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.)

Desperately seeking nanoist.

If you're a K.M. Bainbridge who entered our nano-fiction competition, could you please get in touch with us at contact@leafbooks.co.uk? You only put the first half of your email address on your entry form.

Some points of order.

Hello, all. Hope you're well. We've just sent out the March newsletter, which is full of March-related news, but thought we may as well repeat ourselves here for anyone who doesn't, you know, like newsletters.

A special hello to any new Leaf followers who became aware of us following the Wicked Words and Witty Women event in Cardiff on March 11th. It was a jovial night of storytelling, poetry-reading, creative-writing and generally unnecessarily fantastic event in honour of International Women's Day. It was hugely successful and we hope to hold similar events in the future, about which we'll keep you informed.

We'd like to remind anyone who was involved in our nano-writing workshop on the night that they're more than welcome to send in the 50-word stories that they produced in response to our prompts (and apologies to anyone reading the newsletter who thought that was a general call for 50-word stories from the public at large, because it wasn't, though that's not to say that 50-word stories aren't a jolly useful thing to have - being as they are a great warm-up for more epic writing and little poetic masterpieces that many other websites would doubtless be happy to house).

Another quick reminder: the Young Writers' Competition closes at the end of this month, so please get your entries in as soon as possible, or nudge any young people you might know until they disgorge a short story. Judging for the nano-fiction competition is ongoing, and we hope to announce the results in the April newsletter (and hopefully slightly earlier than that on this blog).

And a final note: Dancing with Delsie and Other Poems is in the final stages of production, but we've yet to hear from one of the winning authors. If you happen to be Christopher Korta, author of 'Memory of my Father', could you please get in touch with us as soon as possible at contact@leafbooks.co.uk. Thanks.

Poetry Competition Results

What were we calling this one? Poetry Competition 2008 part II? 'Cause it's 2009 now. Anyway. Whatever it's called, I'm pleased to announce the results of it. You know the one I mean. It ended last October and now it's been judged and soon there'll be a book. Here are the answers. I mean results.

Winner:

'I Do' by Eloise Williams

Runner-up:

'Dancing with Delsie' by Sally James

Commended:

'Snapshot' by Francis Hayes
'Armchair revolutionary' by Francis Hayes
'Retired' by Francis Hayes
'Pants Outside, Trousers, Big Letter H On T Shirt, Here To Save The World' by Jonathan Pinnock
'Sandra and Me' by Catherine Edmunds
'sky' by Catherine Edmunds
'Motherlode' by Deborah Harvey
'How My Family Got Into South Africa' by Liz Cashdan
'Collecting Pieces of you in Boxes' by Jan Harris
'Tracing the Shape' by Alfie Bryman
'Lion' by Anthony Watts
'Against the Storm' by Leah Armstead
'In a Circle it Doesn't Matter' by Leah Armstead
'Convalescent Hill' by Kate Rhodes
'Irish Quartet' by Margery Forester
'The Keeper/Blackwater' by David Underdown
'Toaster' by Charles Evans
'Jess's Box' by Joanna Ezekiel
'Mendelssohn's Nose – 1939' by John Feakins
'Memory of my Father' by Christopher J Korta
'Personal Best' by Alan Dunnett
'Whisky' by Dorothy Fryd
'What Smruti Sees' by Jenny Morris


Congratulations to all of the above and commiserations to those who didn't make the list. Better luck next time (which means April). All of the above will be included in the competition anthology, which'll be called Dancing with Delsie and Other Poems. Keep an eye on the blog and the news page on the website for further information about the production of this anthology.

Our thanks to all who entered.

Merryness.

Just a quick happy Christmas type post before signing off till 2009. We hope everyone received their copies of Discovering a Comet and More Micro-Fiction in time for Christmas. If you're awaiting any orders, everything outstanding was sent this morning, so hopefully those should all be with you shortly.

Comp-wise, the Mostly Life competition winners will be up on www.mostlylife.com early in the new year: we'll be sending out a newsletter as soon as that's occurred. The Poetry Competition is still being judged and has been slightly beset with computer-related issues (nothing severe: just a bit delaying) ... but we should be all set to announce the results in February 2009. Keep an eye open. And that's about that.

Have a jovial season.

All at Leaf.

Mostly Life Competition

We're daftly happy to announce the results of the Mostly Life competition.

Winner - 'Mrs Cheveley in the Conservatory at Tenby', an animated poem by Emily Hinshelwood.

Emily's poem will be published on the Showcase blog at www.mostlylife.com, and she'll receive £200 prize money. The following running-up pieces will also be published on the showcase:

'Historic Conversations' by John Buckley
'Ask Mairghread' by Clare Girvan
'Hi, David Gaffney' by Nadia Kingsley
'From Romford with Love' by Paul Smith
'The Care and Attention of Your Man' by Sally Quilford
'Forget-ful' by Jane Pearn
'And the Consequence was ....' by Jennifer Price

All of the above have been contacted by email: please get in touch if you're one of these people and you've yet to receive a personal notification.

Congratulations to the successful entrants and thanks to all who entered.