Ninevoices Summer Competition – the winner!

Tags

Endangered words, Nature, Winners

Ninevoices are delighted to announce that the winner of our Summer Competition is ‘The Last Walk’ by Karen Martyn. Congratulations, Karen! The prize of £100 will soon be coming your way.

In our competition entrants had to use one or more words taken from a list of little-known words with meanings related to nature, such as smeuse (Sussex dialect for a hole in a hedge left by the repeated passage of a small animal – see photo) or petrichor (the smell of dry earth and rock that comes before and during rainfall). The required length was 99 to 199 words.

Our decision came after much discussion (really!). Entries came from across the world – from three continents, in fact. We were impressed by the imagination and ingenuity shown in the way our chosen words were deployed.

A close runner-up was ‘Stop the Rain’ by Christina Dalcher.

Special mention should also be given to the following entries:

‘Before and After’

‘The Mangrove Mist’

‘The Scent of Descent’

‘The Gloaming’

Our thanks to all those who sent us entries. Sorry there could be only one winner!

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Ninevoices Summer Competition

Tags

Endangered words, Nature

Last month a Times article highlighted the dwindling use of certain words associated with nature. Featured in a sidebar were eleven such words as follows:

Owl-light Twilight
Roarie-bummlers Fast-moving stormclouds
Shivelight Lances of light cast through a woodland canopy
Petrichor Smell of dry earth and rock that comes before and during a rainfall
Glashtroch Incessant rain
Gludder Fleeting sunshine between showers
Neptunes-uouue Sea mist
Smeuse Sussex dialect for a hole in a hedge left by the repeated passage of a small animal
Landskein Weave of horizon lines on a hazy day
Stravaig Scots and Irish for wandering aimlessly
Nurdle East Anglian dialect for wandering aimlessly

Ninevoices challenges our followers to write a story (not a poem or piece of descriptive prose) of between 99 and 199 words using one or more of these words in a manner organic to the story. For stories of equal quality, your chance of winning will rise if you’ve used more than one of these words or introduced another such word (defined in a footnote outside the word count. The title is also excluded from the word-count).

The deadline is 31st August 2017. The entry fee is £5 payable via PayPal. The prize is £100 for the best story. Entries should be sent to ninevoices@ymail.com.

Any profits above the prize amount will go to the charity PMRGCA-UK

 

—HOW TO ENTER—

Please send each entry separately to ninevoices@ymail.com.

Stories should be sent as Word documents or pdfs.
In the email, tell us:

• Your name
• Your phone number (including country code if not in the UK)
• Your writing name (which is what will be shown if we publish the story)
• The title of your story

—PAYMENT—

Please pay us £5 per entry.

For multiple entries, please pay as separate transactions.  It would help us if you could mention the title of the story in the notes area.

Pay here: