Autumn Writing Prize

This very special issue features the winners of the Visual Verse Autumn Writing Prize for 2022.

Congratulations to our 2022 winners:

Ankh Spice, Mims Sully, Robin Houghton and Osahon Oka.

From our shortlist of 20 chosen by my fellow judges and the VV team, I was looking for the work that had meaning, mystery, and captured the sense of strangeness in the image. With these final four there was an added layer too - all of these works are composed around a core emotion, a balancing act of language and feeling which is exciting and quietly impressive - they are the ones that stayed with me, and yielded more as I read them over. Congratulations to everyone who submitted, and these four writers from across the VV world.
– Professor Preti Taneja

Thank you to our brilliant, insightful judges: our co-founder and acclaimed author and academic Professor Preti Taneja, deputy editor Isabel Brookes; Victoria Gosling, author of the brilliant novel Before the Ruins; the hugely talented US-based writer, storyteller, and performer Jay Délise; and Visual Verse publisher and co-founder Kristen Harrison.

And thank you to the 141 writers from around the world submitted to the prize this year. It was no simple task: write 50-500 words in response to a supplied image and submit within 24 hours. We congratulate all of you for taking on the challenge.