Think you have what it takes?

Want to get some practice?

Just need an excuse to put pen to paper?

Then enter the Secret Attic Short Story Competition!

Each month you can submit an entry that will be passed onto our judges who will pick the best and award a winner. During some months the subject matter will be a 'free for all', where you can write anything you like, other months will have a specific theme.

Previous Competition Winners

February 2005 David Willshaw

April 2005 Christine Sutton

May 2005 George L Darley

July 2005 Robyn O'Hara

August 2005 Richard Adamski

September 2005 Hannah Southgate

October 2005 Heather Parker

December 2005 Feathers by Bob Lakin

January 2006 RD Larson

February 2006 Debra Spiller

March 2006 Nethi Sette

April 2006 Joe Louis

May 2006 Kim Montgomery

Love of Literature by Raymond Hopkins, Kronoby, Finland

Little Miss Entwhistle of the Central Library, though no longer in the first flush of youth, was yet not so old, nor so lacking in good looks that she failed to attract appreciative glances. Unfortunately, appreciative glances was practically as much as she ever got. Not that she really missed a family life, but nevertheless, it has to be admitted that the strain of living in that sort of solitude which arises when even your only pet, a budgerigar, refuses to talk to you, was beginning to take its toll, until she found a new passion in her existence.
How she overcame this unenviable position is easily related. Through efforts which never reached the ears of the local Watch Committee, Miss Entwhistle had so increased the rate of book borrowing that considerably more than the usual amount of annual funds was allocated to the library service, and as a result she was offered promotion, an office of her own, and a degree of secure privacy she had never before enjoyed. To her employer’s surprise, she turned them all down, and asked for a position of sole assistant in one of the town’s outlying and underused branches, a branch that had come under threat of closure several times. She assured the Libraries Committee that she felt able to keep it open and properly employed.
Being given the opportunity she had asked for, she surrendered her once unblemished chastity several times each day to anyone and everyone of the appropriate gender who returned their books before the due date.
As she explained, ’I fine you if you are overdue, so it seems only fair to offer a reward for being on time. No dear, it’s not the Common Market rules, this is purely an idea of my own.’