Dragon’s Pen – Snippets from the winning poem and short story

During October and November 2012, women from all over Scotland submitted short stories and poems on the theme of ‘Moving’ to Glasgow Women’s Library. We received an overwhelming 146 entries, from which four poems and four short stories were shortlisted. The shortlisted writers were invited along on November 29th to read their entries out in front of our panel of tame and talented dragons, who provided encouraging and supportive feedback. One short story and one  poem were selected by the dragons as the overall winner in each category. We were so impressed by the standard of the entries that we decided to feature a short extract of each work on our website and on social media for the month before, and the month after, International Women’s Day on March 8th 2013.

In the next few weeks, the two winning entries – COLOUR by Judith Stevenson (winner of the short story category) and WED by Ruth Johnston (winner of the poetry category) will be made available as podcasts and, at the same time, all shortlisted entries will be available to read on our website. In the meantime, if you can’t wait to read the shortlisted entries, they will be exhibited at Glasgow Women’s Library from Friday 15th February, along with most of the entries we received.

Today we are launching the series of short extracts with teasers from the two wonderful winning entries. We will have more snippets to tempt your reading taste-buds over the next two months. Enjoy these lovely snippets and come back for more every weekday from Monday 11th February.

“It was the dusty plastic gardenia arranged in a yellowing glass vase on the windowsill that hardened her heart.”

from COLOUR by Judith Stevenson (winning short story)

“my lips chattered, painted oxblood red,
that smeared on a chain of pearls
I kept putting in my mouth,”

from WED by Ruth Johnston (winning poem)