Barcenilla and McLeod triumph in Creative Future Writers’ Awards

Lerah Mae Barcenilla and Yvonne McLeod have respectively won this year’s Creative Future Writers’ Awards for poetry and prose.

Now in its ninth year, the competition attracted a record number of entries, with almost 1,400 unpublished writers from around the UK submitting their work and a quarter of the winners having never entered a competition before. This year also saw a huge increase in entries from writers identifying as LGBTQIA+.

Mae Barcenilla won the platinum award for poetry for “To Love and Be Loved as a Language Primer”. She said growing up “in a small province full of magic, tradition and superstition,” inspires her experimental work which “lyrically captures childhood memories of a colourful, sun-drenched homeland, the warmth of extended family and leaving on a bus filled with suitcases for another life in another country”.

The gold award went to “From Dr Kanner’s Office” by Helen Price, while silver was awarded to “Framed by Woodgrain” by Karen Downs-Barton and bronze given to “A Glossary of Artillery Terms” by Nnadi Samuel. “There is nothing like that black voice!” by Oluwaseun Olayiwola was highly commended. “I Wish We’d Won the Miner’ Strike” by Jay Farley was also commended.

McLeod triumphed with the platinum award for prose with “Flibbertigibbet” a moving story told from the perspective of a nine-year-old girl living in slavery, about the murder of her best friend, an outsider, by a mob on a Jamaican plantation, with themes of belonging, superstition and betrayal. Gold went to “The Kam Sun” by Hannah Caitlyn Lee, while silver went to “Southport” by K Devan and bronze to “Fledglings” by Alex Joynes. “Twenty-four Answers to the Life in the UK Citizenship Exam” by Anne Elicaño-Shields was highly commended. “FISH” by Olivia Mark was also commended.  

Alongside £12,000 worth of cash and top writing development prizes supplied by prominent publishers, authors and development agencies, the winners are offered further training, mentoring, one-to-one support and other developmental opportunities, long after their initial award. The winning submissions, alongside work by this year’s judges, are also published in an anthology.

Judge Dorothy Koomson said: “It’s such an honour to be judging the Creative Future Writers’ Award again. I was blown away by the range and depth of the pieces submitted. Each of the stories and poems that made the shortlist were entertaining, unique and thought-provoking – something that is usually very difficult for writers to achieve at this stage of their writing journey.

“’Flibbertigibbet’ was something special. You are immediately pulled into the story, effected by the narrative and transported to another world by the descriptive writing. I wanted to keep reading, to have more of this story. Just beautiful. ’Flibbertigibbet’ was a wonderful winner, although all those on the shortlist would have made equally worthy winners. This is such a brilliant prize and I am grateful to be involved with it.” 

Guest judge, 2021 T S Eliot Prize-winning poet Joelle Taylor, added: “Through the creation of initiatives like the Creative Future Writers’ Award we glimpse the future of radical writing within the UK. Opening the pages to this anthology is like stepping through a portal into a diverse and dynamic literary landscape that the award helped to populate.”

The additional judges were Aki Schilz of The Literary Consultancy and Sarala Estruch from the Poetry School.