RoomToWrite's own Avril Joy shortlisted for the Costa Short Story Award..
Costa Short Story Award - a brand new award for a single short story, run in conjunction with the Costa Book Awards, and judged both anonymously and independently of the five main category system.
Over 1800 entries were received in this new competition, open to both published and non-published writers, for a single, previously-unpublished short story of up to 4,000 words by an author aged 18 years or over and written in English.
The six anonymous, shortlisted stories were available for the public to download, read and vote for from the end of November 2012. Voting closed at 12 noon yesterday, Wednesday, 23rd JanuaryNorth East writer, Avril Joy, has today been named as one of the six short-listed writers for her short story Millie and Bird.
The identities of the winner of the Costa Short Story Award and the two runners-up, together with the overall Costa Book of the Year winner, will be announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony in London on Tuesday, 29th January.
Extract from Millie and Bird by Avril Joy
"It was the kind of summer when the grass grew
too long to cut and your toes stubbed at the damp end of your trainers, the
summer I was sixteen. It rained all through May and June. It rained on my
birthday. It never let up and the weeds in the yard grew taller than the gate
post. Jonty Angel, our next-door neighbour, gave Millie the bird that summer, a
white zebra finch, and she spent all her time coaxing it onto her shoulder,
whispering to it and feeding it titbits. He gave her a cage too and she put it
in her bedroom out of harm’s way. It was the summer of Bird, it was the summer
I fell in love..."
Discover more about Avril on her blog
or her novel Blood Tide
All
entries were judged by a panel of five:-
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