SNAP Winners Announced

New writing by students at the University of Suffolk has been celebrated at an awards ceremony.

This year’s Student New Angle Prize (SNAP) winners were announced after their 500-word East Anglia focused entries were judged by award-winning author, Kate Sawyer.

Kate also delivered a writing workshop at the event and ran a micro-fiction challenge asking attendees to capture a memory of East Anglia in under 30 words. The challenge was won by Amy Bessent and judged by last year’s SNAP winner, James Brown.

MA History student, Anya Page was announced as the winner of this year’s SNAP competition with her piece An Abandoned Airfield which Kate described as a multi-sensory piece of writing and which she praised as ‘traversing time’.

Anya, from Ipswich, said: “I get a lot of my ideas when I am out and about and store them in my head until I write them down.”

The runner-up was PhD Creative Writing student, Jayd Green, for North Sea, Over Night. Highly commended went to fellow PhD Creative Writing student, Muriel Moore-Smith, for Fire In The Sky.

SNAP offers all University of Suffolk students the chance to enter by submitting 500 words of original writing as prose or poetry. Like the New Angle Prize, entries must either be set in or clearly influenced by our East Anglian region.

Dr Lindsey Scott, event organiser and course leader MA Creative and Critical Writing said: “The SNAP competition is very special. It gives us a chance to discover new voices in the region and all University of Suffolk students can enter.

“Hearing this year’s shortlisted entrants reading their work and inspiring others was wonderful.

“We received a record number of competition entries this year and it was a delight to bring this community of writers together and help celebrate their achievements.”

SNAP is an annual competition partnered with the New Angle Prize for Literature, a national book award for published authors organised by the Ipswich Institute. General manager, Jo Rooks, attended the event, awarding £200 prize money to the winner and £50 to the runner-up.

Jo Rooks said: "The Ipswich Institute is proud to sponsor the Student New Angle Prize and it was a great pleasure to attend the awards event.

"The standard of writing was extremely high and it was wonderful to hear the works read by the authors, all of those long listed and shortlisted should be proud of their achievements."

Also supporting the event with a book stall was Ipswich’s independent bookshop, Dial Lane Books.

Shortlisted entries:

SNAP winning entry by Anya Page - An Abandoned Airfield | University of Suffolk (uos.ac.uk)  by Anya Page (MA History)

SNAP highly-commended entry by Muriel Moore-Smith - Fire in the Sky | University of Suffolk (uos.ac.uk) by Muriel Moore-Smith (PhD Creative Writing)

SNAP shortlist entry by Nicola Whittam - Guardian | University of Suffolk (uos.ac.uk) by Nic Whittam (MA Data Science and Artificial Intelligence)

SNAP shortlist entry by Sophie Wilks - Kensington Gardens | University of Suffolk (uos.ac.uk) (BA English and Creative Writing)

SNAP runner-up entry by Jayd Green - North Sea, Over Night | University of Suffolk (uos.ac.uk) by Jayd Green (PhD Creative Writing)

SNAP shortlist entry by Jenny Lutchman - Winterton Pups | University of Suffolk (uos.ac.uk) by Jenny Lutchman (MA Creative and Critical Writing)

SNAP shortlist entry by Michael Laurence - Littleport, 1815 | University of Suffolk (uos.ac.uk) by Michael Laurence (MA Creative and Critical Writing)