The Ungagged judges have spent a month reading, scoring, debating and re-reading and we have – at long last! – got a winner for the Ungagged Winter Short Story Competition.
The competition was fierce and the panel of judges struggled to decide on a winner. All of the stories on our shortlist sparked discussion and debate, and they impressed us with their creative structure, character development or layers of metaphor.
Our winning story attracted a lot of praise from the judges:
Loved the ending and the play on words with the names. The opener was reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange, without being an over the top rip-off, which was great.
A tale in the spirit of MR James but this world is about the dispossessed. I liked the imagery.
I like this enormously. Here is someone who can really write, who understands the beauty of words but who is not so dazzled by them as to forget about plot and character too. I did not foresee the ending, although in hindsight there were clues…
Nice use of theme. Loved the recent cultural references. Wonderfully descriptive and evocative use of language to describe setting and characters.
I enjoyed this piece, I liked how assumptions about working class people were turned on their head, and I loved the imagery and smilies. The style was readable and likable, and the twist at the end was satisfying and well executed.
You can read our winning story here:
A Lefty Winter Tale
By
Anthony Franks
And it will be performed on our next podcast, due out next week.
You can follow Anthony on Instagram and Twitter
We’d like to thank all of our entrants for sending in their work, we didnt anticipate the standard of entries, and would warmly encourage all of you to enter our next writing competition. Details will be announced here soon.