Creative writers plot their way to major success
Two Bath students have received glowing praise in the prestigious Uk-wide Young Walter Scott prize for creative writing. Meg Lintern, from Chapmanslade, and Helena Baxendale, from Bradford upon Avon, were two of the ten Highly Commended entries. Meg was praised for her entry called Lest We Forget and Helena for Transmigration Programme. Meg was moved to write about the “lost generation” after the recent WWI centenary commemorations. She said: “I was inspired to write my piece by the 100-year anniversary of the end of World War One, and was particularly moved by the sentiment of the lost generation. “This led me to explore the stories behind the statistics, hence I tried to encapsulate the immense personal loss behind the countless names on the war memorials in my area. “The BBC documentary ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ made me cry like a baby, and I really wanted to express this emotion through my story.” Helena’s piece was inspired by an endangered species of tiger. She said: “The inspiration for my story came unexpectedly when I was reading about the threat to Sumatran Tigers in the area in which my story is set. This linked into the problems that people were facing in terms of overpopulation, hence transmigration action from Java to Sumatra (and other islands off the Indonesian coast) and the knock-on affects of this on Sumatran native peoples.” The Young Walter Scott Prize, which launched in 2015, is a Uk-wide creative writing prize for 11-19 year olds, challenging young people to write a piece of short fiction set in a time before they were born. The judges selected a total of 14 young writers to honour with this prize, now in its fourth year. Children’s writer Eleanor Updale was among the judging panel this year alongside award-winning author Elizabeth Laird. Elizabeth said: “Enthusiasm, the joy of exploring history, the delight of experimenting with words, and above all the thrill of exercising the imagination - all these leap off the pages of the stories submitted. “It’s been a bumper year both for the quantity and quality of the stories submitted, and I’ve no doubt at all that we’ll be hearing from some of these young writers in the years to come.”