Julie Curwin of Canada wins Commonwealth short story competition 2008

Julie Curwin of Canada is the winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Short Story Competition.

Her story 'World Backwards' was selected as the best story from the Caribbean and Canada region of the Commonwealth and as the winning story of the competition from more than 1,700 entries.

Ms Curwin is from New Brunswick in Canada and now lives with her husband in Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. A psychiatrist by profession she has a BA in philosophy and political science from Mount Allison University, a BSc and M.D. from Dalhousie University, and a diploma in post-graduate medicine (psychiatry) from Queen’s University.

Despite her busy profession she has found time to write and has already won recognition for her fiction. In 2007 her story ‘The Other Side of the Window’ was selected as a finalist in the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers. She is currently working on a collection of short stories with medical themes. Prior to taking up writing, she had a 10-year career as a professional long-distance triathlete, and was a member of Canada’s elite national team.

The other winners in the 2008 Commonwealth Short Story Competition include regional winners from the Pacific (Jennifer Mills from Australia), Africa (Taddeo Bwambale Nyondo from Uganda), Asia (Salil Chaturvedi from India), and Europe (Tania Hershman from the UK).

Highly commended winners come from Nigeria, South Africa, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Sri Lanka and the UK.

The judges were writer Jaishree Mishra, author of Ancient Promises, Accidents like Love and Marriage and Afterwards, broadcaster Amber Barnfather, and Nigerian-born author and playwright Biyi Bandele.

The Commonwealth Short Story Competition began in 1996. It is funded by the Commonwealth Foundation and administered by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association. The winning stories have been recorded on CD and distributed to broadcasting stations around the Commonwealth. The CDs are available for sale from the CBA website www.cba.org.uk.

For more information or to receive a copy of the 2008-2009 Commonwealth Short Story CD, please contact cba@cba.org.uk, or phone +44 (0)20 7583 5550 or fax +44 (0)20 7583 5549.

Related Websites:

• Commonwealth Broadcasting Association