Creative Writing Winners 2025

Shortlisted Poetry and Short Fiction works from the 2025 Prize are published in the Creative Writing Anthology 2026.


Poetry – Christina Hutchins
Practicing the Saving


Christina Hutchins’s poetry books include Tender the Maker (2015) and The Stranger Dissolves. She was first poet laureate of Albany California. Awards include The Missouri Review Prize and Dartmouth Poet in Residence at Robert Frost’s home.


Short Fiction – Cait Kneller
The Pink House


Cait Kneller lives in Auckland, New Zealand, where she is also a teacher. Her writing has appeared in The Moth, The Idaho Review, Turbine/Kapohau and Strong Words: The Best of the Landfall Essay Competition.


Shortlisted Writers 2025


Poetry

Alex Mepham – Tell Us About the Fire
Amber Sanchez – Sugar Water
Amna jw – lahore
Angela Costi – A Revised History of the Balcony
Ann Westgarth – Timelapse
Annette Lin – we play a game about extinction predictions while removing standing water from the garden
Carlos Andrés Gómez – “What I Most Love About God is His Love of Basketball”
Christian Ward – Portrait of my father as a badger
Cia Queyquep – Before Mom Goes To Jail
Damen O’Brien – Riding in Peloton with Death and Don McLean’s American Pie
Denise O’Hagan – One night in August
Elizabeth Wilson Davies – Snow Geese
Emily Loftis – If an Octopus Changes Color While Sleeping, That Means They’re Dreaming
Gayathiri Kamalakanthan – Birthed Right
Godelieve de Bree – ritual persistence
Hans Jorg Stahlschmidt – When the black wings are above
J. Marahuyo – Uber to Emergency: my sister is missing
Jed Myers – Work’s End
Joan García Viltró – The Almazara


Joyce Victor – Last Visit
Jude Lavelle – Last Call
Julia Webb – If I let the news into my house then I know it will be real
Kelly Davis – You are at queue position 32
Kira Trainor – Stones to Sink the Cradle
Kizziah Burton – Your Father Is in the Sewing Room Blind-Stitching Secrets
Liza Duncan – The Uncles
Maryam Imogen – Ghouth The Big Bang
Maya Caspari – Olives
Michael Lavers – Your Going
Natalie Whittaker – I watch Jurassic Park
Patricia Clark – “Beach Combing”
Rachel Robb – THROUGH LINES
Roberto Salvador Cenciarelli – Footnotes to Untitled Buffaloes 1988-1989
Róisín Leggett Bohan – 04 C 14598
Steve Evans – Splitting Timber
Sue Proffitt – Six Children
Tara Zafft – And Then it Began
Tim Scott – An Absent Blackbird for the Miami Showband
Wes Lee – A Brief Dream Under A Summer Moon

 

Short Fiction

Alexina Dalgetty – An Alphabet for Lola Grace
Anna Grady – Summer Girls
Baird Harper – After the Burger King, He Began to Mourn
Christian Anthony – Vauxhall
Clare Howdle – still bird
Craig Cormick – The Names of Those Lost
Edward Hogan – Dad Joke
Jaime Gill – The Hate Baby
Jupiter Jones – Slug Tape
Kailash Srinivasan – Disprin

L. Soviero – Lucy Ignores Death
Laura Schadler – My Year as Mirabelle
Liz Houchin – Stella saves the world
Maria Nebula – Our Shoes
Marie Cooper – The Weave
Orlando Hernández Martínez – How to Accidentally Make a God
Peter Thomais – A Glimmer of Shades
Sean Murray – Sandals
Sophie Stanley – Rainbow


Images by Ellie Davies