For the third time running, Waterloo Festival, in collaboration with Bridge House Publishing, organised a writing competition over the winter along the theme of Transforming Communities. Writers were invited to interpret freely the theme in a 1000-word story. We announced the winners a few weeks ago.
As part of the celebrations, we'll be launching the digital anthology later in June. You can meet the editors and the winners in an online event on Friday, 12th June at 6:30pm. More details to come. Until then, meet some of the winners here! We invited them to send us a video or text introducing themselves and their work as well as a book recommendation.
We heard through text from winner Mehreen Ahmed.
Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning, internationally published and critically acclaimed author. She has written Novels, Novella, Short Stories, Creative Nonfiction, Flash Fiction, Academic, Prose Poetry, Memoirs, Essays and Journalistic Write-Ups. Her works have been podcast, anthologised and translated in German, Greek and Bengali. She has two masters' degrees and a bachelor's (Hon) in English Literature and Linguistics from the University of Queensland and Dhaka University. She was born and raised in Bangladesh. At the moment, she lives in Australia.
The following is an extract from her winning piece Dolly:
The doll looked at her and blinked. She had wings. She rose from her lap like a dot of light. There was a sound of the window locks clicking and popping straight up. The car doors flung open. Bright lights in her eyes, Dolly smiled. Ana was free. She jumped out of the car. She fled. She fled with Dolly and never looked back. The man had gone to buy coffee, she imagined. She pictured him back into the car, looking frantically for Ana. But all he found was her pink suitcase, perched neatly up against the seat’s leather base.
Favourite Book Recommendation: Ulysses by James Joyce
Bridge House Publishing
Comments