City Writes Competition Winners Spring 2021

What a bumper month of submissions! City Writes, a showcase for City’s short courses creative writing, is certainly going strong. The competition winners should be particularly proud and this term we’ll be

following stalkers, witnessing the seismic shifts of history, rebuilding humans with computers, struggling to find the right words for garden parties and contemplating our mothers, all alongside the fabulous Visiting Lecturer Kiare Ladner whose debut novel, Nightshift, a tale of obsession amid London’s night shift workers, came out just this February. Described as ‘toxic, sexy and pacy’ by Elizabeth Macneal of The Doll Factory fame and ‘A meditation on obsessive female friendship that sinks into the bone’ by Irensosen Okojie acclaimed author of Nudibranch, this is a debut everyone’s talking about.

Sign up for the event on the 1st April here. For more information on our wonderful competition winners, read on.

Sini Downing  (Short Story Writing) is a creative storyteller who loves to put pen to paper. In her day job, she champions great writing and truthful character performances in video games. Based in London, she needs aworld map to keep track of her friends and family. Having attended various City writing courses, Sini is currently editing her first novel, Where You Left Me, and seeking representation. She’ll be reading ‘The Opposite of Grace’.

Novel Studio alumna, Lara Haworth is a writer, visual artist and filmmaker. Her visual work has been exhibited internationally at places including Yokohama, Japan, Toronto, Canada and Chemnitz, Germany. Her writing has been published in magazines such as Visual Verse, Biography, LAKE, ACME and Nōd. Her new film, All the People I Hurt with My Wedding was released on February 12, by Don’t Google It. Her debut novel, The Straits, is represented by Jo Bell at Bell Lomax Moreton.

Stephen Jones’ (Writing for Theatre, course no longer running) career has involved various twists and turns between teaching and journalism. Until recently he worked as a columnist for the Times Educational Supplement and he currently teaches literature in a London FE college. He has been writing fiction for twenty years, but – despite attracting interest at times from publishers and agents – publication has so far eluded him. The writing bug though just won’t go away! He’ll be reading an extract from the longer work, ‘Pearl’.

An alumna of the Memoir writing course, Avril Joy’s short fiction has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Victoria Hislop’s, The Story: Love, Loss & the Lives of Women. Her work has been shortlisted in competitions including, the Bridport, the Manchester Prize for Fiction and Raymond Carver Short Story Prize in the USA. In 2012 she won the inaugural Costa Short Story Award. Her latest novel, Sometimes a River Song, won the 2017 People’s Book Prize.

Originally from Cardiff, K. Lockwood Jefford (Novel Writing Summer School alumna) is based on the Kent coast. She worked in NHS mental health services, took several City short courses and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck. Her short story, ‘Picasso’s Face’, won the 2020 Royal Society of Literature’s VS Pritchett Prize. Her work appears in several publications including Prospect Magazine online and Brick Lane Bookshop’s 2020 Prize Anthology. She is working on a collection of short fiction and will be reading ‘Driver’.

Vasundhara Singh lives in Bhopal, India and is a graduate of Journalism from Delhi University. Enrolled on City’s Novel Studio, she aims to write a novel about people she has known, loved and sometimes, hated. She is a photography nerd and an occasional poet. She’ll be reading ‘Feel, feeling’.

After hearing from these astoundingly accomplished winners, Kiare Ladner will be reading from her debut Nightshift (Picador 2021) and taking part in a short question and answer session with Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone. As a child, Kiare Ladner wanted to live on a farm, run an orphanage and be on stage. As an adult, she found herself working for academics, with prisoners and on nightshifts. Her short stories have been published in South Africa, where she grew up, and the UK, where she lives now. Nightshift is a debut whose depth of theme matches its searing plot.

This Spring City Writes 2021 on Thursday April 1st at 7pm is not one to miss. Sign up for free here. We look forward to seeing you there.