Winter Creative Competition Winners Announcement

The results for 2014’s Winter-Themed Creative Competition are in!

Many thanks to Dr Vidyan Ravinthiran, poet and English department lecturer, for generously judging the written category for us.

The winning entries will be published individually over the following days, but for now read Dr Ravinthiran’s comments and our own for teasers!

WRITTEN CATEGORY

1st place: Katja Garson with ‘Storms and Silences’

Congratulations to Katja Garson for winning first place, with what Dr Ravinthiran called “a mysterious prose fragment with some lovely nature description and a narrator intriguingly connected to two other characters, ‘Greg’ and ‘Jenny’; it’s like the beginning of something longer, and perhaps it is, but it also works very well I think as a standalone piece.”

2nd place: Kimberly Anderson with ‘Winter of the Doves’

Second prize goes to Kimberly Anderson for her “carefully-written lyric which begins with a mischievous play on ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ and continues with some nicely honed phrasing: ‘A crow somewhere cried,’ for instance, is a treat for the ear.”

Runner-up: Hana Kapetanovic with ‘Promaha’

Just missing out on a prize is runner-up Hana Kapetanovic with her poem ‘Promaha’, “which has a terrific opening: ‘Too many open windows lead to / runny noses, coughs and slowly dying, / according to my mother.’ It’s an elegant short poem whose odd clear syntax captures the sad humorous distance between two cultures.”

VISUAL CATEGORY

1st place: Katherine Hurst with ‘Christmas Castle’

Congratulations to first-place winner Katherine Hurst for her endearing, whimsical illustration of Castle Great Hall with a playful Christmas twist. We were won over by this piece’s imagination; Katherine managed to capture the spirit of the competition completely, incorporating the winter theme and Durham itself with genuine creativity and charm.

2nd place: Young Ah Kim with ‘Blue Jay’

We happily award second place to Young Ah Kim for her beautiful painting of a blue jay on a snowy branch. The stunning technical ability is well worth recognition, as she skilfully captures the bright, wintry scene realistically with understated use of sharp white, blue, black and red.

Tied runners-up: Mariam Hayat with ‘Little Robin Redbreast’ and Patrick Brennan with ‘Cathedral Snow’

We give special mention to two joint runners-up who came very close to the cut. Mariam Hayat was an incredibly strong contender with her ‘Little Robin Redbreast’, a piece that makes striking, effective use of vibrant colour while maintaining strong realism, and Patrick Brennan’s clean, neat watercolour of a snowy Durham Cathedral in subtle, muted tones was yet another very impressive piece.

A huge thank-you and well done to all who participated in our first Winter-Themed Creative Competition! Entries were of a high standard, making judging difficult across the board, but it was a pleasure to see such an array of creative talent and Dr Ravinthiran was very encouraging of the written entrants. We hope the winners enjoy their prizes!

Non-winning entries will be published on The Bubble in future too, and we encourage everyone to enter our future competitions!

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