The Results of ABC’s Winter Competition

The results are in!

But first a big thanks to all of you who participated. We had a great turnout, with forty submissions, and we managed to raise almost £200 – which means two cash prizes of £50 to each of our winners. But the competition was very fierce. In our reading we saw every aspect of Winterness adapted, remembered, parodied, pastiched and perfected, which made for fascinating few weeks of reading and some very difficult judging.

But judge we did, and so, without further ado:

Poetry

The winner of our Poetry prize is Yvonne Anderson, for her piece ‘Breathless for Winter to be Gone.’ This poem features an incredible summary of the four seasons, followed by a lyrical portrait of Winter as a bullying, unwanted lover. The tone is at once fantastical and somehow painfully honest, redolent of innocence lost in that first crush of cold temperature:

http://www.abctales.com/story/yvonne-anderson/breathless-winter-be-gone

And a couple of honourable mentions that we had a very hard time passing over– two pieces that are both utterly fantastic, Linda Wigzell Cress’ ‘Winter Comes’ and Silver-Spun-Sand’s ‘Half Past December’. It’s hard not to pause over these poems:

http://www.abctales.com/story/linda-wigzell-cress/winter-comes

 http://www.abctales.com/story/silver-spun-sand/half-past-december

Prose

Choosing a winner for prose was incredibly difficult, given the wealth and quality of the entries, but after a lot of deliberation we’ve decided that the Prose prize simply must go to Celticman for ‘One Winter’s Day You Will Meet Your Maker.’ His is an incredibly sensitive, affecting portrait of two siblings left to raise one another while Mum spends her time drinking Gordon’s gin. It’s heartbreaking; the sharpness of the details and the rendering of sibling loyalty are so stark and carefully evoked that you’ll be lucky to finish your first reading with a dry eye:

http://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/one-winters-day-you-will-meet-your-maker

And with a competition like this, even the honourable mentions are hard to thin down. But special mention must be made for the stunning dialogue and character in Stan’s ‘Winterkill’ and the surreal, mythopoesis of VeraClark’s ‘The Bringer of Winter’:

http://www.abctales.com/story/stan/winterkill-part-1-2

http://www.abctales.com/story/stan/winterkill-part-2-2

 http://www.abctales.com/story/veraclark/bringer-winter

There were so many incredible pieces in the competition worthy of prizes and accolades that it’s hard to bring only these to your attention, and if you haven’t had a look at the other competition entries yet, please do - http://www.abctales.com/competitions - the reading is a real pleasure and not one to be missed.

Thanks again to all of you who submitted – and if this wasn’t your moment, there's no room for regrets. We’ll be having our next competition in April, so keep writing and keep reading,

Luke and the ABCtales team.