The rain may be lashing and the thunder rolling, but we are back at the beginning of another exciting writing year.
We are going to kick off our 45th year with announcing the results of our annual non-fiction competition.
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 memorial prize, named in tribute to Richard Booth, the self-proclaimed “King of Hay”, who among many literary interests, was a keen supporter of the Hay Writers’ Circle. He sadly passed away in 2019, still in love with books, writers and his beautiful kingdom of Hay-on-Wye.
Our judge this year was the incredible Dr. Alwyn Marriage.
Dr. Alwyn Marriage is a poet, lecturer and writer, a member of the Society of Authors, and Managing Editor of the publishing house, Oversteps Books. She is also a Research Fellow in the School of English and Languages of the University of Surrey.
Alwyn is the author or editor of fifteen books, which include a number of poetry collections, a couple of non-fiction books, and two novels: Rapeseed and The Elder Race. Two recent poetry collections are In the image: portraits of mediaeval women and Pandora’s Pandemic. Her latest collection, Possibly a pomegranate, was published in spring 2022 and her poetry, articles and reviews are published widely in newspapers, magazines, journals and on-line platforms.
Without further delay, here are the results :
The Richard Booth Prize for Non-Fiction Competition 2024
1st Prize – Five Photographs by Jean O’Donoghue
2nd Prize – The Whole Truth by Val Ormrod
3rd prize – The Awakening by Margaret Blake
Commended – An Ethiopean Journey by Angela Grunsell
A full judge’s report and winning pieces to follow.
Congratulations once again to everyone who entered their work and a huge thank you to our judge, Dr. Alwyn Marriage.
THE HAY WRITERS 