Helen Barton wins Orange / Harper's Bazaar Short Story Competition

London, 19.15pm, 3 June 2009: Worcester based writer Helen Barton has triumphed over 600 aspiring authors to win the eighth Orange/Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition.

Judge and Editor of Harper’s Bazaar, Lucy Yeomans, presented a cheque for £1,000 to Helen Barton at the Orange Prize for Fiction awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre in central London.  The winning story will be published in the October edition of Harper’s Bazaar magazine, on sale in September.

Now in its eighth year, the Orange/Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition forms part of the Orange Prize for Fiction literary portfolio and aims to support unpublished writers at the beginning of their careers.

Previous winners have gone on to achieve notable literary success including Clare Allan, who won the first ever Orange/Harpers Bazaar Short Story Competition in 2001.  Her debut novel, Poppy Shakespeare, was published by Bloomsbury in 2006 and went on to be longlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Award for New Writers. The novel was also dramatised for television and broadcast to acclaim on Channel 4.

Entrants to this year’s competition were asked to write a story of no more than 2,000 words on the theme of ‘Mother’.  Entries were received from all over the world and three finalists were selected and invited to attend a writing masterclass held at the offices of Random House in London.

Commenting on the winner, Susan Sandon, Chair of Judges, said “The three shortlisted stories were all worthy contenders and selecting a winner was an enormously difficult task involving amicable but robust discussion between the judges.  All three writers are immensely talented and I am certain that they all have enormous potential.”

The two other shortlisted authors, Brooke Dunnell and Jenny Holden, will receive £500 each.