The Publishing House for New Voices
Last year, Isobel Shirlaw won the poetry category in the Fresher Writing Competition for her touching poem, A Gift of Remembrance. Poetry judge, Anthony Dunn, praised her work and labelled it a “remarkable, multi-layered and coherent piece” which was both moving and intriguing. Isobel has since joined us to record her winning poem and to share the inspiration behind… View Post
Since winning the Fresher Writing Prize Best Short Story award in 2016 for her story Cyfannedd Fach, Hannah Persaud has not put her pen down! Her love for writing has led her to complete her debut novel, The Codes of Love which will be published March 2020 in print by Muswell Press and in audio by Bolinda. In light of… View Post
Since winning the Fresher Writing Prize for poetry in 2018, Lindy Newns has had one of her poems published in the Grenfell anthology, and was invited to read her work on a Manchester radio show. With another successful year of the Fresher Writing Prize behind us, we wanted to take the opportunity to reflect back on Lindy’s winning poem and… View Post
We are delighted to announce that Family Matters, by Martina Nesi, has been awarded the prize for the Best Short Story 2019. Fresher Publishing judge, Ansa Khan Khattak, Editor at Picador said: “I loved the ambition of this story – our narrator sees spirits –and how it worked so well with the very human aspect of family relations. The author made… View Post
We are delighted to announce that the winner of the Fresher Writing Prize for Poetry 2019 is Isobel Shirlaw, for her poem Gift Of Remembrance. Isobel studied English at Oxford University and has worked for the Daily Telegraph, the British Government in Bangladesh and for Refuge, a UK domestic violence charity and lives in Berkshire. Poetry judge, Antony Dunn said: ‘A Gift of… View Post
We don’t officially have a runner-up category, but our judge, poet Antony Dunn, was keen to also commend a poem called Excavation by Elenia Graf. There’s something horribly familiar about the sentiments behind ‘excavation’ which rings true. It dismantles the pretty, the safe, the familiar, to get to some mysterious horror underneath. It doesn’t over-explain, the mystery is not resolved – and… View Post