Despite the cold, August was a wonderful month as we announced the winners of the inaugural Minds Shine Bright writing competition Confidence 2022. A total prize pool of $7600 was awarded to 46 writers and their work is featured in Confidence by Minds Shine Bright, our first anthology in a series exploring the theme of confidence in fiction.
Congratulations to Françoise Thornton-Smith the overall winner for her short story Red Bikini, Alexandra Svoboda, short story category winner, All the Pain and all the Joy, poetry category winners Kevin Dyer, Dahlias and Michael Leach, Emergence of Voice, script category winner, Jed Stanley, Beaucoup Bills and flash fiction category winner Poppy Brazier, Flying Free. Congratulations to all the commended writers too. Together these entries formed the Minds Shine Bright Short List 2022.
The Long List – Special Mentions
The response to Confidence 2022 was incredible. Almost five hundred writers submitted entries from many countries.Those that stood out were selected for the Long List, following a blind judging process and an assessment against ten criteria. All long Listed entries receive a special mention on the Minds Shine Bright Long List and will be sent e-certificates soon.
Gifts of recognition were awarded to twenty writers that wrote memorable fiction. This process was conducted after the overall judging process was complete. Writers were selected because their work really shone in some way. You can see all the writers who were awarded gifts of recognition here. These gifts will be sent over the next couple of weeks.
Another highlight from August is that we published Confidence Minds Shine Bright Anthology 2022 which will be arriving in bookshops soon. We are very proud of the high quality of our first ever publication and we are committed to creating beautiful books in the future too.
For readers
If you would like a copy of Confidence by Minds Shine Bright you can ask bookshops that purchase from Ingram (most do) to order it in (The ISBN is 978-0-6455231-0-2), or you can ask your local library to order in a copy too.
An online e-bookstore is currently being built for Minds Shine Bright here and once it opens we will let you know.
For reviewers
If you read Confidence by Minds Shine Bright please make the time to write a review and post it online. It will help others to discover us too.
For writers
If you enjoy entering Minds Shine Bright writing competitions Storm is currently open for entries until the 30 September 2022. You can enter Storm on the Minds Shine Bright home page by scrolling down to the form. In late October we will be opening the Minds Shine Bright writing competition Confidence 2023. We look forward to seeing how writing on the theme of confidence changes.
Thanks so much for your support of Minds Shine Bright. We will continue to explore new ways to shine a bright light on writers and we will share our journey with you as we do.