Winners Announced for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2016

60 Finalists including Two Winners Published in a Compelling Anthology

of Poetry & Short Fiction

Auckland poet Maris O’Rourke has been selected as one of just 60 finalists in the international Aesthetica Creative Writing Award that attracted thousands of entries from writers across the world.

Now in its 10^th year, the award is hosted by Aesthetica Magazine, a leading contemporary art and culture publication with a print and digital readership of 311,000 worldwide. The Aesthetica Creative Writing Award is an internationally renowned poetry and short fiction competition open to emerging and established writers from around the world.

The Award recognises excellence in contemporary writing and provides a platform for literary professionals to showcase their work and reach a wider audience. Each year the finalists and winners are published in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual, an absorbing compendium that fuses new and critically-acclaimed international writers. Considering a vast range of themes and subject matter, the book reveals many different aspects of life today alongside introductions by Arifa Akbar, Journalist, Critic and Columnist and former Literary Editor of The Independent and inewspapers, and Poet and Professor Dr Oz Hardwick.

Judges include Martine Pierquin, Course Organiser in Creative Writing and Film, Media and Contemporary Cultures at the University of Edinburgh Short Courses; Stephen Toase, whose work is published extensively and who is currently working with imove Arts on a project called Haunt; Liz Jones, teaching Fellow at Aberystwyth University’s Theatre, Film and Television Department, and David Wharton, Course Director of the Certificate in Creative Writing at the Vaughan Centre for Lifelong Learning, University of Leicester.

This year’s competition was fierce, with over 2,500 entries from over 40 countries worldwide, including Australia, Canada, the USA, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Japan, China, Ireland and the UK. 60 finalists from the poetry and short fiction categories, including a winner from each, were selected for publication, featuring recent university graduates alongside established literary professionals in a unique collection of innovative writers at all stages in their career.

Winning entries include Christina Sanders’ What Happens At The Edge, which stood out as the Short Fiction Winner for its beautiful writing and its emotional intensity. Winner of the poetry category, Ian Dudley impressed judges with Fish and Chips, a poem that uses simple yet effective language combined with unexpected rhythm to intrigue the reader.

Cherie Federico, Editor of Aesthetica Magazine, comments: “In publishing the Annual, we are presented with a fantastic and unique opportunity to showcase some of the best emerging and established literary talent from across the world. The result is a collection of new writing of outstanding quality, which you can return to time and time again; it will continue to spark your passion for new writing.”