Files we can't open.

Prospective competition entrants - just a quick note to remind you that, with the archaic technology we have at our fingertips, we are unable to open .docx or .wps files. You must send your entries as .doc or .rtf files, or at a pinch as PDFs, otherwise we'll have to ask you to try again.

(We'd also love you lots if you used single spacing and pressed the tab button rather than making multiple assaults on the space bar every time you want to create a paragraph indent, but I suppose that's just being picky. When formatting pieces for inclusion in the book, we make them single spaced, fully justified, 12 point Times New Roman with 5mm paragraph indents, and we replace any double spaces after full stops with single ones. That's just a suggestion, you know, if you're hunting around for a format.)

We're working on Ada and More Nano-Fiction at the moment, correcting the first draft of the PDF, and also we're liaising with the winners of the Young Writers' Competition and tweaking Ada's cover and answering emails and sometimes we sit in the garden 'cause it's quite sunny. If you wanted to know what we're doing. Goodo.

Young Writers Competition – Results

We had lots of fun judging the Young Writing Competition; the entries were, in varying degrees, adorable, intelligent, highly humorous and ridiculously impressive. Here are the results from all three age categories:

Under 11

Winner
'The Great Barrier Reef' (poem) by Hugo Grundy

Runner-up
'Sicilian Adventure' (poem) by Dualtagh Grundy

Commended
'Avril' and 'Doors' (poems) by Hector Stellyes
'Colours are for' (poem) by Gemma Baker
'The Queen's Lyre' (story) by Rebecca Daniels
'Mysteries and Mirrors' (poem) by Ellamae Hindley
'The Sand Witch' (story) and 'Welshness' (poem) by Mollie Thomas
'Katia's Story' (story) by Bethany Barnes
'Snow' (poem) – Shayahi Kathirgamanathan
'After Dark' and 'Mind Your Manners' (poems) by Evan James Ward
'I've Never Seen' by John Roberts
'What does my Daddy do at Work?' (poem) by Dominic Wills
‘Rebellious Megan’ (story) by Sumeyya Tontus
'The Ghost Galleon' (story) by Imogen Shortall
'The Amazing Pebble' (story) by Archie Clark
'My Wales' (poem) by Ruby Johnston
'Pet Dinos in my Garden' (poem) by Jonathan Potter
'Mr Leroy' (story) by Carley Ann Hayes

Under 14

Winner
'Taste of a Tic-Tac' (poem) by Henry Gould

Runner-up
'How can I look forward when I don't know where to go?' (poem) by Shakira Dyer

Commended
'New Life' (story) by Henry Gould
'Garden Exploration' (story) by Shakira Dyer
'Leprechaun Holiday' (story) by Cerren Richards
'Sights of Newport' (poem) by Saskia Barnett
'Darkness' (story) by Selena Drake
'Weekends' (poem) by Oscar Lowe
'The River' (poem) by the Creative Writing Club, Penryn College
'Surfing' (poem) by Samuel Moore
'The Trenches' (poem) by Ellie Hendricks
'Geraint and the Lady of the Lake' (story) by Konrad Edwards
'They Don't See What I See' (story) by Cleo Mathias

18 and under

Winner
'Journey in the Countryside' (poem) by Phoebe Power

Runner-up
'Writer's Block' (story) by Mairi Templeton

Commended
'Regifting' (story) by Mairi Templeton
'History, Period Two' (poem) by Luke Webber
'Deliveries' (story) by Amy Pay
'Reality' and 'All I Need is Inspiration' (poems) by Louise Hunter
'An Education' (story) by Charles Risius

Congratulations to our winners and commiserations to those who didn't make the list. Better luck next time. All of the above will be included in the competition anthology, which'll is yet to be named. Keep checking the Leaf Books blog, forthcoming newsletters and the news page on the website for further information about the production of this anthology. Our thanks to all who entered.

(And a dollop of other news: Dancing with Delsie and Other Poems is now available for purchase. Ada and More Nano-Fiction is in the advanced stages of production and will hopefully be available for purchase by July. See the website for further details.)