We are excited to announce the results of our 2024 Frances Copping Memorial Prize for Fiction Competition, named in fond remembrance of our Lifetime President who sadly passed away in 2020.

This popular competition again received a good number of entries from both inside and outside Hay Writers’ Circle and we very much welcome external interest in all our writing competitions.

Our judge this year was the Dr Carolyn Lewis. She commented that, “Overall, the stories surprised me in terms of the bleakness of the characters’ lives – there were dead bodies all around and the stories offered little in the way of joy or redemption.  Whilst I’m no Mary Poppins, I wanted to read something that lifted me, albeit for a short while... However, on a brighter note, the plotting in many of the stories was well handled, innovative and thought provoking and a lot of the characters will stay with me for a long time.”

We are extremely grateful to Carolyn for all her work judging this competition, including the written comments she made for the prize winners – going forward, such useful comments can hone writing skills for the future.

Without further delay, here are the results!

1^st Place: ‘Don’t Panic’ by Helen Smith

2^nd Place: ‘Empty Seat’ by Mark Bayliss

3^rd Place: ‘Small Comforts’ by Lily Rose King

Judge’s Comments:

1st. Place – “Don’t Panic – this is exceptionally well written. the writing is stripped back and the narrator’s voice is handled well.  The writing flows, indeed there were no flat spots at all. The narrator’s anguish is handled well and the descriptions are evocative.“

2nd Place – “Empty Seat – this is an intriguing story with an unusual narrator. The descriptive passages work well and I found the writing visual and engaging.“

3rd Place – “Small Comforts – the narrator, Layla, is well written and the reader understands her distress and the turmoil she has endured. Her loneliness and her solitary life are handled well.“

Our 2024 winners :

“Well done to all the entrants, writing for a short competition is no easy thing so they’re all to be congratulated.” Dr Carolyn Lewis

The 2024 Frances Copping Fiction Competition Winner by Helen Smith

don’t panic

We’re in the parking lot; Jenkintown Whole Foods, Philadelphia. I’m in your car. It’s locked, the keys that now swing from my hand wrestled unwilling from your slender fingers, shoppers pausing to glance, to frown. Hurrying on by. Steering their children to another aisle. I barely noticed, but you did. You hate it when we make a scene.

I watched those fingers, a year and an ocean away, form tentative shapes over the black and white of the piano keys in your house by the sea. Threaded my own quietly through them as the moon rose behind the curtain, guiding. Drew out a halting music, soft and new and tender, a question and a promise.

The keys bite into my palm as I watch your fingers now curl around your cigarette, flick ash against the side of the concrete bollard where you chose to sit. I watch you as you stare out across the fairway, the curve of your long spine turned from me. I switch the music on, dial it up loud. Your playlist fills the car, and I drown in it.

bones sinking like stones, all that we fought for

You throw the stub of your cigarette to the asphalt, grind it beneath your toe. You’re wearing the shoes I bought for you, specialist barefoot trainers imported from Poland. You love those shoes. I love the way your feet move on the pavement, through the forest. The only feet that could keep up with mine, across fields, plunging down woodland banks, your long legs, long stride, matching my determined speed.

An SUV passes between us. Parks. A family exits; young mother, two toddlers. The horn beeps as the car locks. They cross the lot. You roll another cigarette, stuff the tobacco pouch and the papers

back into your pocket. You know I hate it when you smoke. Hate the smell, how it clings, lingers on your clothes, on your tongue. How I can still smell it hours later, exhaling from the pores of your skin.

I’ve never smoked. Never will. I hate it. Hate you. Hate how I still want you. How even now, my belly tightens at the shape of you, smoke rising. You look edgy, dangerous, exciting, there on the concrete in a city foreign to me as you are, a country I am still learning.

homes, places we’ve grown, all of us are done for

I rest my hand on the stick shift. It’s too hot under my palm, my dress already sticking to my back, to the seat, in the sweat of the east coast summer. I’ve never driven an automatic. Or a left hand drive. My right foot settles on the pedal, left momentarily searching for a clutch that isn’t there. It’s been half an hour. Long enough for the vegetables to wilt in their bags, nestled in the passenger footwell.

We’d laughed, in the air-conditioned aisles, over my hastily written shopping list. Aubergine, courgette, coriander. You dug a pencil from your bag, leaned over my shoulder to scrawl eggplant, zucchini, cilantro. Your breath tickled my ear. I reached on tiptoe to ruffle your hair, kiss your cheek. Your lips brushed mine for a moment, leaving me for the dairy aisle.

The air in the car is heavy, stifling. You take out your phone. Dial a number – a friend, no doubt, to take you home. I have no home, not any more. Caught, transatlantic, in your web. I start the engine and you look up, but you do not turn. The parking lot is busy, someone’s unloading their shopping two spaces down from you, too much noise to identify the familiar cough of the engine, always temperamental. I push the stick into drive, release the handbrake, ease the accelerator.

and we live in a beautiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do

Last summer you drove me the length of Scotland, my feet on the dash, windows down even in the rain. Stopping in tiny highland towns for croissants and kiwi fruits, eaten in the bleak beauty of empty ski resorts as the clouds thickened. Here we eat peanuts, tossing the broken shells out onto the interstate as the hot wind lets fly our hair and our promises. I take one from the glove compartment as I crawl between the parked cars. Crush it in my palm, letting the fragments of shell fall to the footwell, the salty nut into my open mouth.

You stand then. Turn. Your hand falls from your ear, phone left to hang at your side. I’m closer to you now, close enough to see the frown pucker the skin of your brow as you see me, recognition dawning. I’m distracted for a moment, just a moment, by your beauty. The way the afternoon sun falls between the apartments, trees, across the fairway, to glance off your curls and frame you in its light.

Even in the harsh striplights of the store, you could only ever be beautiful. I’d watched you turn the corner as I put tomatoes in the basket. Mushrooms, scallions, garlic. Followed you, then, to the tune of the piped music, a dance in my step. Your hand was on the milk, your eyes on her. Your body tilting towards her, pulled into her gravity. Her lips softly curling upwards as she spoke. It had only happened once, you’d said. I was an ocean away and you were lonely, that was all. It meant nothing. It meant nothing. The touch of her hand, now, on your arm was not nothing. I knew, then. I knew.

Someone calls your name. Your eyes stutter past me. Your hand raises, and I follow the curve of it, the way your long fingers loosen into a half wave. And she is there, stepping out into the sun. I floor the accelerator. Haul the wheel sharply left. Towards her. The tyres screech. Someone screams. You say something, your mouth moving in my periphery. I don’t hear you. I don’t care. She sees me. She runs. You run. Towards each other. The car lurches.

oh, all that I know, there’s nothing here to run from

All of us are done for.

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And finally – Poetry Competition and Masterclass Reminders

Our 2024 Poetry Competition closes midnight 9th April. To enter your poem on the theme of FOOD please head over to our Competitions page.

Limited places are still available at our one-off Performance Poetry Masterclass with our competition judge, Susan Evans. Reserve your place via the Eventbrite link on our Events page.

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