The Jane Austen Literacy Foundation Writing Competition 2024 has been a great success. Our theme was ‘The Art of Listening’, we had more than 70% more entries, and the standard was outstanding. Our panel of over a dozen volunteer judges, led by Jane MacKenzie, first narrowed it down to a longlist of a dozen short stories.
Our three finalists were chosen from the longlist of twelve by our second panel of judges:
The three finalist stories were published online for the public to vote and pick our winner for 2024.
THE PRIZE - All three finalist stories will be recorded as an audiobook by multi award winning Austen narrator, Alison Larkin, and released later in the year for all to hear.
Congratulations to Ann Evans, Terry Kerins and Scott Santarossa for writing the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation Winning Stories of 2024. Click here to read the winning stories.
Scroll down to register and receive an email notification for our next writing competition, launching March 2025.
2024 Winner: Ann Evans
the WINNER
The Dawn Chorus by Ann Evans
Ann Evans started writing over 30 years ago as a hobby when her three children were small. Gradually that hobby became a career and a way of life. Amongst the first writing projects she got into was to create, co-write and edit a parish magazine.
Once her children were at school she wrote, directed and occasionally acted in six school pantomimes. She also snuck in the back door of her local newspaper, the Coventry Evening Telegraph and became a Feature Writer for 13 years.
Her first book, Cry Danger for Scholastic was published in 1995. Now with over 40 books to her name, she writes for children, teens, reluctant readers, adult crime/thrillers and romances. She also writes non-fiction for a variety of magazines - and short stories!
FINALISTS
(in alphabetical order)
2024 Finalist - Terry Kerins
2024 Finalist - Scott Santarossa
The House Next Door by Terry Kerins
Terry Kerins was born in Macroom, Co. Cork, Ireland. In 2021 she was runner up in the Michael Mullen Charity Fund Flash Fiction Competition.
In 2022 she won The Bournemouth Writing Short Story Prize and was also short-listed in From the Well. In 2023 she received a Special Commendation in From the Well short story award and her two of her entries in the Allingham Flash Fiction Competition were short-listed and one was Highly Commended.
Terry was a finalist in LISP Short Story (London Independent Story Prize)1st Competition in 2024 and was also Commended in The Bournemouth Writing Short Story Prize.
Terry writes short stories and flash fiction and lives in Cork City with her daughter.
The Tram Stop by Scott Santarossa
Scott Santarossa grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and currently lives in Perth, Australia.
His writing journey started in 2022 when his debut short story ‘Watermelon Smoothies’ was selected as a top 50 finalist from more than 5000 entries in the inaugural short story competition, ‘The Best Australian Yarn.’
Scott enjoys writing stories centred around LGBTIQ+ characters, especially through the lens of multicultural relationships. In his spare time, Scott works as a dentist, enjoys learning languages (in particular Auslan) and travels when he can with his partner.
HIGHLY COMMENDED
The following stories were also selected for our longlist, from which the three finalists were chosen:
Distant Voices by Ros Levenson
Holly's Poem by A.J. Swift
I Am No Bird by Caroline Parsons
Jeannie's Voice by Suzanne Parsons
Penelope's Library by Caitlin Lore
Structures by Timothy Di Florio
The Good Biscuits by Beth Daley
Threads of Life by Nigel Ward
Two Twenty-Three by Derick Turner
We would like to congratulate all of the authors. These stories did not quite make it to our final three, but nearly did. We found the writing to be of exceptional quality and these stories gave our panel of judges much pleasure. We very much hope that all of the authors who enter our writing competition will keep writing and will enter the competition again next year.
THANK YOU
We would sincerely like to thank all of the volunteers who work behind the scenes on our Writing Competition, including our lead judge, Jane MacKenzie, our competition administrator, Delicia Johnson, our judging panels and promoters.
We also would like to thank everyone who entered our competition, read our finalist stories and voted to choose our winner - we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
WRITING COMPETITION 2025
If you would like to be sent an email when our next short story writing competition is launched in March 2025, fill in the form below: