Writing Competition

To celebrate Kemptown Bookshop’s 50th anniversary IN 2026, we ARE RUNNING a writing competition on the theme of bookshops. The winners will be included in an anthology published in September 2026.

Our winners

Thank you to everyone who sent in their entries – we were very moved to see how bookshops have inspired you over the years. After a very difficult judging process, we are thrilled to announce our winners. These will be published in an anthology called Love Letters to Bookshops which will be launched in September 2026. If you’d like a free ticket to the launch party, click here.

Congratulations to our winners:

Short Stories

Christian Liberman Dear Me

Della Griffiths Death Among the Spines

Gail Davey Under the St John's Wort

Alexis Wolf Bookstore

Tracy Liennard The End Of Us All

Tim Blake The Victoria Station Book Club

Poetry

Ia Kozoboli The Pop Up Pashto Bookshop

Bridget Wilkins The One That Got Away

Brenda Cusack Shelved Alphabetically

Roz Doe Pilgrims

Victoria Kaplan My Bookshop by the Ocean

Jérôme Caflisch A Spy’s Favourite Covers

Flavius Covaci Hay-on-Wye This Previous July

Jodie Campbell Disgruntled

Olivia Gagan Tabernacle

Khushi Bajaj Will you sleep with me in a queer bookstore?

Vanessa Horn On the Shelf

Flash Fiction

Abigail Quine Window Shopping

Jane Frank-Cummiskey Paper Heart

Alex Kendall Eat your words

Zahira Choudhury It's Time to Start a New Book

Christine Lugrine Church

Kavita Chhiba The Bookshop Escape

Susanna Callaghan The Lost Detective

Gráinne Daly Title Shot

Daren Carpmail Heart’s Desires

Longhill School Winner: Akil Ahmed

Brighton College Winner: Simi Shergill

Meet the judges

Anna Jefferson

Anna Jefferson is Co-Director of New Writing South and Co-founder of Forthwrite Festival, celebrating women writers over 50. She is a fiction writer and playwright, having written for stage and screen since 2005. Anna has published three novels, Winging It (2020) and Nailing It (2021), both published with Orion and Happiness Lives Next Door, published with Penguin Random House, Germany (2024.) She is currently working on her fourth novel.

Cathy Hayward

Cathy is a writer, bookseller, and manages a creative writing school. In 2022, after a lifetime pottering around bookshops, she bought Kemptown Bookshop and has worked to create a community hub which supports local authors and aspiring writers. Her second novel The Last Daughter of Highdown Hall was published in May 2026 and her third The Missing Mother of Rose Cottage is due out in July.

Roy Mcfarlane

Roy is a poet, writer and former youth and community worker born in Birmingham of Jamaican parentage. He is currently the National Canal Laureate and the former Birmingham Poet Laureate and Starbucks Poet in Residence and co-editor of Celebrate Wha? Ten Black British Poets from the Midlands (Smokestack). He has three poetry collections by Nine Arches Press: Beginning With Your Last Breath, The Healing Next Time and Living by Troubled Waters.

Dr Jess Moriarty

Jess is Principal Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Brighton where she is Course Leader for the Creative Writing MA. She edits a book series for Intellect, and her new book, due out later this year, is called Art as Activism.

William Shaw

Best-selling crime writer William Shaw publishes his 14th novel The Burning Tide in 2026. He was one of the team behind Brighton's volunteer-run pop-pup bookshop and writing space The Bookmakers.

Sean Campbell

Sean is the founder and editor of époque press, an independent publisher of literary fiction. Sean is passionate about discovering new voices, championing great new works of literary fiction and working with authors who have strong unique voices. Sean loves building close working relationships with authors and engaging them in every stage of bringing their work to publication.