Emerging Writer Award 2023 Winner
Harminder Kaur is working on a novel about madness. In 2021 she was awarded the Laura Kinsella Fellowship from the National Centre for Writing and the Andrea Badenoch Award from New Writing North. In the same year she took part in ‘A Brief Pause’, a writing development programme for BAME writers, and the University of Iowa’s Summer Writers’ Workshop. Prior to becoming a writer, she was studying for a PhD in Cultural Theory which was interrupted by the onset of schizophrenia. Her experience of mental illness has had a profoundly spiritual dimension and led to her becoming a Christian. She published a short story entitled ‘The Sphinx’ in the collection Small Good Things (Dahlia Publishing, 2021).
I am really thrilled to receive the Emerging Writer Award. I feel it is a great endorsement and it will give me increased impetus to complete the novel I’m working on. I think I will be able to benefit a lot from the fantastic resources offered by Moniack Mhor.
Second-Place Finalist
Rachael Fulton’s stories can be heard on Audible and BBC Radio 4. She has been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award, Highly Commended in the Bridport Prize and longlisted for BBC and Commonwealth Short Story prizes. She won Elle Magazine’s New Talent Award. She currently works in comms and radio and is the co-host of upcoming podcast Mums in the Making. She’s currently working on her debut novel and her debut baby, and despite the novel being (many) more years in the planning, the baby will be out first!
Highly Commended
Iqbal Hussain lives in London and has been writing since he could hold a pencil. In 2022, he won first prize for Writing Magazine’s Grand Flash competition. His work appears in various anthologies, including Lancashire Stories by Lancashire Libraries and Inkandescent by Mainstream. His story, ‘A Home from Home’, won Gold in the Creative Future Writers’ Awards 2019. Iqbal is currently working on his debut novel, Northern Boy. In his teens, Iqbal appeared on Blockbusters, Countdown and The Crystal Maze.
Ethel Maqeda loves writing short stories. Her writing has appeared in various journals, including Short Fiction: The Visual Literary Journal, Isele Magazine, and Wasafiri Magazine, anthologies, including Volume-3 (Palm-Sized Press), We are not Shadows (Folkways Press), Wretched Strangers (Boiler House) and Verse Matters (Valley Press). Her collection of short stories, Mushrooms for my Mother and Other Stories, made the 2020 S1 Leeds Literary Prize longlist. Away from writing, Ethel works for a volunteer-led charity that teaches English to migrant learners. She is also involved in theatre participation projects for young people from marginalised backgrounds for various theatre organisations around Sheffield.