We are very proud to announce that THE CANTERBURY TALES WRITING COMPETITION 2018/19: MAGIC AND TRICKERY will be judged by Patience Agbabi, Gail Ashton and Adam Baron. We are honoured and excited to have their support.
Patience Agbabi is an award winning poet who has lectured in Creative Writing at the universities of Greenwich, Cardiff and Kent. She is currently a creative writing fellow at Oxford Brookes. Her 2014 retelling of The Canterbury Tales, Telling Tales, was nominated for the Ted Hughes Award. In 2017 Patience was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Patience will be looking for a love of spells, spiels and magical mischief.
Gail Ashton is a poet, writer, editor, and teacher who has lectured at the universities of Manchester and Birmingham. She has published numerous explorations of medieval literature including a recent analysis of Chaucer’s most famous work entitled Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, for Bloomsbury Publishing. Gail’s recent collections of poetry include The Other Side of the Glass and What Rain Taught Us .
Gail will be looking for surprises, work with a story to tell and a distinctive contemporary voice to tell it.
Adam Baron is the author of six critically acclaimed novels that have been widely translated across Europe. His latest, Boy Underwater, was published in June 2018 by HarperCollins and is aimed at younger readers. Boy Underwater was Waterstones, Sunday Times, and Mail on Sunday Book of the Month, as well as being the first ever Toppsta Book Club choice. Adam is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Kingston University.
Adam Baron will be looking for energy, both in the writing and the characters. He says: “I’d like to read stories that really leap up off the page. I can’t wait to get stuck in.”