
- Eva by Phil Bowne (1st place)
- Paper Boats by Keely O’Shaughnessy (2nd Place)
- Claro by Meg Paul (3rd place)
2014 Contest
On December 4th, at the launch of Carnival: New Writing III we announced the winners of our inaugural Novel Writing Contest. It was an exciting and suspense-filled occassion, and competition was tough. The shortlist consisted of six entries, which were forwarded to our judge, literary agent Becky Thomas of the Fox Mason Agency:
- Churchill by Sleiman El Hajj
- The Good Housewife’s Frontal Lobotomy by Jane Durston
- The Making of Robin Mountjoy by Sue Pearce
- Matlock by Duncan Dicks
- Things We Should Have Done by Hayley Barnes
- Vid[dot]mov by Emmy Summers
From that, Becky narrowed it down to three finalists:
- Things We Should Have Done by Hayley Barnes (BA student)
- Matlock by Duncan Dicks (PhD student)
- The Good Housewife’s Frontal Lobotomy by Jane Durston (MA student)
The overall winner of the £100 prize was Duncan Dicks, for Matlock, and here is an excerpt of Becky’s judge’s citation:
‘I loved the central character, the setting, the coming of age element, the mystery of the Mappe and the conflated emotions of those formative years…It felt very Kes or Son of Rambow to me. It was the most rounded of the entries in that I liked the premise and the writing. I’d be very keen to see how this develops.’
