Writers celebrate successes

[John Dean]

PRESS RELEASE


A Darlington-based writing group is celebrating a remarkable year of successes.

Inkerman Writers comprise authors who attend, or used to attend, creative writing courses at Darlington Arts Centre.

In the group’s most recent success, Bud Craig, who lives in the Darlington area, travelled to Oberhausen in the Ruhr region of Germany having reached the final of the International Short Story Competition.

Run out of the Ruhr, the competition had for the first time invited entries by writers from the German region’s twin towns Mersin (Turkey/Çukurova), Carbonia (Italy/Sulcis) and Middlesbrough and the Tees Valley).

The theme was Light Years and writers were asked to imagine what would happen if people from other planets visited us or we visited them. Bud’s story was called Make Cowards of Us All and is set on the planet Viltà.

He was one of three semi-finalists from the Tees Valley. Although Bud just missed out when the three-prize winners were chosen from 12 semi-finalists, at a ceremony in the famous Oberhausen Gasometer, to have got that far is a great achievement.

Bud, who two years ago won the Writers’ Forum national short story prize, said: “I was thrilled to receive this recognition for my story. I'd like to thank the Inkerman Writers who have helped me develop my writing so much over the past few years."
Other Inkerman Writers to have celebrated success over the past year include:

* Mike Watson, who has been shortlisted in two short story competitions, come second in another two and won last year’s Marple Writing Competition with "Bedtime:

* Liz Thompson, who won this summer‘s globalwriters.net Flash Fiction Competition with her story True Love, beating writers from across the world, and:

Tom Benson, who was one of the winners in a competition sponsored by English Heritage in which authors had to write a story inspired by Whitby Abbey. His was one of forty stories to be included in the forthcoming book Whitby Abbey, an Inspiration. The story was entitled Decision at the Abbey.

In addition, several of the group have been published, including Darlington writer Kath Radford with her crime novel Beyond Belief, available from on-line book stores such as amazon.co.uk and barnesandnobel.com, and Richard Nicholson, from Teesside, whose crime novel Poisoned Well is available from www.fiction4all.com, under Thrillers/Suspense.

The group also recently produced its first short anthology; A Strawberry in Winter is available from blurb.com It also has a website at www.inkermanwriters.ning.com

* At 7pm on Thursday 28th October, in Cockerton Library, Darlington, a group of writers are launching their booklet Images from a Churchyard. The group, two of whom, Masha Woollard and Barbara Myers, are Inkerman Writers from Darlington, visited St Andrew's Church in Haughton Village as part of a project carried out with Teesside University, after which they wrote poetry and prose based on inscriptions on the tombstones.

* Barbara Myers was also highly commended in the North East Adult Learners’ Week Regional Awards earlier this year, in recognition of her commitment to her writing.