International Student
Short Story Competition
1st Prize: £1000
2nd Prize: £500
3rd prize: £200Winners to be selected by prize-winning writer Tahmima Anam.
Winning and shortlisted stories eligible for publication in an anthology.
Deadline: 31st January 2012.
NCLA is pleased to announce the 2012 International Students Short Story Competition. The competition aims to attract outstanding work which explores the experience of international students living and studying in the UK and to give students an opportunity to assess and translate their experience creatively.
The 1st International Student Short Story Competition was won by Ahnaf Abdul, a Malaysian studying Law at the University of Oxford, who received the £1000 cash prize. The second prize of £500 was won by Muhammad Idzwan Husaini of Newcastle University, while the third prize was shared by joint winners: Alan Islas Cital of the University of Birmingham and David Molloy of the University of East Anglia. The winning and shortlisted stories have been published in an anthology titled Crossing the Lines: New Writing by International Students (Flambard 2011).
International (including EU) students can enter for the International Student Short Story Competition, providing they are studying at a UK university, or have graduated within the past two years. Entrants can write about any aspect of their experience of studying abroad, such as the challenges of adapting to life in a different climate and culture, the ups and downs of ‘international living’, culture clashes, coping with food/cuisine in a new country, homesickness, love (or the lack of it), social lives, job hunts and struggles to make ends meet, or any other aspect of their experience of living and studying abroad.
The winning stories and a shortlisted selection will be eligible for publication in an anthology exploring the UK international student experience.
Copies of Crossing the Lines: New Writing by International Students can be obtained from Inpress: http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/i022312.aspx, and through other reputable book stores.
Be the first to know; keep up to date with the competition news by following the competition on Facebook.
The Judge
Tahmima Anam was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her first novel, A Golden Age, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Costa First Novel Prize, and was the winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book. Her second novel, The Good Muslim, was published in hardcover by Canongate in May 2011. Her writing has been published in Granta, The New York Times, and the Guardian. She lives in London.