Derbyshire author is flash fiction winner

A short story written by a Hathersage woman has impressed judges in a prestigious writing competition.
Christina EaglesChristina Eagles
Christina Eagles

Christina Eagles was highly commended within the flash fiction category, for very short stories of 250 words or less.

Almost 13,000 writers from 80 countries entered the Bridport Prize competition for one of 34 winner and highly commended awards. Christina was among just three highly commended writers from 2000 entrants in her category.

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Her story, Thinning the Crop, was selected by flash fiction judge Tim Stevenson. Mr Stevenson said: “It has been a pleasure to read the entries this year; I predict that those authors still unpublished will not have too long to wait before success becomes a well-deserved reality”.

Mother of three Christina said she was “absolutely delighted” with her award. and that she loved the challenge of writing flash fiction where “each word has to earn its place”. Her story examines “the lies we tell ourselves to get through life, in order to cope”.

A Scot by birth, Christina Eagles has lived in Derbyshire’s Peak District for 30 years. She has written intermittently for most of that time and in 2014 was placed third in Fish Flash Fiction award.

Now semi-retired from communication skills training she hopes to devote more time to writing in the future, and to her other passion, her horse.

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Christina’s first novel won the David Thomas award for unpublished novels and she is currently seeking an agent for her second work.

“It is about a family who have a Downs Syndrome child adopted, and covers issues I would like people to read about. It’s easy to assume that when a baby comes the love comes with it..” she explained.

The Bridport Prize has categories in poetry, short stories, flash fiction and the Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a first novel, named after the Prize’s founder. It began in 1973 and offers over £18,000 in prize money to be won annually.

An anthology of this year’s winning entries including Christina’s flash fiction story, is available from the Bridport Prize website at www.bridportprize.org.uk. The competition has just launched for 2017.