As part of our Crime Reading activities, we ran our first Crime Writing Competition during May, with the theme ‘A Murder in the Library’.
We invited people to submit either a short story (500 words), flash fiction (200 words) poetry (max 30 lines) – and were delighted to receive 100 fabulous entries, from people all across the Bradford District, and beyond – reaching as far as India and the USA!
All entries were anonymised before being sent to the judging panel which was made up of crime fiction experts, including authors, bloggers, interviewers and readers. Our judges used the same criteria to assess the entries which generated a longlist, incorporating work from all three categories.
We then created our longlist of the highest scoring entries which comprised of – three poems, three short stories and two flash fiction pieces. Our shortlist was sent to our final judge Crime author and admin of Crime Fiction Author, Sean Campbell.
Our shortlisted writers were:
Poetry category – Barry Carter, Dalton Harrison and Oz Hardwick
Flash category – Tony McGeachie and Owen Townend
Short fiction category – Bob Duckett, Catherine Dent and Judith McAra
All shortlisted writers were invited to read at our first Crime Reading Festival – Murder at the Library, which took place at Keighley Library on the 20th June. We were thrilled that three of our writers could join us to read their own work, and permission from the other writers was given for our published crime writers to read on their behalf. What an absolute treat our audience had, our library alive with intrigue, mystery and suspense.
Our very worthy and talented winners are as follows:
Winning flash fiction writer – Tony McGeachie
Winning short fiction writer – Catherine Dent
Winning poet – Dalton Harrison (and second place)
Overall winner – Bob Duckett (short fiction)
Our judges all commented on the quality of the pieces, and it has been an absolute pleasure to bring such a varied selection of writing together – with so many interpretations of murder from joyful mysterious and literary. The judges commented that the pieces were atmospheric, intriguing, playful elegant, surprising and astute – and our final judge’s final comments were:
“Fantastic finalists here. You weren’t kidding when you said it’d be a tough choice. Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to read these. All the authors involved should be ever so proud of their work – they are very worthy category winners.”
Comments for our winning entry:
“Oh, how brilliant! The death- the murder! – of critical prose!”
“An absolutely joyful exploration of what makes a library a library; curating the right books for the collection, making use of the limited shelf space as best the curator can. It’s witty, playful, and the Dewey references are fantastic as a way to frame the conversations and judgement with the sort of magical vibe of Night at The Museum.”
Thank you for everyone who took part in our competition, to the judging panel and to the enthusiastic audience at ‘Murder in the Library.’ We will be in touch with writers selected to be included in our anthology – where you will be able to read the winning entries. Watch this space for further details – and events.
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