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16 November 2014

Winners of GGBT Creative Writing Awards 2014


Henry Wismayer
Elizabeth Ducie

In a truly international competition for the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust's Creative Writing Awards in 2014 entries arrived from near and far, from various parts of England and neighbouring Ireland, and from as far away as San Francisco on the west coast of the USA and Phnom Penh City in Cambodia.

The judges would like to thank all the entrants for their keen interest and good writing, and they hope very much that the writers will continue with their good work.

Prose writers had to begin with the following words and to continue from there:

‘Three doors opened off a dark passage. From behind one of them there seeped the smell of....’


There were two winning entries in 2014:

Best Prose Fiction Writer: Elizabeth Ducie (Devon, UK) for ‘Liver and Onions’

Best Prose Travel Writer: Henry Wismayer (London, UK) for ‘MV Umoja’

Though there were many interesting and commendable entries, prizes were not awarded in the other categories.

Elizabeth Ducie’s story ‘Liver and Onions’ has been uploaded to the GGBT’s website, and may be read there.

Henry Wismayer’s prose travel text ‘MV Umoja’ is not available for the time being.

The Winning Writers

Henry Wismayer lives in London (UK), and began writing about travel in 2008, when his account of climbing of a mountain one weekend in Morocco was published on the front page of an in-flight magazine. He is now a freelance feature writer specializing in travel. His articles have appeared in over fifty publications worldwide including The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, Time Out, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, Geographical, Wanderlust and CNN. He specializes in adventure travel in Africa and the Middle East, with occasional forays into more luxurious climes. You can find out more about his impressive range of work on his website.

Elizabeth Ducie lives in the county of Devon (England, UK), and she is a member of the Chudleigh Writers' Circle, Exeter Writers and the West Country Writers' Association.

When she was a teenager, her essays and poetry helped her to win her first overseas trip following a newspaper competition. After more than thirty years as a technical writer, she returned to creative work in 2006. For the past seven years, she has enjoyed experimentation with different types of writing. She has written articles for content websites and on commission, and short stories and poetry for competitions, in which she has achieved some wins, several honourable mentions and some short-listing.

Her first novel, Gorgito's Ice Rink (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014), is set in Russia and based partly on her travel experiences. During the eight years of working on this project, she graduated with an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter (England, UK).

Elizabeth’s other publications include Sunshine and Sausages: How to Run a Successful Garden Party (Chudleigh Phoenix Publications, 2013), Parcels in the Rain and Other Writing (Chudleigh Phoenix Publications, 2014), a collection of short stories, flash fiction, travel writing and memoirs, The Business of Writing: Part One: Business Start-Up (Chudleigh Phoenix Publications, 2014) and The Business of Writing: Part Two:Finance Matters (Chudleigh Phoenix Publications, 2014).

With her friend and fellow writer Sharon Cook, she is co-editor of the Chudleigh Phoenix Community Magazine, and together they launched the Chudleigh Phoenix Annual Short Story Competition, which is now in its fifth year. They have also published two collections of short stories, Life is Not a Trifling Affair (Chudleigh Phoenix Publications, 2011) and Life is Not a Bed of Roses (Chudleigh Phoenix Publications, 2012). Both anthologies are available as paperbacks and as ebooks.

04 March 2014

Christina Hyun publishes her 2012 award winning story


Christina Hyun
'The Stool Pigeon' - Winner of GGBT's Best Thriller Award in 2012

Christina Hyun, who won the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s award for Best Thriller for her entry ‘The Stool Pigeon’ in the annual creative writing competitions in April 2012, has published her winning short story electronically.

The version which is available on Smashwords is suitable for any e-reader and for downloading to a computer, while the version available on Amazon is intended for Kindle e-readers only.

The successful writer travelled from Issaquah in Washington State (USA) to Berkhamsted (England, UK) to receive her prize, which was presented by Prof Peter Evans (Queen Mary, University of London, UK) at the Graham Greene International Festival on Saturday 29th September 2012.

As an entry in the competition, ‘The Stool Pigeon’ had to begin with the line A voice near his/her/my foot said, 'Got a cigarette?'….” and she continued from there. Christina then developed the tale of a female State Security agent in the capital of North Korea who is given the green light to betray her country's president.

Her short story, ‘The Odd Job’ was first published in Bellowing Ark, a literary tabloid which is published fortnightly in Shoreline (WA, USA) and features ten new writers per year. The story achieved second place in Mom Writers Literary Magazine's short fiction contest. She workshopped this story at Zoetrope's online writing community, to which she is grateful for critical responses and support. Along with Christina’s two other short stories ‘Cuckoo Funeral’ and ‘Magique’, ‘The Odd Job’ was published in 2013, and is also available from Smashwords and Amazon.

Christina has been blogging at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper since 2006, and is on hiatus to finish her novel, which will be a political thriller.

To follow her progress, you may connect with her Blog, her Facebook and Twitter pages.

Writers who wish to enter this year’s Graham Greene Birthplace Trust’s creative writing competitions must submit their entries by 1st April 2014.

In 2014 prose writers must begin their competition entries with the following words, and continue from there:

'Three doors opened off a dark passage. From behind one of them there seeped the smell of....'

In 2014 screenplay writers and playwrights must embed the same words somewhere in the dialogue of their competition entries.

Full details of the competitions (including information on the categories, presentation and submission of entries) may be seen on the Trust’s website, where the winning entries in the competitions in 2013 may also be read.

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