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 suggestion.
Next we received from winner Rosaleen Lynch.
Rosaleen Lynch, an Irish youth and community worker and writer in the East End of London, pursues stories whether conversational, literary or performed. Much of her writing explores family and working class community. Waterloo Action Centre has been a draw over the years, whether for arts events and courses or it promotion of community stories by running creative writing workshops and recording oral histories.
Rosaleen has flash fiction and stories in publications such as Jellyfish Review, The London Reader, Reflex Fiction, the Short Édition story dispensers and anthologies such as Neighbors (Crack the Spine) and The Word for Freedom (Retreat West). Most recently her story Other Uses for a Woman’s Body won the International Women’s Day 2020 Micro Fiction Competition (Lunate Fiction) and her unpublished collection of the same title came second in the Flash Fiction Collection Competition 2020 (EllipsizZine).
Circle Time is a piece of flash fiction set in the 'what if' world of the disappearing youth services when community groups do it for themselves.
"Three girls went missing on three consecutive Fridays after school. Lacey was eleven and her mum didn’t report her missing until Justine’s disappearance was all over Facebook. Lacey’s Mum thought she was at her Dad’s. No one in the neighbourhood believed Lacey’s Mum, but that’s what she told the police. When Milly-Anne went missing, although children still came to Kids Club they were picked up and dropped off. More than one parent said that it made sense because it was getting dark. Milly-Anne’s Dad was all over social media within an hour of when he was expecting her home from school. People told him he was overreacting. His answer, twenty-four hours later was a middle finger GIF with the caption ‘I told you so.'"