After careful and detailed consideration, the New Writers team has selected the winners of the 100-Word Writing Competition. With more than 600 entries, this was no easy task. Not least because the standard of writing was higher than ever. It is extremely difficult to write a story or poem with so few words that moves the judges’ emotions, excites their synapses or provokes hitherto unthought ideas. But the winners of this competition have achieved that.
We would like to thank everyone who entered. We’ve had a lot of fun reading every entry, and we doff our caps to you all. If your entry didn’t make it to the winners’ table, the shortlist or longlist, it does not mean it is not very good or even brilliant. Judging of creative work is necessarily a subjective endeavour and there were literally hundreds of other entries we could have picked if looking at the quality alone.
Also, you have helped raise money for two excellent UK-registered charities First Story and The Funzi & Bodo Trust. We have transferred the donations and we are confident they will put the cash to very good use.
Note that the New Writers Poetry Competition 2025 – with a prize pot of £1,800 – is open for entries until 17th July 2025 – you can find the competition details HERE.
And now is the time to find out the 10 winners, and those who were picked for the shortlist and longlist. (Click on the titles to read the winning entries.) The winners will also be published in the next New Writers Anthology (the last one can be found HERE).
Winners
First Prize (£500): Twist in Peace by Lucy Mac
Author bio: Lucy Mac is a British writer of short, flash and micro fiction living on the outskirts of Ashdown Forest. Her stories have been published in print and online in Bath Flash Fiction and Westword among others, and longlisted for various competitions, including Bath Flash Fiction, Yeovil Literary Prize, and Not Quite Write. When she isn’t being mum or walking her rescue dog, you can find her writing/daydreaming at the kitchen table or on Instagram and Bluesky (@lucymacwrites on both).
Second Prize (£200): FLOUR CHILD by Alice Lyon
Author bio: Alice Lyon (she/they) is a writer based in Northern Europe by way of Missouri. Their work explores family dynamics, with a focus on disabilities and generational trauma. She is currently at work on a novel. Website: alicelyon.com; BlueSky: @wordsbyalice.bsky.social; Instagram: @alice.stea
Third Prize (£100): Sock by Jay McKenzie
Author bio: Jay McKenzie’s work appears in adda, Maudlin House, The Hooghly Review, Fahmidan Journal, Fictive Dream and others. She has been recognised in the Exeter Story Prize, Henshaw, Quiet Man Dave, Edinburgh Short Story Award, Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, Exeter Novel Prize, Alpine Fellowship, Bath Short Story Award, Bath Flash Fiction Award, Aesthetica, Bridport Prize, Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and was recently awarded first prize in the 2025 Fish Short Story Prize and runner up in the inaugural Tom Grass Prize. Her novel, How to Lose the Lottery, will be published with Harper Fiction in March 2026. You can find her at jaymckenzieauthor.com or on Instagram as jay_writes_books.
Fourth to Tenth Places (£50 each)
And the seven other prize-winning entries that complete the top ten (in alphabetical order by entry title):
21st December 1916 by Alison Wassell
Author bio: Alison Wassell is a writer of short fiction from Merseyside, UK. Her work has been published by Fictive Dream, Does It Have Pockets, Gooseberry Pie, Frazzled Lit, Trash Cat Lit, NFFD, Bath Flash Fiction Award, FlashFlood Journal and elsewhere. She was Highly Commended in the 2024 Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction and has twice been nominated for Best Small Fictions. Twitter/X: @lilysslave Bluesky: @alisonwassell.bsky.social
Descartes at Naylor’s Cove by Paul Lenehan
Author bio: Paul Lenehan, a Dubliner, is a writer of long, short, and flash fiction. He has placed his stories in a number of Irish and international journals and magazines over the years. His current writing project is entitled Tears For Things: One Hundred Stories of One Hundred Words.
Flight by Joanna Hastings
Author bio: Joanna Hastings is a writer and editor. She has written plays, children’s stories and poetry, and is currently working on a novel (coincidentally featuring a rather combative seagull in a supporting role). She can be found at joannahastings@bsky.social or through her editing website: joannahastings.com.
Life, In No Particular Order by Katrina Moinet
Author bio: Katrina Moinet is winner of two Globe Soup fiction prizes and shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year with their debut poetry collection Portrait of a Young Girl Falling. Katrina is published in Poetry Wales, Raw Lit, Black Iris, and Mslexia Best Women’s Short Fiction. Their Hedgehog prizewinning pamphlet The Art of Silence and a third pamphlet, with Atomic Bohemian, are forthcoming in 2025. Instagram: @kmoinetwrites, website: katrinamoinet.com
mother of all mothers by Emily Pille
Author bio: Emily Pille was born in a small suburb outside of Detroit, and her heart was set on writing and exploring the world shortly after. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in English, she went on to live in New York, Prague, Rome, and Seoul. As both writing and reading can be solitary ventures, Emily offers her work as a meeting point, an invitation to face — and relish — longing, desire, loneliness, and hope. Instagram: @emilyypille
The Hush Between Heartbeats by Lucia Galli
Author bio: Half Italian, half British, three-quarters wanderer, four-fifths eccentric cat lady, and entirely a book lover, Lucia Galli is a researcher by profession and a novelist at heart. She currently lives in Italy, dividing her time between writing, planning new trips, and dreaming up new stories.
To bake an autism pie by Véro Falco
Author bio: Véro lives by the sea with her very attentive cat. She gravitates towards short stories & poetry, but enjoys experimenting across different creative mediums. Véro likes to write “stuff that makes you feel things,” and is a keen explorer in the vast landscape of human emotion. Website: verofalco.co.uk
Shortlist
Here are the other entries that the judging panel selected for the shortlist of the competition (in alphabetical order by entry title):
- Hollows by Megan Cartwright
- Margaret Clitherow, 1586 by Harriet Back
- Marshmallow Blooms by Karen Storey
- Naked Truths by Dalila Hamdoun
- Nightbreak by Norman Grieve
- RECONNECTION by Alice Lyon
- Rooted In You by Emily Payton
- Shoulder Season by Adele Gallogly
- The man, the father of the man by Eyimofe Okuwoga
- The Role of Peat Bogs in Grieving by Gill O’Halloran
- Want A Friend? by Kerri McCourt
Longlist
Here are the entries that were picked for the longlist on this occasion, with plenty just a whisker away (in alphabetical order by entry title):
@theveryshelleybee(deactivated) by Jay McKenzie
A Day Like Me by Anne Meale
Bedsit Prose by Stephen Chappell
CAMPING IN THE APOCALYPSE by Nicholas Hogg
Confirm Your Humanity by Katrina Moinet
Death Too, Stood Still by Calder Wren
Dreading Phone Calls by Bri Stoever
Grief Doesn’t Shrink by Kate Hack
He woke before his da by Peter Moulding
Impostor by Nicola Wilks
Jakey Boy’s Getting Moobs by Nick Havergal
Life in colour by Caroline Silverside
Limited Express Bottleneck by Voxghn
Little Robin by Goeul Kim
Lost and Found by Joanna Miller
Slime by Roisin Mulligan
Stellar Formation by Râna Campbell
Stereocilia by Christopher Jonathan Phelps
The Elusive Jester In The Silver-Jangly Hat by Col Robinson
The Explorer by Jaime Gill
The Invasion by Jacqui Kelly
The Language of Repair by Debra Waters
The Last Ride by Harry Humber
The Least of These by Helen King
The man, the father of the man by Eyimofe Okuwoga
The Manmade Meteorites Crash and They Burn and They Burn and They Burn by Manu St. Thomas
Under the bed by Valerie Matti
Unit 2 by James Borley
Wings by Kate Hack
Wraiths of the Past by Arin Laney
Thank you for entering our competition, and we hope you enjoy the winning entries as much as we do. We wish you all the best with your writing endeavours. Best wishes from The New Writers Team.
p.s. If you like what we’re doing at NewWriters.org.uk, please consider donating at our Ko-fi.com page. We’ll use any donations to offer more regular free competitions (with bigger prizes) and more free entries to our paid competition to those on low incomes.
Thank you to everyone who entered. If you’d like to find out about our upcoming writing competitions – both free-to-enter and those with an entry fee such as the Poetry Competition 2025 (£1,200 top prize) – as well as writing prompts, book recommendations and more, sign up to our newsletter (we send one each month and will never share your email address or any other information with anyone else).