'Writing For The Sake of Writing'
A Celebration of The Elmbridge Literary Competition
My vocabulary hadn’t been up to it. I’d floundered about, hunting up unfamiliar words that I’d never written down before, getting baffled and entangled and frustrated. But I shouldn’t be writing now with an eye to publication. Even if it got finished I’d never offer it to a publisher and risk another fiasco. I wanted to write for the sake of writing, and got started one evening in my hotel bedroom.”
R.C. Sherriff
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The Elmbridge Literary Competition was launched in 2005 and this year sees 'The River' as the the theme for the 20th Competition. It was initially conceived as a one-off project, a collaboration between The R C Sherriff Trust and Elmbridge Borough Council, with the theme of ‘Cook Up A Story’. Now in its 20th year, the Elmbridge Literary Competition has become a truly international one, with entries coming from across the world.
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The winners of that first Competition that year were Patricia Jones in the Adult Category with her short story ‘Plum Jam’, Olivia Parnian in the 5-8 year old category with her poem ‘Don’t Like, Do Like’, Helen Berg in the 9-13 year old category with her poem ‘The Pie’ and Nigel Munson’s short story, ‘An Apple A Day’, in the 14-18 category. Since then, hundreds of authors, young and old have submitted stories and poems on themes inspired by events like the 2012 London Olympics, the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the debut novel of R C Sherriff. The 2019/20 Competition, inspired by the 400th Anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower had, given everything what followed, the rather prophetic title of ‘New World’!
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In recent years, the Competition has partnered with the publishers Sampson Low, who have produced chapbooks of the winning entries, with copies of these stories and poems being housed in the British Library, and the national libraries of Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
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Below are Winning, Highly Commended and Commended entries from previous competitions.
Click on the chosen Competition to download a zip file of the entries.
Winners of the Little Rhymes and Short Stories,
2018, with Judge and author Simon Cherry.
Some of Literary Competition Judges L-R Simon Cherry, Susannah Rickards, Former R C Sherriff Trust Director, Loretta Howells, Agnes Meadows, Current RCST Director, Pete Allen
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