The Creative Future Writers’ Award 2024 received over 1,600 entries from underrepresented writers across the country. We sincerely thank each and every one of you for giving us a chance to read your work. We’re pleased to announce those selected:
Creative Non-Fiction
- Platinum: Louis Bailey, The Nightjar (excerpt from ‘The Night Run’)
- Gold: Ciara McVeigh, A Space That Speaks
- Silver: Shwetha Bai, Flowers Don’t Wither, Portraits Don’t Bleed
- Bronze: Kaylia Dunstan, Fox and Me
- Highly Commended: Vanita Parti, Monobrow
Shortlist: Taylor Beidler, Andrew Cheffings, Joan Cruz, Valerie Fraser, Viktoriia Grivina, Kay Lopez, Elizabeth Nazer, Eureka Shabazz, Edie True
Fiction
- Platinum: Patrick Cash, Kai
- Gold: Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim, Alade Must Die
- Silver: Sophia Khan, Prayers
- Bronze: Melanie Banim, Bungalow
- Highly Commended: Harper Walton, Diamond and Pearl
Shortlist: Finn Brown, Nina Cullinane, Tina Ivharue, Molly Millar, Chantal Oakes, Modupe Ogunniyi, Ella Plevin, Kirsti Sinclair, Sara Todd, Dana Watts
Poetry
- Platinum: Maya Little, Childe of Hale
- Gold: Rona Luo, Karst
- Silver: Francis-Xavier Mukiibi, Dig Up Black Boy Bones from Brown
- Bronze: Lara Mae Simpson, Graduation Dinner
- Highly Commended: Kasmira Kincaid, Mother Fregoli
Shortlist: Lauren Alwyn, Sheena Hussain, Kayleigh Jayshree, Caitlin Tina Jones, Sumia Juxun, Abbie Leeson, Anita Ngai, Alison Tanik, Helen Thomas, Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
We look forward to working with this year’s winners and furthering their careers, thanks to the generosity of our prizegivers, who contributed £23,000 in courses, development and support—and enabled us to increase for the first time from twelve to fifteen winners.
Our sincere thanks also to the judging panel: poet Wayne Holloway-Smith, poet/essayist Nina Mingya Powles, Tessa Foley (Poetry School), Jennifer Kerslake (Curtis Brown Creative), Joey Connolly (Faber Academy) and Aki Schilz (The Literary Consultancy).
I like bands’ initial albums, and I like artists at the start of their careers. I like seeing footballers stepping into the first team for the first time, and I like watching debut directors at the movies. It’s invigorating to me to see raw talent finding its way, in this way—that often initial burst of ambition, and excitement—the kernel of a voice emerging, the level of risk practitioners are free to take at this stage. No wonder the process of judging CFWA was such a source of joy—the originality and imagination, the vocabulary of these newcomers, crikey!
—Wayne Holloway-Smith, Award judge
Judging the Creative Future Writers’ Award this year was an invigorating and challenging process. The shortlist of many innovative writers offered a glimpse of some of the most exciting writing being produced in the UK today. In the poetry and fiction categories, writers boldly pushed boundaries of genre and form. In creative nonfiction, a category new to the prize this year, there was an incredible range of stories and voices covering subjects I’d not encountered before. I was drawn all the way in and longed to keep reading. It’s been a joy and an honour to be involved in this prize that is helping to reshape our literary landscape.
—Nina Mingya Powles, Award judge
Read this year’s winning pieces, alongside work by our judges and Writers in Residence, in our anthology: click here to order your copy.
Join us to celebrate the winners at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival on Saturday 26 October: book your ticket here. Or you can watch the event online via livestream: details here.
About the winners (in alphabetical order)
Creative Non-Fiction
Shwetha Bai is a student, creative writer and freelance journalist. She is currently studying for a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds. She primarily writes poetry and prose that centre around Indian culture with some elements of magic realism. She is currently working on a short story that explores womanhood in a domestic Indian household.
Louis Bailey is currently working on his debut novel, The Night Run, an eco-memoir inspired by his nightly habit of running around the Dark Peak in Derbyshire. A sociologist by training, Louis is a research specialist at My CWA, a domestic violence charity in Cheshire. His writing has been published in a range of academic journals including the Journal of Interpersonal Violence; Criminal Justice and Behavior; and Mortality. His poetry has been published by SkearZines and Beautiful Dragons Press, and his visual work was exhibited as part of the Out in the Shires Festival (Worcester), and at the People’s History Museum (Manchester). In 2023, Louis was shortlisted for the Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing.
Kaylia Dunstan has had decades of experience in communications and has written for high profile public and private bodies globally. She has a love of melding the real and the allegorical in her creative work.
Ciara McVeigh is a freelance writer with commercial copy clients across the UK, Ireland and Europe, and bylines in The Irish Times, Image magazine and Woman & Home. She was a finalist in the 2023 Writers & Artists Working Class Writers’ Prize, and published in 2022’s ‘100 Voices’, an anthology of women’s writing. She won the Women’s Words Manchester writing competition in 2018 and was longlisted for the Fish Publishing Memoir Prize in 2015. Ciara is currently working on her first full length manuscript, a collection of creative nonfiction entitled Narrow Waters.
Vanita Parti is the founder of Blink Brow Bars, and is the beauty pioneer responsible for introducing threading to British women. She was awarded an MBE for service to Beauty, and when not tending to her brow bar empire, she can be found crusading on national media and hosting her podcast. Vanita is the graduate of the Faber Academy ‘How to Write a Novel’ and will soon embark on a Masters for Creative Writing.
Fiction
Melanie Banim, a writer and poet, leads creative workshops at universities and in communities, and works in mental health and music. She has recently been selected as a New Northern Poet 2024. In the last two years, she has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize, Highly Commended in the Manchester Poetry Prize, a finalist in the Gaia Nature and Class Prize, was longlisted in Rialto Nature and Place, Plaza, and Cúirt Prizes, and was shortlisted for the Northern Writers’ Debut Poet Award (in both 2023 and 2024). Melanie was chosen for The Stinging Fly poetry and fiction programmes at Irish Writers’ Centre, Dublin, and was an Emerging Writer (Poetry) at the London Library (2022-23). Melanie is one of this year’s New Poets’ Collective, writing monthly at Southbank Centre.
Patrick Cash is a British-Irish writer. He was one of the winners of the Felicity Bryan New Voices 2024 programme for his debut novel, Fireworks. His short fiction has been published in The London Magazine and Fictionable and long-listed for the Desperate Literature Prize 2024. He was part of The London Library’s Emerging Writers’ Programme for prose fiction (2022-23), working on a short story collection, Nightlife, for which he was also mentored by Alan Hollinghurst.
Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim is a Nigerian writer and editor currently based in the UK. He won the Quramo Writers’ Prize in 2022 and was selected for the Best Small Fictions anthology in 2024. He was a finalist for the Faber Children’s FAB Prize (2023), the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship (2022), the Masters Review anthology prize (2023), and twice in the Moon City Short Fiction Award (2022 & 2023). He has also been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2022), the Laura Kinsella Fellowship (2022), and the Dzanc Diverse Voices Prize (2021). He has multiple nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. Ibrahim is the editor of the Journal of African Youth Literature (JAY Lit).
Sophia Khan is a writer and teacher. She is a member of REWRITE and has been published in REWRITE Reads and The Decolonial Passage. In 2023 she was longlisted for the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize.
Harper Walton is a writer, editor and tutor. They have a Master’s Degree in creative writing from the Paris School of Arts and Culture. Their poetry, fiction and essays have been featured by 1883 Magazine, Whitechapel Gallery, Venice Biennale and more. They were highly commended for the Manchester Cathedral poetry competition, achieved third place in the Brick Lane Bookshop short story prize, and have won two Young Poets Network challenges. They have headlined and hosted spoken word events across the UK.
Poetry
Kasmira Kincaid is a writer and trade unionist. In 2020 she became the first ever care leaver to graduate from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. She has previously published fiction in the Dublin Review, nonfiction in the Big Issue, poetry in the anthology Free Loaves on Fridays and has appeared on BBC Radio Four, Four Thought. She is currently working on a play and a collection of poems.
Maya Little is a writer and theatre director. Her writing has appeared in The Rambling and Oxford Review of Books, among others, and she was a Roundhouse Poetry Collective member (2023-24). She is a regular workshop facilitator at the Oxford Poetry Library and Fusion Arts. In 2023 she was commissioned to write ONLYCONNECT, an interactive digital story about rentable friends.
Rona Luo is a queer, neurodivergent poet and acupuncturist. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Magma, The Massachusetts Review, ANMLY, Honey Literary, fourteen poems, and more. Her speculative visual poetry has been exhibited at the Royal Festival Hall. She has been supported by Tin House, Kundiman and Southbank Centre’s New Poets Collective.
Francis-Xavier Mukiibi is a poet of Ugandan heritage. He is an alumnus of the Barbican Young Poets, the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and the Obsidian Foundation and recieved an Eric Gregory Award in 2024. His poems appear, or are forthcoming, with Ink Sweat & Tears, Zindabad Zine, Under the Radar, Propel, Magma, Poetry Wales, Poetry London, Broken Sleep Books and Flipped Eye Publishing.
Lara Mae Simpson is a poet, writer, and editor, with an BA in English from King’s College London. Their poems have been published by The Poetry Society, fourteen poems, Queerlings, and more, and their essays and articles appear in labaatan and Pomegranate Magazine, amongst others. They were Literature Editor at STRAND Magazine 2023-24, and they are currently Poetry Editor at Phi Magazine and an intern at Sinister Wisdom. They are part of The Writing Squad.
The 2025 competition will open in mid-January. Details will be published on our website in due course; sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date.
