Well, we have a result and the July competition was probably the closest of the lot! In the end, the winner is Joel Willans, our first winner from Helsinki, in Finland.The judge’s citation said: “This story is terrific. Beautifully observed, playing on the reader’s prejudices, indeed challenging them, in the end it turns the whole thing on its head. Deftly handled, a worthy winner in a very close competition.”

Two days to go before our latest competition closes. We will announce our July winners a little later today.

I will be judging the August competition and I am looking forward to the experience. From what I have seen, a difficult choice lies ahead of me! John Dean

I came back from holiday at the weekend to find plenty of excellent entries for our August competition.The entries showed how global we have become with stories from St Vincent and the Grenadines in the West Indies (a first for us), the United States (which pleases us since it is a country that has been under-represented so far), Cyprus (we think this is another first for us), New Zealand, Canada, France, Ireland and the UK, including one or two from the North-East, where we are based.

I have spent recent days re-reading the stories which have won our monthly competitions since we launched at the end of last year, as well as those which received highly commendeds and commendeds. The reason is that, as I have mentioned before, we plan to start recording them in September so that visitors to the site can not only read the stories that have done so well, but also listen to them.
My job has been to compile the stories for the people who will read the stories. Going back over the tales has brought home the high quality of work that we have received - and it is not just the ones which were picked as winners by Fiona Cooper, our judge. I know, for a fact, that each month we have had plenty of other stories that presented a strong case for being selected. Fiona has had some difficult tasks whittling them down.
So what have I learned from my reading? Well, one thing I have learned is that there is no such thing as a bang-to-rights winner. Some winners have been traditional tales, others have been experimental, some have been straightforward, relying for their impact on the power of the story, others have depended on a novelty of writing, with the authors experimenting with different forms and leaving much unsaid.
But at the heart of each and every one of them has been a strong sense of lives lived. Each writer has told strong stories through beautifully-drawn characters whose thoughts, fears and emotions leap off the page and grab the attention. It is what made the stories special. It is what makes every story special.

There won’t be any blogs for a couple of weeks but Gary, in our office, will be answering any queries you send through via the site.
We hope to announce the July winners - there will be a really tough choice for Fiona because the standard was so high - at the end of August.

John Dean

August’s competition is under way and our first stories this time around were from New Zealand.
We know that one of the reasons we receive stories from that part of the world is the efforts to promote our competition by the New Zealand Society of Authors.
We appreciate the support we receive from such organisations: it has been the same in countries including Australia and Canada and we know that many writing groups elsewhere are also spreading the word.
We thank you all.
John Dean

Our July competition has now closed and the stories will go for judging. Because it is the holiday period, we are not expecting a result until late August. Talking of August, August’s competition is now open.