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David Watson wins the Avril Bruten Award

This year’s Avril Bruten Award for creative writing has been won by graduate student, David Watson, for his funny and provocative short play ‘Happy Hour’, which dramatizes the ill-fated meeting in a US bar between a young man, his father-in-law to be, and the latter’s much younger wife.

David is an MSc student in Sociology, and performed an extract of the play along with some friends at the Award Ceremony on Friday 6 March 2015 . The audience of students, staff, fellows and alumni also heard another five shortlisted entries read aloud, along with some of Avril Bruten’s poetry and readings from the two judges, Claire Battershill (prize-winning short story writer), and Rachel Piercey (a poet and the first winner of the Award). Claire and Rachel are both alumni of St Hugh’s College.

The Avril Bruten Award is an annual event in memory of Avril Gilchrist Bruten, fellow in English at St Hugh’s from the late 1960s until 1999. She left a generous bequest to set up the Award, which was first run in 2007, and the College was delighted to welcome Avril’s brother Alistair Bruten to the event this year.