Wordplay: Peter wins again

THE WINNERS of this year’s Young Shetland Writer Competition collected their prizes at a special Wordplay event on Saturday morning, writes Jordan Ogg.

Peter Ratter from Ollaberry won both the dialect and 11-17 age group categories for his short story The Ship, while Rachel Clarke from Sandwick received the 7-11 age group prize for a story titled Ansel’s Adventure.

The task of choosing a winner was a tough one for competition judges, Mary Blance and Jen Hadfield.

“We looked for and found gripping openings, good descriptive and atmospheric writing. We found stories that the writer had obviously worked especially hard on.

“You can usually tell when a writer’s come back after the first excited splurge of writing to see if they can make their story even better. And of course we looked for and found originality: there’s never a dearth of that in this competition.”

For Peter there was extra reason to celebrate, as this marked the third year in a row that he has won a prize in the competition.

Commenting on his continued success, the judges said: “Every year his work gets more assured, more experimental, and more compelling. He continues to make storytelling look easy, which it certainly isn’t.

“So Peter has been setting the bar pretty high for the upper age group for the last wee while, but our runner up and commended entries continue to show how many exciting, upcoming voices Shetland can boast.’

Peter and Rachel’s stories will appear in the New Shetlander and be read by the authors on the BBC Radio Shetland book programme later this year.