Meet the winners of the Manchester Writing Competition taking home a £10,000 prize

A teacher from New Zealand who wrote poetry while recovering from a car accident and a refugee mentor from London who writes about loss and childhood memories have won the 2023 Manchester Writing Competition.

The Competition is run every year by the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Met and offers the largest amount of prize money in the UK for writing that hasn’t been published before.

Manchester Writing Competition

Every year one short story and one collection of poems are chosen by a panel of distinguished judges made up of poets and novelists who teach creative writing at the university.

Tracey Slaughter was presented with the 2023 poetry prize and April Yee took home the 2023 Short Story prize at an Awards Gala at Manchester Met hosted by the former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

Duffy, who is Creative Director of the Manchester Writing School, said: “These prizes are life-changing for anyone who wants to be a writer.

“Lots of authors and poets are forced to have day jobs but winning this amount of money will give you the chance to focus full-time on your work.

“When I first started out I had a job as barmaid and if I wanted to write, I had to do it behind the bar when things were quiet and there were no customers.

“I wish I’d had the kind of financial support that the Manchester Writing Competition offers to talented people.”

Duffy set up the competition in 2008 to celebrate Manchester as an international city of writers and find diverse new voices.

Manchester Writing Competition Winners 2023

Tracey Slaughter, a teacher at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, was badly injured in a car accident earlier this year, and this led to her collection of poems opioid sonatas that so impressed the judges.

Beating five other shortlisted poets to win the award, Slaughter said: ‘It was truly an honour to be chosen as a finalist among such inspiring writers.

‘I’m completely dumbstruck to be named as the winner. Receiving this prize has made me feel like something positive has come out of all the time I spent in hospital.’

The poetry award was chosen by a panel of judges chaired by the poet and Manchester Met Creative Writing lecturer Malika Booker, who said: ‘Tracey has a genuine, unique voice and her work is forceful and outstanding.’

Short Story Prize April Yee was chosen as winner for her powerful short story about pregnancy, Still Blue Thing, and plans to use the prize money to complete a collection of short stories as well as finishing her first novel.

Yee said: ‘It’s great to have this support for my work, I think a good short story should be beautifully written but also have an impact on the people who read it.

‘Writing prizes like this one are really useful for authors because they give you a deadline to work to and if you are lucky enough to win, they help you pay for the basics that allow you to write.’

The best short story was chosen by a team of judges who all teach creative writing at Manchester Met.

The prize-winning author and chair of the judges Lara Williams said: ‘Picking a winner this year was tremendously difficult but Yee produced a captivating story that was so exciting to read. I can’t wait to see what she does next!’

Support for upcoming writers and poets

For the past 15 years, the Manchester Writing Competition has been supporting emerging writers and helping them to attract literary agents and get their novels or poetry collections published.

Since the Competition began it has awarded a total of £240,000 in prize money, and it has played a part in earning Manchester its status as International Unesco City of Literature.

The competition is open to anyone over the age of 16 from anywhere in the world. The deadline for the next round of the competition will be in September 2024.

For more information visit their website here