2025 Bournemouth Writing Winners announced. Congratulations!
Hannah Bunting – best short story for “Icarus Rising.”
Laura Williams, judge of the Short Story category, commented, “One might think there can’t possibly be more to be said about the well-trodden myth of Daedalus and Icarus, but in this spinning tale of entrapment, isolation, madness and betrayal, I found myself looking at this story, and the possibilities it contains, in an entirely new way. The atmosphere is unsettling, almost gothic, full of birds, wax, bones and ink, and the writing lifts these characters off the page into the heat of the sun. The best short stories are perfectly constructed for the short form, leaving nothing more to be asked of the author, although the questions they pose stay running around the reader’s head.”
Paul Nield – best poem for “First Love.”
Dithering Chaps, judge of the Poetry category, commented, “We fell in love with this poem because it reminded us of one of our favourite Shakespearean sonnets; ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,’ which is another poem that describes a lover in unconventionally unflattering terms. ‘First Love’ even starts with a line of full-on iambic pentameter, but, perhaps conscious that no-one can out-bard the Bard, it finds its own, contemporary way of telling us its love.”
2025 Bournemouth Writing Prize Anthology to debut at the Bournemouth Writing Festival in April.
You can read the winning entries plus all of the shortlisted finalists in the anthology, which is available to buy at the Festival and on Amazon in April.
Both Hannah and Paul will be joining us at the Festival where they will take the stage at the Bourn Jammy event on Saturday evening to read their words whilst the band improvises music to match the prose.
The Bournemouth Writing Prize was organised as a partnership between Bournemouth University and the Bournemouth Writing Festival, supporting our chosen charity The Outsiders Project – for which entrants donated nearly £300.
Thank you to all the writers who entered, our readers and judges, Abbey Woolgar and Mirirm Culy for their tireless design skills, and Saeed Rashid for the cover image.
Here are some details about our past winners
2024
Short Story
Mary Shovelin – Bad Blood
Mary Shovelin is a translator/writer who has been living longer in Belgium than in her native Donegal, Ireland. She has had several short stories published in anthologies, while others have been longlisted/shortlisted and commended in various competitions in England, Scotland and Ireland.
She recently won first prize in the Kilmore Write by the Sea short story competition in Ireland. You can read the story on the Write by the Sea website. Another story, commended in the Edinburgh short story competition, is published in their anthology, Solemates, available on Amazon. She is currently working on a collection.
Poetry
Julie Leoni – Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Julie Leoni lives on the Welsh Borders where she teaches yoga, swims in the river at the bottom of her garden, and raises raspberries, rhubarb, and her children. She blogs for Psychologies Magazine and runs family retreats in community settings. Her PhD means that she gets to teach interesting courses at a number of universities and schools. She is the author of three non-fiction books which can be found at www.julieleoni.com.
Hedgehog Press will also be publishing Julie’s winning poem in a collection called Farmotherlands in spring 2025. Julie has been a finalist for the Cinnamon Press Collection Prize twice, a finalist for LISP, and has received commendations as a shortlist contender for both Mslexia and The Bridport Prize, as well as being longlisted for the Canterbury Prize.
Her poetry collection Farmotherlands is available here.
