Sprout writing competition (now closed)
During July this year I ran a short story competition in collaboration with Lynda Nash and theSprout. The competition was timed to coincide with the launch of my short story anthology, Jaque's Magic Beans, and Lynda's poetry collection, Ashes of a Valleys Childhood. We chose the Sprout website because of the excellent work they do in encouraging social participation among youngsters aged 11-25. In the coming weeks I'll be writing a blog post dedicated to them, but for now, back to the competition: the rules were simple; anybody that lived in Wales and was between 11-25 was eligible to enter. All they had to do was write a story in under 1500 words and submit it to the Sprout website, and we would announce the winner on August 5th. For prizes, Lynda and myself each donated a signed copy of our books, as well as purchasing a £10 Waterstones book voucher.
The competition ran for a month and we saw some really good entries. After the competition closed, Lynda and I met in a secret location to decide between us who the winner would be. It took us many hours of reading, re-reading and much debate but eventually we knew who our winner was. We couldn't announce it yet though – we had sworn to keep it a secret until the Sprout magazine's 2nd issue launch party where we were appearing as guests.
That night came quickly and Grassroots, an outreach centre for 16-25 year olds, was our venue. As Sprout editorial members, fans, friends and family settled in to enjoy an evening of entertainment and celebration Lynda and I made our final preparations. We had performed several readings together by this stage and were becoming used to speaking in front of crowds – just as well; Grassroots was packed to the rafters! After the compere had introduced himself and Arielle, the Sprout's head-honcho, had thanked everybody for coming we were ushered up to the stage.
We took turns, as we always do, to read selected stories and poems from our respective books, and when we were done we proceeded to announce the winner and award the prize. So, after asking the audience members who had entered the competition to give a show of hands, we opened our envelope, drew out the winner's name and read it aloud… which is when we discovered that Opal_Eyes, the winner of our competition, was not there!
Well! What could we do? We couldn't give her prize away to somebody else, that just wouldn't be fair – but we couldn't keep the prize either, so Dan, one of the Sprout's sub-editors, graciously agreed to 'receive' the award in order to pass it on to Opal_Eyes (who we later found out had become stuck in the Brecon Beacons, some thirty miles north of us) at a later date.
Gift voucher and books given away, our tale might have ended there – but as fate would have it, Opal_Eyes was unable to claim her prize from Dan straight away so it wasn't until the Sprout's following editorial meeting at the end of August that Opal_Eyes that received her books. Fortunately for me, I was present at the meeting so was able give an impromptu awards ceremony (complete with drumroll from the editorial committee) and personally present Opal_Eyes with her prizes.
This brings me almost to our conclusion, but for one thing: earlier this week I received an email Dan with a message from Opal_Eyes… "Jaque's book of short stories was well worth coming down for, read it all on the bus home and it made the trip a million times more enjoyable."
Thank you Opal_Eyes, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Now, for you, my readers, if you would like to read the story that won the competition, look here. If you'd like to return to my website then click on this link instead, and if you'd like to buy the book that impressed Opal_Eyes so much… take a look at my store.
