It's Winners Day!

It’s winners day!
Judge Fiona Cooper has selected her winners for the December Global Short Story Competition and writers from Spain and France have taken the honours. And we have also announced the winner of our recent flash fiction competition.
The £100 December Global Short Story Competition first place prize goes to Johanna Bergstrom, of Malaga, Spain, of whose story The Bitch Next Door Fiona says: “This is a fast paced intense story, exploring preconceptions and assumptions about other people and their actions. The way events are distorted is given a neat twist at the end - the Chinese whispers that gossip thrives on are very well done - and this is wholly believable and satisfying.”
Our highly commended runner up is Ann Hebert, of St Andre-de-Najac in Aveyron, France, who wins £25 for The Letter.
Fiona says: “Our secrets will always come to light eventually, even if sometimes they stay hidden until death. This compassionate and thoughtful story shows the quite astonishing parallel between a young woman's present pretences and her dead mother's deep buried past. It is an intriguing story which creates a strong visual picture and I could see it being televised very successfully.”
The writers on the shortlist are:
Thomas Smith, Sunderland, England
Alex Reece Abbott, York, England
Eowyn O’Connor
Winning stories will be posted on www.inscribemedia.co.uk Well done to our successful writers. You can enter the latest competition at the same address.
* Our judging panel, chaired by John Dean, has selected the winner of our free flash fiction competition launched in October 2013. The challenge was make us feel something in more than 20 words. The £50 prize goes to
Lesley Marshall with:
A boy!” my husband exulted. “We’re a perfect family!”
Which we were.
Until he discovered the imperfect chromosome... and left.
Special mention to It’s a Girl by Asharika Jaward:
"A girl?" they sneer. Its fate is sealed. Hers, but not hers to keep; to love, to mother
Eileen R Mueller:
Scraps of rotting pumpkin, cast-off shoes.... A bitten hotdog! Starving, he shovels it down, stumbling to the next bin.
Kirk Nesset: Catastrophe Measure
The sky is on fire, our buildings bright pink. We wait where the ground shakes least, endlessly repeating our names.
Our free comps run at our Facebook page at
 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Inscribemedia/183385438479538