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The National Literacy Trust and Bloomsbury Publishing have announced the winners of the Short Story Prize, which revealed “brilliant new children’s writing talent”.
The competition, which launched in March, challenged budding authors to capture children’s imaginations by recreating a classic fairy tale with a modern twist, aimed at an audience of eight to 12-year-olds.
The competition received hundreds of entries which were judged by a panel including children’s author Chris Priestley, members of the Bloomsbury editorial team and Jonathan Douglas, director of the NLT.
The eight winning stories will all be included in an e-book anthology by Bloomsbury and the newly-published authors will also receive £200 each.
The stories include: ‘Beardunzel’ by Annie Edge, ‘The Perfect Child’ by Charlotte Goddard, ‘VANISHED’ by Frances Stickley, ‘The Mysterious Transformation of the Prince of Amphibia’ by Stephanie Aslan, ‘Sarah Snow and the Seven Spacecraft Engineers’ by Miranda Luby, ‘Rapunzel’s Reunion’ by Emma Young, ‘The Giant’s Child’ by Vicky McFarland and ‘The Problem with Mr Woolf’ by Kelly Archer.
Douglas said: “Exciting and inspiring literature is vital to our work and we are delighted that the Short Story Prize has helped up to uncover such brilliant new children’s writing talent.
“A huge thank you to everyone who entered the competition – the money raised will help us to inspire more children to enjoy reading, which has an important impact on how well they do at school and in the future.”
Ian Lamb, head of children's marketing and publicity at Bloomsbury, said: “We were blown away by the many wonderfully twisted Short Story Prize entries and are delighted to have discovered fantastic new writing talent with the National Literacy Trust. We hope that the published e-book will inspire young people across the country to enjoy reading and perhaps even write a short story of their own.”
For more information, visit www.literacytrust.org.uk/shortstories.