Delighted to see what I believe to be a new country entering with a writer from Greece. I am pretty sure that is the first from that part of the world.

Thank you everyone for your support.

John Dean

Judge Fiona Cooper said of Where the Kookaburras Laugh: “The sumptuous use of language makes this story flow. Stark subject matter is treated with uncompromising honesty and a lyricism which enhances the whole experience. A child can only accept and respond to the circumstances of life, but the world of imagination can be a blessed lifebelt.”

For the first time, we have joint second placed stories who cannot be separated. They include Dead Scorched Birds, by Helen Forbes, of Kirkaldy in Fife, Scotland. Fiona said: “I liked the way this writer paints such a clear picture of such contrasting lives going on next door to each other. Very succinct : the action occurs within the space of a few hours yet encompasses a wide range of emotions and the language is bold and imaginative. “

Joint second with her is Elaine Desmond, of County Cork, Ireland, with The Willow Tree, of which Fiona said: “A complex idea well sustained using deceptively simple language which highlights a whole lifetime of experience and conflicting emotions within a family that has been thrown together again after their only child has her life torn apart. “

They each receive £25.

Shortlisted were Angela Morley, Sarah England, James Rodriguez, Barry J Taylor, Richard Nicholson, Eddie Heaton, Julie Swan, Annie Shaw and Mike Watson.

Well done to you all.

There is still time to enter the July comp - it promises to be a cracker, some terrific stories have been entered already.

John Dean

We have not had that many entries from the East so to receive a story from that part of the world is excellent news. I hope many more will follow because the countries there have rich storytelling traditions.

I have written before about how running this competition makes me feel part of a global family and is if to prove the point, where else could you handle material from Vietnam and Chichester in southern England within minutes of each other? The world has indeed become a small place.

Have a good weekend.

John Dean

It is perhaps surprising to remind ourselves that short story writing is a relatively recent art form. Indeed, the person widely credited with ‘creating’ it as a modern phenomenon was Nathaniel Hawthorne, of Salem, Massachusetts, in the United States, whose book Twice-Told Tales was published in 1837.

Just as American writers seized upon short stories as an exciting way of writing, so did Irish authors, recognising the potential to explore important issues in a new way.

What is interesting about many of the early Irish writers was their burning desire to reflect the world in which they lived, and the issues which it faced. That is something we also find time and time again in the stories sent to this competition by authors, from all over the world, who are not frightened to challenge and confront their readers.

Some of the early Irish short story writers knew all about that as well. Authors like George Moore, who was born in 1852 and died in 1933, and Sean O’Faolain, born in Cork in 1900 and who died in Dublin 91 years later, explored the social conditions in the world about them. Both are seen as in the forefront of the development of Irish short story writing.

So, it is a delight to find that we continue to receive entries from Ireland - a sure sign that the tradition is alive and well in the 21^st Century.

The suggestion was that we publish the shortlist from which those winners were selected, as a way of offering encouragement to those writers who just missed out.

This is an excellent idea - one we have used on previous competitions we have run - and we will start it when our June winners are announced.

Fiona Cooper is still judging June’s competition and we will get things moving the moment we know her decisions.

Thank you for all your support.

What characterises every entry is the desire to tell people’s stories and I think that is one of the main things that makes a writer. We are the ones who see someone across the street or sitting in a bar and wonder ‘what brings you here? Where are you going? Where have you come from? What have you done? What if?’

And if you get to ‘what if?’, the story is starting to form in your mind. I have talked before in these blogs about where stories come from: with me it has tended to be a sense of place. I walk into somewhere and the atmosphere takes over and a story unfolds. The people come later.

However, for others, for many writers indeed, it starts with the person, that man or woman spotted scurrying for the bus, who goes on by without ever knowing what they inspired.

Like most writers, I sometimes base characters on people I know. Not their persona, rather their appearance, which I use as a starting point and which triggers the process for me. They have no idea they have become that character - after all, how would they know since I turned them into drug dealers, gun runners and serial killers?! - but using them is very helpful in allowing me to fix the person in my mind.

Keep spying on the bus queues!

July is open for entries and we have had our first story in already.

John Dean