Lothian Life is delighted to announce the winners and shortlist in our Happy Ever After? short story competition.
From a strong shortlist of six, we narrowed this down to the three winners, and these are as follows:
First Prize:
The Flight of Widow Gibson by Kirsti Wishart
Runners-Up:
Is It Time Yet? by Patsy Collins
Airmail by Adam Trodd
Highly Commended (Shortlist):
Positive? by Catriona Patience
Rent by Liz Power
The Wedding Dress by Helen Cormack
Congratulations to each of the shortlisted entrants (and to those from the long list who got so far). We very much enjoyed reading all the stories, and narrowing it down was such a difficult task.
Kirsti’s winning entry was ultimately a unanimous choice, the mix of the serious and the playful, real and surreal, and the sheer good writing, ticked all the boxes.
With Patsy’s story, we all enjoyed the unusual point of view, and her ability to tell a lovely story in so few words.
Adam’s stood out for being a true feel-good yet poignant story, and the warmth of the relationshp between the grandfather and his grandson really drew us in.
Kirsti wins a 6 week writing course courtesy of WriteRight Editing, and Patsy and Adam win copies of the judges’ latest books.
The three winning entries will be published here on Lothian Life over the next few weeks.
As a thank you for your support, we’re delighted to offer everyone who entered the competition some brief feedback (I’ll be in touch via email), and also 20% off the Writing Short Fiction or Novel Writing 1 courses from WriteRight – just go to www.writerightediting.co.uk and get in touch via the online form  quoting ‘LL Offer’ before the end of February.
Further very sincere thanks are due to everyone who supported us (including the guest judges, Marie Campbell and Sandy Bennett-Haber) to allow this to be a free competition.
Best of luck with your writing goals!