Slaughter and Yee win Manchester Writing Competition prizes

Tracey Slaughter and April Yee have won the 2023 Manchester Writing Competition for unpublished writing. 

Poet Slaughter took home the Manchester Poetry Prize, and Yee was awarded the Manchester Fiction Prize at a gala awards ceremony on Friday evening (8th December). Each winner receives £10,000 prize money from the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The two awards were presented by former Poet Laureate and current creative director of Manchester Writing School Professor Carol Ann Duffy, who set up the competition in 2008 to celebrate Manchester as an international city of writers, find diverse new voices and create opportunities for writer development. 

Slaughter’s portfolio of poems opioid sonatas centred around a car accident and was praised by judges for having a “forceful, luminous brilliance” and a “complexity which reveals itself over multiple readings”. 

A writer of poetry, fiction and personal essays, Slaughter is from New Zealand and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Waikato where she edits literary journals Mayhem and Poetry Aotearoa.  

Yee’s short story "Still Blue Thing" explores themes of pregnancy, cancer, loss and childhood memories. 

Former journalist Yee has reported in more than a dozen countries before moving to London where she has served as editor-in-residence at The Georgia Review, and a Refugee Journalism Project mentor. Her poetry, fiction and essays have previously won or been listed for Best of the Net, The Best American Essays, the Ivan Juritz Prize and the Manchester Poetry Prize.