FlipSide Festival’s writing competition

In its debut year, FlipSide’s environmentally-themed writing competition, the Green Alphabet Writing Prize (GAWP), drew a large number of entries from locations as far as Europe, the US and Australia.

The competition was judged by leading authors Jackie Kay, the Scots Makar (poet laureate), Blake Morrison, writer and Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College and Jon Canter, Suffolk-based novelist and playwright.

At an event at the FlipSide Festival at Snape Maltings on Saturday October 7th, Jackie Kay announced the winners and presented the winners with their cash prizes: £500 for the adult winner and £250 for the Under 16 winner.

The adult category was won by Grace Blackwood with ‘S  for Survival’, a post-apocalyptic instruction manual for regenerating the world’s flora. Second prize was awarded to T.J. Marshall-Nichols for ‘Queuing at Yoshinogawa’ and third prize to Diane Jackman for ‘The Naming of Flowers’.

Grace Blackwood writes short stories in between working for a children’s literacy charity and bringing up three sons. She has had work performed at the Liar’s League and published in the London Journal of Fiction. She lives in South London but spends as much time as possible on small Scottish islands.

In the Under-16s category, the winner was  Dhylan Patel for ‘The X Animal Museum’. Second prize was awarded to ‘Ice Caps’ by Iona Mandal and third prize to ‘The Tale of the Carrot Tree’ by Amelie Meek.

Writers were asked to submit fiction, non-fiction or poetry with a green theme and to take just one letter of the alphabet as their starting point. GAWP was run in conjunction with Friends of the Earth.

FlipSide 2017 ( www.flipsideuk.org ) opened with Margaret Atwood and includes talks with Jackie Kay, Ali Smith, Anna Pavord, Helen Macdonald, Anne Michaels, Álvaro Enrigue & Valeria Luiselli, Iain Sinclair and Lucy Hughes-Hallett in addition to a vibrant selection of music, dance, art, film, food and drink and events for all the family.

FlipSide was founded in 2013 by Liz Calder, Genevieve Christie, Louis Baum and John Christie.  In its inaugural year it welcomed writers from the UK and Brazil including Ian McEwan, Will Self, Milton Hatoum and Bernardo Carvalho.   In January 2015 FlipSide became a Registered Charity (1160164).  FlipSide is the sister festival of FLIP (Festa Literaria Internacional de Paraty), South America’s first and largest international literary festival.

The organisation’s aims are to produce the FlipSide Festival and a growing calendar of schools and community literature, music and arts events, opening a window onto a world of new cultural experiences.

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