I love seeing good people doing brilliant things. Naomi Thomas, who I’ve been lucky enough to work with at Hive’s Sheffield Young Writers is definitely a good person and is definitely doing brilliant things. She was Highly Commended in this year’s Orwell Prize and now she’s one of the five shortlisted writers for the BBC’s Young Writers Award.
Her story, The Battle of Trafalgar Square, is wonderful – ‘a punch in the face of a story, in the best possible way’ so said the judges. I was thrilled to hear it, and her, achieving great things (and a brilliant thing after another Hive Writer, Georgie Woodhead, won the award last year – there is so much talent in the north!).
A huge congratulations to everyone who’s made the list. Naomi’s story, read by Jessica Barden, is here, along with the others.
*
In other news…
The competition I’m judging for Sheffield Libraries’ Year of Reading (open to all and in three age categories – details here) hit a little snag when lockdown happened in that we had no way of accessing emails, and that meant we’d been unable to acknowledge receipt of any of the entries. I’m a writer. I am used to waiting for what can seem like an eternity for decisions on stories I send to people and I’m one of the first people to say that the waiting part of the job is often the toughest (you’ve done the work and grafted over many drafts, and then spent your time looking at where your work might fit – that’s hard enough in itself). I’m sorry it’s taken us so long. But – positively – we now have access and emails are being sent as I type.
We’ve also made the decision to extend the deadline to February 29th next year – there are great, great prizes (mentorship with me, book tokens, and all sorts) – and I’d love for you to be involved.