Sid Sagar is Best Berkhamstedian

Sid Sagar (above right) won the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Award for Best Berkhamstedian Writer 2010. He received his prize from the psychoanalyst and former England cricket captain, Michael Brearley, OBE (above left), at the Graham Greene International Festival 2010, when a packed auditorium gave Sid an enthusiastic reception.

He wrote an exciting short story from the point of view of a man whose problems with money and alcohol lead him into bad company and the desperate remedy of acting as a hired assassin. Written in a modern and exciting style, the tale moves quickly to a conclusion, which reassures the reader with the suggestion that evil does not necessarily triumph.

The starting point for all texts in the competition was: “A whistle blew, and the train trembled into movement....”, and the award-winning texts were displayed in the Exhibition in Deans' Hall, Berkhamsted School (Hertfordshire, UK), on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd October 2010.

The winners of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards 2010 were Cathy Hogan (best fiction), Susan Shemtob (best screenplay), Rebecca Barrow (best writer under 21 years), Sid Sagar (best Berkhamstedian) and Anne Chinneck (best Old Berkhamstedian). Prizes were presented by Michael Brearley and William Ivory, writer of the screenplay for the popular film Made in Dagenham (UK, 2010).

The closing date for submission of texts for the next round of the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards is 1st April 2011. Full details of the competitions are available on the Trust’s website, from which you can also download a pdf file with the complete rules.

Graham Greene Birthplace Trust's Creative Writing Awards 2011

If you are interested in creative writing, why not try your luck in a competition organised by the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust?

Here are the titles or starting points for the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s Creative Writing Awards 2011.

Prose writers must begin with the following line, and continue from there:
“Everybody in the world, so they say, has a double…”

Screenplay writers must embed this line somewhere in their dialogue:
“Everybody in the world, so they say, has a double.”

Your text must be written mostly in the English language, and it must be no more than 800 words long. The closing date for submission of texts is 1st April 2011. You may enter more than one text, if you wish. There are seven categories under which you may enter:

(i) best fiction writer
(ii) best thriller writer
(iii) best travel writer
(iv) best screenplay writer
(v) best writer under the age of twenty-one years on 1st April 2011
(vi) best Berkhamstedian writer (i.e. a writer who is a pupil at Berkhamsted School on 1st April 2011)
(vii) best Old Berkhamstedian writer (i.e. a writer who is a former pupil at Berkhamsted School on 1st April 2011).

Full details of the competitions are available on the Trust’s website, from which you can also download a pdf file with the complete rules. Entries will be welcome from writers all around the world.

The winners of the Awards 2011 will be announced on Saturday 1st October 2011 in Deans’ Hall (Berkhamsted School, UK, shown in the images above) at the Graham Greene International Festival.

There will also be one-day courses for aspiring prose fiction and screenplay writers at the Graham Greene International Festival 2011.