Lucent Dreaming 2022 Prize: Short Story, Flash Fiction and Poetry Winners and Shortlists

We are excited to share the winners and shortlists for the Lucent Dreaming 2022 Prize. The winners and selected shortlisted or highly commended pieces will appear in a new Lucent Dreaming hope-themed anthology in 2023. Our biggest thanks to Matt Kendrick, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Emmy Clarke, Charlotte Murray, Maggie Wang, Rebecca Ferrier, Akhim Alexis and the LD team for judging this year’s prize.

Short Story

Read the winning stories.

1st Prize
Holly Barratt, ‘Anthropocene’

Holly Barratt lives in Cardiff, Wales. She writes stories in many genres. She has previously been published by Wyldblood Press, Oxford Greats in Flash and Fudoki. She is inspired by history, folklore, nature, memories and dreams. She is currently working on a novel about strange things that come from the sea. Writing fights for space in her life with a day job in education as well as cats, yoga, and a tendency to disappear down internet rabbit holes in the name of “research”.

2nd Prize
Michelle Marie Ryan, ‘I am a tree’

Michelle Marie Ryan is an emerging American writer and university professor, originally from Washington State. She has been living and teaching in the Loire Valley, France since 1991 and is currently completing her first collection of stories: Blue Breast. She is interested in formal experimentation, deep authenticity, the power of dreams, and the connection between body and landscape. She seeks to stir the reader and set new perceptions in motion.

3rd Prize
Louise Mangos, ‘The Taste of Quince’

Louise writes novels, short stories and flash fiction which have won prizes, placed on shortlists, and have been read out on BBC radio. Her short fiction has appeared in more than twenty print anthologies and magazines. She has published three suspense novels and holds a Masters in crime writing from the University of East Anglia. Louise lives in a village in the foothills of the Swiss Alps where the story The Taste of Quince is set.

Shortlisted stories

Emily Macdonald, ‘Salvage’
Sarah Hills, ‘When hope comes’
Hannah Brown, ‘From Bitter Pearl’

Flash Fiction

Read the winning flash fiction.

1st Prize
Kathryn Aldridge-Morris, ‘What I Tell My Son When I Watch Him Through My Windscreen After Drop-off’

Kathryn Aldridge-Morris has work in New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, Flash Frog, Ellipsis Zine, Bending Genres, Bracken Magazine, Janus Literary and others. Her flash fiction also appears in several anthologies, most recently ‘And if that Mockingbird Don’t Sing’ (Alternating Current Press) and the Bath Flash Fiction Award Anthology. She tweets @kazbarwrites

2nd Prize
JP Relph, ‘Apocalypse Hen’

JP Relph is a working-class Cumbrian who grew up just across the border in Scotland. Her writing journey began in 2021 with Writers HQ and is mostly hindered by four cats and aided by copious tea. She loves murder programmes, zombies and Marvel. A forensic science degree and a passion for microbes, insects and botany often motivate her words, which can be found in Splonk, Quill & Crow, Molotov Cocktail, Popshot Q and others. She can be founder on Twitter @RelphJp

3rd Prize
Fay Brown, ‘Crone Days’

Fay lives and writes on the south coast of England when she isn’t teaching sixth form students about the classical world. She started writing again during lockdown with @WritersHQ and finds that the sea often creeps into her work. Fay has previously been published by Fudoki and the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology 2022. 

Honourable Mentions:

Richard Hooton, ‘Underneath the Keyboard’
Tegan Oldfield, ‘The East’

Shortlisted flash fiction

Rosaleen Lynch, ‘Ceiling Projections for Late Stage Souperism’
Julia Ruth Smith, ‘Despite His Broken Heart’
JP Relph, ‘Find Shelter’
Denise Bayes, ‘Missing in Action’
Fiona Lynch, ‘Open sentences’
Karen Arnold, ‘Owl Spring’
Jamie D Stacey, ‘Pumpkin Anatomy’

Poetry

Read the winning poems.

1st Prize
Matt Broomfield, ‘the poet miguel hernandez uses his one phone call from a fascist jail cell to call pablo neruda’

Matt Broomfield is an award-winning British poet, journalist and activist. His poetry has recently been published by the North, Stand and the Best New British and Irish Poets 2021, among others. His debut poetry collection, ‘brave little sternums: poems from Rojava’, was published July 2022 by Fly on the Wall. All the poems in the collection were written in and about the three years he spent living and working in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) in solidarity with the direct-democratic, women-led revolution there. You can purchase the collection: https://www.flyonthewallpress.co.uk/product-page/brave-little-sternums-by-matt-broomfield

2nd Prize
Milena Williamson, ‘Hometown Half-mile’

Milena Williamson is pursuing a PhD in poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre. She has received an Eric Gregory Award, the Ireland Chair of Poetry project award, and the Streetcake Magazine experimental writing prize for poetry. Her debut pamphlet is Charm for Catching a Train from Green Bottle Press. She is a managing editor at the Irish Pages. For more: www.milenawilliamson.com.

3rd Prize
Barry Fentiman Hall, ‘Big’

Barry Fentiman Hall is a poet based in the Medway Delta. Most of his subject matter comes from his wanderings about that area. His works include The Unbearable Sheerness Of Being (2015), England, My Dandelion Heart (2018), and Sketches (2020) He is one half of the literary organisation Wordsmithery who have recently produced Welcome To Cloisterham as part of the 2022 Rochester Dickens Festival. He is also the editor of Confluence Magazine.

Shortlisted poems

Boroch, ‘The Walks’
Helen Bowie, ‘Poprawa’
Jeffrey Skinner, ‘River, Bear’
Milena Williamson, ‘Charm for Birthing Difficulties’
Barry Fentiman Hall, ‘YOU WILL HEAR HORSES’
Ole Hagen, ‘HOPE AGAINST HOPE’
Stephanie Powell, ‘We are young and delicious’
Perla Kantarjian, ‘eating fruit with you before you leave’

The Lucent Dreaming 2023 Prize will open November 2022, and close April 2023.