GRAND PRIZE WINNER – UNPUBLISHED
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Pagodas of the Sun—Japan Stories – G. S. Arnold
Canada
G. S. Arnold has an MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing from the University of Toronto and works at a career college in Toronto, Canada. His work has appeared in literary journals such as The Malahat Review, Event Magazine, Ninth Letter, Asia Literary Review, Glimmer Train, Prairie Fire, and The Masters Review. Along with receiving numerous Toronto, Ontario and Canada Arts Council grants as well as a Pushcart and a Journey Prize nomination, his stories have been short or long listed in contests such as the Writer’s Union of Canada Short Prose competition, the 2019 CBC short story award, the international Bridport Prize for short stories, and the Masters Review Short Story Anthology. He has recently finished his debut novel “Sea of Clouds,” set during the 1923 Tokyo earthquake.
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GRAND PRIZE WINNER – PUBLISHED
/short stories/
Little Fortified Stories – Barbara Black
Canada
Barbara Black writes short and flash fiction, poetry and libretti. Her work has appeared in many publications and anthologies, including The Cincinnati Review, Geist, The Hong Kong Review and Bath Flash Fiction Award anthology 2020. Achievements include: Fiction Finalist, 2020 National Magazine Awards and Winner, 2017 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition. Barbara was shortlisted for the 2023 Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award and won First Prize in The Plaza Prizes Microfiction Contest and Second in their Flash Fiction category. Her debut book, Music from a Strange Planet, received the 2023 Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society Award in Fiction, was a finalist in The Canadian Book Club Awards and won the international Wishing Shelf Book Award for Fiction. Her latest book, a recipient of the 2024 Firebird Book Award for Short Story, is Little Fortified Stories, a collection of micro and flash fiction. Barbara lives in Victoria, BC, Canada, where she gardens and loves to ride the twisties on her trusty Triumph motorcycle.
NOVELS UNPUBLISHED
A Generation of Leaves – Alexander Matheou
Malaysia
Alexander Matheou is a humanitarian worker, a traveller, and a writer. In 2016, while supporting the response to the migration crisis in Greece, he researched the history of how his Greek grandfather died in the resistance in Central Greece in 1943, and he published the story on Amazon. He then spent four years researching and writing a novel: A Generation of Leaves, loosely based on family history, which follows the adventures of three very different brothers in the Balkan Wars in Greece in 1912/1913. Each summer, Alexander stays on the Island of Aegina, where in 2022 and 2023, he wrote Aegina Tales, a collection of short stories that weave an ancient spell from the abandoned goddess, Aegina, into the lives of people living on the island in the summer of 2023. Alexander is currently Regional Director for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, based in Malaysia, and is responsible for coordinating humanitarian work in thirty-eight countries.
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NOVELS PUBLISHED
Istanbul Crossing – Timothy Jay Smith
France
From a young age, Timothy Jay Smith developed a ceaseless wanderlust that’s taken him around the world many times. En route, he found the characters that people his work. Polish cops and Greek fishermen, mercenaries and arms dealers, child prostitutes and wannabe terrorists: he hung with them all in an unparalleled international career that saw him smuggle banned plays from behind the Iron Curtain, maneuver through Occupied Territories, represent the U.S. at the highest levels of foreign governments, and stowaway aboard a ‘devil’s barge’ for a three-day crossing from Cape Verde that landed him in an African jail.
Tim brings the same energy to his writing. As a result, he’s won top honors for his novels, screenplays and stage plays. Fire on the Island (2020) won the Gold Medal in the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition for the Novel, and his screenplay adaptation of it was named Best Indie Script by WriteMovies. The Fourth Courier (2019), was a finalist for Best Gay Mystery in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards. Previously, he won the Paris Prize for Fiction (now the de Groot Prize) for his novel, Checkpoint. Kirkus Reviews called Cooper’s Promise “literary dynamite” and selected it as one of 2012’s Best Books.
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POETRY UNPUBLISHED
Waiting for Godot in the blue Corolla – Jennifer M Phillips
USA
Jennifer M Phillips authored the poetry collection Wrestling With the Angel (Wipf & Stock, 2024), and chapooks Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (iblurb.com 2020), A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street press, 2022), and Sailing To the Edges (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2025). A bi-national immigrant, she lives gratefully in Barnstable, Cape Cod on Wampanoag ancestral lands. She is a bonsai-grower, gardener, painter, was a long-time HIV-AIDS and hospital chaplain and Episcopal priest.
POETRY PUBLISHED
I have decided to remain vertical – Gaylene Carbis
Australia
Gayelene Carbis is an award-winning Australian/Irish/Chinese/Cornish writer of poetry, prose, short film, and plays. Gayelene’s first poetry collection, Anecdotal Evidence (Five Islands Press) was awarded Finalist, International Best Book Award, U.S. Her second book of poetry, I Have Decided to Remain Vertical (Puncher and Wattmann) has been Finalist /Distinguished Favourite in numerous international poetry book awards in 2023 and 2024 (U.K.; U.S.) and most recently awarded Highly Commended in the NSW Society of Women Writers’ Poetry Book Award 2024. Her book is currently Finalist in the Eyelands Poetry Book Award 2024 (Greece).
Gayelene’s work has been widely published, performed and won/been finalist in poetry, prose, short film and playwriting awards in Australia/overseas, including India, Malaysia, Nepal, Edinburgh, Oxford, New York, and Canada, where she was awarded a Banff Residency Scholarship in Poetry. She teaches Creative Writing in universities and at Sandy beach (Sandringham) and works as a writing mentor and manuscript assessor. She is currently working on two collections: prose poetry; and auto-fiction/memoir.
Gayelene lives and works on the unceded land of the Boonwurrung people.
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SHORT STORY UNPUBLISHED
Black Crescent – Townsend Walker
USA
Townsend Walker draws inspiration from cemeteries, foreign places, violence and strong women. “3 Women, 4 Towns, 5 Bodies & other stories,”a short story collection, Deeds Publishing, 2018.
“La Ronde,”a novella of linked stories, Truth Serum Press, 2015.
Overone hundred short stories and poems published in literary journals.
Two nominations for the PEN/O.Henry Award.
He reviews for the “New York Journal of Books.”
He teaches creative writing at Mount Tamalpais College on the San Quentin State Prison Campus. His website is https://www.townsendwalker.com.
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SHORT STORY PUBLISHED
Occupations – Anna Mantzaris
USA
Anna Mantzaris is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work has appeared in The Cortland Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Necessary Fiction, New World Writing Quarterly, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. She teaches writing in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University.
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HISTORICAL NOVEL/MEMOIR UNPUBLISHED
Darkness in 1984 – Paul W. B. Marsden
Wales
Husband to Elena and dad to three grown up kids who make me so proud. I work in construction but I’m burning passion is being a writer. I have enjoyed a varied career as an anti-war member of parliament, director of an animal charity, security consultant, quality management professional and I dally in IT and AI. I have published technical construction book, local history books, poems, aphorisms and a literary history book – Entente Cordiale of 20 Writers in the 19th century.
I am absolutely delighted and honoured to be a finalist in the Eyelands Book Awards with Darkness in 1984 about the Christmas meeting, in 1945, between Arthur Koestler and George Orwell in North Wales that influenced his writing of 1984.
Recently I finished my next manuscript, Making A Moveable Feast, on the day to day conversations, in the first months of 1922 in Paris, between Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway that shaped his unique writing style. It is a story about the impact of the women of the era, not least, Hadley Richardson.
I am now planning my next ‘writers’ book!
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HISTORICAL NOVEL/MEMOIR PUBLISHED
Today In Paradise – Andrew Corin
New Zealand
Andrew, a New Zealand trained doctor and award-winning author, has been working in General Practice since 1997. He is based in Tauranga, New Zealand, working full time as a primary care physician and clinical researcher with extensive experience in governance roles for health and community organisations.
Andrew has also had medical experience in Ireland, Kenya and the Philippines, including work for emergency relief and mission organisations.
He enjoys growing avocados on his small orchard and participating in as many outdoor activities with his family as possible in all his spare time!
Writing has been a delightful creative release for him, whether in the form of coaxing life out of a dry, academic article, or embracing the unpredictability of crafting fiction. Andrew’s first published work, a collection of short fiction stories titled This Old Stick was awarded as Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book awards of 2020. His debut novel, Today In Paradise, a historical fiction, has been awarded as a Finalist in the Eyelands Bood Awards 2024.
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CHILDREN’S BOOK UNPUBLISHED
Braveheart – Iryna Polishchuk
Ukraine
Iryna Polishchuk is a children books writer from Ukraine. She lives in Kyiv now. Iryna loves children and they love her too. She is sure that each child is unique and needs parents love and care.
She strongly believes that children literature still holds a high place in people’s lives all over the world. It is a significant tool to reveal children’s talents and self-actualize.
She writes kind and good stories to help children to grow up in a loving and caring for the environment.
Despite the horrible war in Ukraine, she continuous to write for children. Becauseit becomes more important to share universal human values such as love, friendship, wisdom, hope, helpfulness, honesty, unity with nature and a world at peace.
Her books are full of beauty and hope what we especially need in today’s troubled world.
Iryna feel blessed with supporting friends and family in her life.
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CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHED
Bunky and the Summer Wish – Aleksandra Tryniecka
Poland
Aleksandra Tryniecka is an Assistant Professor at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Poland. Her speciality is literature, especially the nineteenth-century (Victorian) novel. She is the author of academic (Women’s Literary Portraits in the Victorian and Neo-Victorian Novel – 2023) and children’s books (Bunky and the Walms: The Christmas Story – 2021, Bunky and the Summer Wish – 2024). In her free time she writes poetry and stories in order to accommodate her life with the right words. She enjoys the nineteenth-century British literature, especially everything written by Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins. One of her favourite literary characters is the Cheshire Cat. Without a doubt, Bunky is also her favourite literary character! Bunky and his Friends not only live on the page’s of Aleksandra’s novels, but also in her reality! Bunky has a bunkyful YouTube channel with his all-year-round adventures:
and a website too: http://www.aleksandratryniecka.com
He hopes to become every Reader’s friend and invite more peace, goodness, magic, empathy and nobility into our world.
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SELF PUBLISHED
Dancing the Labyrinth – Karen Martin
Australia
Karen Martin is an acclaimed Australian indie author. She is known for running away with the circus, creating plays in prisons, and striving for transformational theatre experiences. Awarded for her theatre work and preferring to travel to write in-situ, Karen learned to listen to the muses whispering in her ear. She has contributed to several non-fiction books: The Women’s Circus: Leaping the Wire, and Women in Theatre: Ewa Czajor Memorial Award Recipients, and received a Local History Award for the writing and publication of two booklets on her award-winning production of The Women’s Jail Project. Her debut non-fiction The Little Book of Red Flags, shares a humorous approach to a relationship breakdown.
Karen wrote her debut novel Dancing the Labyrinth while living in Crete. Her second novel The Bringer of Happiness was inspired from Languedoc/Southern France folklore about Mary Magdalene. Her third novel Delphi, the sequel to Dancing the Labyrinth, was recently released. The books are united in her thematic series Women Unveiled and share a distinctive feminine narrative probing societal boundaries. Women Unveiled blends Greek mythology, history and imagination in telling (almost true) stories.
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SPECIAL DISTINCTION (novels unpublished)
The Lost Vimana – Jimmy Tandel
India
eyelands.gr 