Congratulations Charlotte Murray: Creative Future Award 2023

Huge congratulations to Hive Poet Charlotte Murray who has won the Silver Poetry Award for her pamphlet “Cross Stitch House”, as part of the Creative Future Writers’ Award 2023.

The award, judged this year by Wayne Holloway-Smith and Nina Mingya Powles, received over 1,300 entries from underrepresented writers across the country. Charlotte will receive a £25 cash prize, a manuscript assessment, a copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook or writing guide, and a year’s membership to The Poetry Society. All award winners are published in the X (2023) anthology alongside the judges and Creative Future writers in residence.

I like bands’ initial albums, and I like artists at the start of their careers. I like seeing footballers stepping into the first team for the first time, and I like watching debut directors at the movies. It’s invigorating to me to see raw talent finding its way, in this way — that initial burst of ambition, and excitement—the kernel of a voice emerging, the level of risk practitioners are free to take at this stage. No wonder the process of judging CFWA was such a source of joy—the originality and imagination, the vocabulary of these newcomers, crikey! — Wayne Holloway-Smith, Award judge

Judging the Creative Future Writers’ Award was an invigorating and challenging process. The shortlist of many innovative writers offered a glimpse of some of the most exciting writing being produced in the UK today. In the poetry and fiction categories, writers boldly pushed boundaries of genre and form. In creative nonfiction, a category new to the prize this year, there was an incredible range of stories and voices covering subjects I’d not encountered before. I was drawn all the way in and longed to keep reading. It’s been a joy and an honour to be involved in this prize that is helping to reshape our literary landscape. — Nina Mingya Powles, Award judge

Charlotte Murray hails from West Yorkshire. She is a member of Hive Poetry Collective and works as a University Archivist. She won second place in the E.H.P. Barnard Poetry Prize 2023, in Bangor Literary Journal’s Forty Words Competition 2021 and in the East Riding Festival of Words Poetry Competition 2021. Her poems have appeared in appear in Lucent Dreaming, Mancunian Ways (Fly on the Wall Press) and Dear Life (Hive). Her pamphlet was longlisted for the Frosted Fire First Pamphlet Award 2023.

For more about the Creative Future Awards, visit: www.creativefuture.org.uk