The theme for this year’s Short Story Writing Competition is based around one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The closing date is Thursday September 5th at 10.30 and the winner will be announced at the December Open Meeting on Thursday 7th December 2019.

The competition is open to a) the members of Beeston Writing For Pleasure Group b) to anyone who is a member of Beeston U3A and c) to U3A members of Long Eaton, Ilkeston and Stapleford who belong to their writing groups.

Our judge for this year’s winner is the poet Becky Cullen.  Becky has worked with our group several times and we are delighted that she has agreed to select the final three stories for 2019.

For more details please contact Helen Stewart on helen.stewart1@btinternet.com or any member of the Writing For Pleasure Group.

We were delighted that Sue Daley from Ilkeston’s U3A writing group  won the short story writing prize for 2018.  The theme was “weather” and Sue skilfully wove an atmospheric story of romance and crime in a fog-bound city.  Those of us who have lived through the “pea-soupers” in Nottingham will have appreciated the way in which Sue captured the feeling of helplessness in such an environment.

Our judge was the professional writer Clare Harvey.  Her latest book is entitled “The Escape”. If you would like to obtain a copy of this book then your link is: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Escape-Clare-Harvey/dp/1471161897/

Thanks go to Clare for being our judge for 2018, to John Gallagher for running the competition and to the members of the Writing For Pleasure Group for their hard work in selecting three finalists from the twenty-three entries.  The three short stories are posted on this site.