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St Hugh’s master’s student receives Avril Bruten Creative Writing Award

Congratulations to Sylvia Nica, the winner of this year’s Avril Bruten Award for creative writing.

Sylvia is a master’s student in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation. Her short story, ’Submerged’, is about a woman and a cockroach, living in an abandoned town in a climate-damaged world.

Sylvia read from her work along with eight other shortlisted students at an event celebrating the award on Thursday 5 March, hosted by Professor Nicholas Perkins. This year’s judge was Freya Morris, author and founder of the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize. Amongst many excellent entries, Freya picked out Sylvia’s story for its poignancy, humour and telling detail. Silvia is pictured with Freya on the left.

Sylvia commented, ‘I’m delighted to win this year’s Avril Bruten Award. I’m very grateful that St Hugh’s supports creative writing and encourages young writers, and I really enjoyed getting to see all the writers together at the ceremony! It was a true joy to hear so many wonderful pieces being read, and also to be able to learn from Freya at the flash-fiction workshop she held earlier.’

Next term, we will continue to celebrate St Hugh’s writers with our ‘Writers in Conversation’ event featuring alumna Lucy Ashe on Thursday 7 May. For further details and to register, please click here.

Below is a photo of Freya Morris with some of the shortlisted students: