We are delighted to begin this week with 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.
We are extremely grateful to our judge, Dr Alan Bilton for his incredible efforts reading all the entries.
Dr Alan Bilton, “received his undergraduate degree in Literature and Film from Stirling University in 1991, and his PhD (for a study of Don DeLillo, an author with whom he has absolutely nothing in common in any way) from Manchester University in 1995. He then taught American Studies at Liverpool and Manchester, before taking up a post teaching literature, film and creative writing at Swansea University in 1996.
He is the author of three novels, his latest The End of the Yellow House (Watermark Press 2020), The Known and Unknown Sea (Cillian Press 2014), variously compared to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the 1902 movie, A Trip to the Moon, and Dante’s Inferno, and The Sleepwalkers’ Ball (Alcemi, 2009) which one critic described as “Franz Kafka meets Mary Poppins”. In Bilton’s Anywhere Out of the World (Cillian Press 2016), he dares us into a fantastical and strange alternative reality through a collection of short stories, into a labyrinth, a world of nocturnal cities, hapless slapstick and misadventures, lost souls and lost travellers.
As a writer, he is obviously a hard man to pin down. He is also the author of books on Silent Film Comedy (Silent Film Comedy and American Culture, Macmillan, 2013) Contemporary Fiction, (An Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction, Edinburgh University Press, 2002) and co-editor of America in the 1920s (Helm, 2004). His essays, reviews and fiction have appeared in the New Welsh Review, Planet, The Lonely Crowd, The Journal of American Studies, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review and elsewhere, as well as the anthologies, Sing Sorrow Sorrow (Seren, 2010) and A Flock of Shadows (Parthian, 2013).”
Dr. Alan Bilton, offered the following comments which are applicable to all entries.
“Each of these very well crafted pieces seems to capture something vitally true and important about the authors’ lives – whether in thoughts, memories, or images. These short pieces managed to compress whole lives into a few hundred words – who am I to say which one is the most meaningful?
Nevertheless, the best, if I can put it like that, I think allow the reader to emotionally share in these moments by grounding events in specific images, sensations and scenes, moments when concrete things become meaningful symbols, feelings and moods are captured in tactile places and objects, and ideas seem indistinguishable from stories.
Many of these pieces seem to me to capture the uncanny strangeness of memory, the mystery of why some things persist, clear as day, whilst others vanish, mist-like into the void. The pieces are also blessed with unique, distinctive voices, giving the impression that the author is present in the room, swapping confidences, sharing their stories: ‘voice’ is nearly always the reason why we love one author more than another, and the work here is wonderfully idiosyncratic and individual.
Otherwise, what I took away from the exercise was a sense of honesty, authenticity, and truth – these pieces talk about important things (most specifically, life, death and the passing of time) in a sincere and emotionally direct way, and I was deeply impressed and moved by the candid way in which they explore the things that seem most important to the author – and then invite us, as readers, to find truth and meaning in them too.”
The Richard Booth Prize for Non-Fiction Competition 2025
RESULTS
1st Prize – Michelle Pearce with ‘My Textile Self.”
2nd Prize – Katy Stones with “The Shore I didn’t Choose.”
3rd prize – Val Ormrod with “Knives.’“
The judge’s comment on the winning piece reads as follows;
‘My Textile Self ‘ – the idea of framing life via an idiosyncratic history of the things we feel closest to our skin is a brilliantly off-kilter and original one, and the lyrical, poetic prose and steam of consciousness is wonderfully inventive, surprising and playful.
Michelle replied on hearing that she had won The Richard Booth Prize, 2025.
“I am particularly delighted to have won this prize – non-fiction is so dear to my heart – there is so much richness in what is true – ‘ you couldn’t make it up’ as they say – yes, delighted – thanks to the judge and special thanks to Hay Writers Circle for – well, for everything.” Michelle October 2025.
Read Michelle’s author bio HERE
(Below is Michelle’s winning piece. )
My Textile Self by Michelle Pearce
Ai Yah!
The nurse wraps me in a white cotton towel and hands me to my mother.
My mother is propped in a black metal bed, on starched hospital pillows, between starched hospital sheets, tightly tucked in with a thick woollen blanket. Cotton. Wool. Cotton wool.
The nurse tuts. To have a second daughter within two years is, in Hong Kong, February, 1969, bad luck. Very bad luck indeed. I should, of course, have been a boy.
The nurse marches off. My mother is alone with me for the very first time. She peels back my layers with her lovely hands. The towel, the cotton smock, the tiny woollen vest with its satin ties and then the great bolus of my nappy – a genius of folded cotton, stabbed with a pin, poppered plastic pants. The legs are so thin! The arms! The chest heaving with screams, those tiny fists reaching into the sudden emptiness of the world – ssshhhh little one – there there – I’ll be as quick as I can – ssshhhh – Cotton. Wool. Cotton wool.
Cotton. Wool. Cotton wool. Dresses (home)made bigger by the year – flimsy cotton shifts to be thrown aside – stripped down to nylon knickers for days and sweltering days on end, swimming the wet patio, drinking it, the gushing relief of the hose. Dresses, velvet with matching ribbons, for brief sub-tropical winter; deep red, royal blue, perhaps a little lace, knee-length socks, patent shoes with buckles, smiling crookedly at the camera – knock-kneed, freckled, a little awkward – good girl.
Cotton. Wool. Cotton wool. Leather – a new pair of sandals every year, bought from Clarkes on long-leave in England; rubber-soled, thick-strapped and lovely – running them in on the parquet floors, the tiled kitchen, the playroom’s bright lino – slap, slap, slap – so proud to wear them with my new yellow satchel, to school in the morning – cotton gingham sailor dress – blue or brown – zip up the front, so light, like wearing nothing at all, cooled overnight in front of the air conditioner, sliding in like a letter.
Getting older, here comes the miracle of flowery, worn-every-day, nylon shorts, long brown legs football-socked, and on the feet the wonder of longed-for adidas. Wrangler jeans with three lines of stitching up the thighs (important), high-waisted, flared, t-shirts with pictures – Coca-Cola, 7-UP, South China Morning Post.
Cotton. Wool. Cotton wool. New wool uniform – now there’s a way to scratch back the cold of my first English winter – chaffed by a green sweater – now there’s a way to subsume sub-tropical divorce – those socks crawling up my legs and that heavy duffle coat hiding my most urgent pupation. By spring I emerge, double-breasted, lipstick-ed, bleached, waistband of my skirt perfectly rolled up, socks perfectly rolled down and I shun those boys’ shoes (yes, Clarkes) and cripple myself in courts. I cut off my hair, blacken my eyes and when I am quite alone, I wipe it away all again – thank you, cotton wool. Cotton.
Wool. Cotton wool – maybe not. Ditch the wool, way too itchy. Cotton is strictly for pants, t-shirts and jeans. Now we have leather, lace, nylon, rayon, LYCRA, polyester, FLEECE – bring on the ‘80s – drain-pipes, crop-tops, leg warmers, stilettos, bat-winged jackets, pencil skirts, t-shirt dresses, sweatshirts – one eye in the mirror, one 1 Words: 924 eye on the high-street’s cheap parade – Is this OK? Does my bum look big in it? Will I fit in? Will it go? Will he fancy me? I’m not sure but I’m wearing it anyway.
Cotton. Wool. Cotton wool – the wedding dress is in a vintage shop hanging there all gauzy and gorgeous, and although he hasn’t asked, I slip it on, give him a twirl and the shop keeper says it’s perfect. Thirty quid it’s worth a whirl, and although my boobs are too small and my boots poke out beneath the hem like hard boiled eggs, the sequined straps cross my back perfectly, and the morning comes when I cross my heart and there they are, there those suited, booted, waist-coated folk smiling amongst the barley and the flowers dancing us to the marital bed.
Cotton. Wool. Cotton wool – it’s baby time again. Real nappies, organic cotton, baby-grows – so cute. Real lamb’s fleece to lie you on, pure wool blanket I made myself when you were inside me and even though I couldn’t knit when I started, I finished it and wrapped you in it and kissed your dearest skull and loved you.
But this is not all, this cotton. Wool. Cotton wool. Now we have man-made fibres, micro-plastics, child labour, sweatshops, pollution, cheap out-let stores, more clothes than any of us can wear – PRIMARK. It’s all getting complicated – piles of waste, give it away, upcycle, recycle, reduce, reuse, second-hand, car-boot, I’m finding it hard to BREATHE –
Ai yah!
Cotton. Wool. Cotton wool. I can deal with the itch, knit my own, meditate on colour, balance form, dream of crafting my whole wardrobe, and his, and theirs, sitting fire-side, blanketed, eating soup, writing books, walking for hours sheep-clad.
Yes, I have come full-circle – cotton, wool, cotton wool, a little leather, perhaps for the feet – cotton, wool, cotton wool – the very first fresh-from-the-womb touch of it, the primal itch of it, the memory is etched in my skin. And those hands, those lovely hands, my green-eyed mother – the touch of them too. Always the touch of them too.
And looking forwards? Perhaps, as the skin withers and wrinkles and becomes thinner than the paper I write upon, the as yet undiscovered mystery of silk.
Congratulations once again to our worthy winners. Thank you to everyone who entered work into this popular competition, and our wonderful judge, Dr Alan Bilton.
There are still a few places left at our Poetry Workshop on 21st October with Gareth Writer-Davies.
Please book your tickets via eventbrite
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS
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