First of all, a huge, huge thank you to everybody who shared and entered this year’s essay prize! Though it was only the second time we have ran the competition, we were confident of unearthing some more brilliant writers in light of last year’s winner Haleh Agar, who took the prize with her excellent essay On Writing Ethnic Stories.
After much deliberation, this year’s judges Pico Iyer and Nicola Griffith settled on the following:
1st Place: Hologram From Milan — Amy Wright
2nd Place: Beyond the Mead-Hall — Benedict Weaver
3rd Place: Dead-Heading the Cosmos — Duncan Forbes
As well as the winners and runners up receiving prizes of £500, £300 and £200 respectively, the winning entry will be published in the April/May print edition of The London Magazine, with the two runners up being published on our website.
Pico and Nicola said of the winning entry: “It turned out we’d both loved “Hologram from Milan” for its mixture of humanity and art, for the way it unfolded a somewhat familiar tale in an invigoratingly original way and for the way that it at once told a whole story and opened up something larger and more suggestive. I loved the way rays of sadness slanted across the warm and open room the author had built for us and Nicola pointed out how much she admired the tone of acceptance and the author’s readiness to acknowledge the complexity of the world, which is what had touched and impressed me as well.”
Referring to the shortlist, Pico also added that “…these stories restored my faith in many things and reminded me how much care and love of writing there is even in a world full of distractions.”
Full shortlist for The London Magazine Essay Competition 2018:
Hologram From Milan — Amy Wright (1st place)
Beyond the Mead-Hall — Benedict Weaver (2nd place)
Dead-Heading the Cosmos — Duncan Forbes (3rd place)
(Then in no particular order)
Eaten By A Tiger — Jessica Sequeira
She’s Not Your Muse (Or How to Love a Modern Swan) — Astra Bloom
Hide and Seek with Draupadi — Kateryna Ivanova
Seeing Sense — Catherine Coldstream
Island of Solace — Alison Lock
Ghost Cams — Rainie Oet
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