Helen Barton wins Orange/Harper's Bazaar Short Story Competition

Worcester based writer Helen Barton has triumphed over 600 aspiring authors to win the eighth Orange/Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition.

Judge and Editor of Harper’s Bazaar, Lucy Yeomans, presented a cheque for £1,000 to Helen Barton at the Orange Prize for Fiction awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre in central London. The winning story will be published in the October edition of Harper’s Bazaar magazine, on sale in September.

Now in its eighth year, the Orange/Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition forms part of the Orange Prize for Fiction literary portfolio and aims to support unpublished writers at the beginning of their careers.

Previous winners have gone on to achieve notable literary success including Clare Allan, who won the first ever Orange/Harpers Bazaar Short Story Competition in 2001. Her debut novel, Poppy Shakespeare, was published by Bloomsbury in 2006 and went on to be longlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Award for New Writers. The novel was also dramatised for television and broadcast to acclaim on Channel 4.

Entrants to this year’s competition were asked to write a story of no more than 2,000 words on the theme of ‘Mother’. Entries were received from all over the world and three finalists were selected and invited to attend a writing masterclass held at the offices of Random House in London.

Commenting on the winner, Susan Sandon, Chair of Judges, said “The three shortlisted stories were all worthy contenders and selecting a winner was an enormously difficult task involving amicable but robust discussion between the judges. All three writers are immensely talented and I am certain that they all have enormous potential.”

Judges for the Orange/Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition 2009 are:

Susan Sandon, Managing Director of Cornerstone at Random House (Chair)

Lauren Laverne, Presenter of BBC 2’s The Culture Show

Kate Mosse, Novelist, Co-Founder & Honorary Director of the Orange Prize for Fiction Lucy Yeomans, Editor, Harper’s Bazaar

Peter Straus, Managing Director of Rogers, Coleridge and White Literary Agency

Marina Lewycka, Novelist and previous nominee for the Orange Prize

Naomi West, Commissioning Editor and Stephanie Rafanelli, Features Editor from Harper’s Bazaar

The two other shortlisted authors, Brooke Dunnell and Jenny Holden, will receive £500 each.

Ian Smith, Head of Sponsorship, Orange UK, commented, “Orange is delighted to be able to support and encourage new writing talent - as well as more established authors - and perhaps help to discover the Orange Prize winners of tomorrow.”

Lucy Yeomans, Editor of Harper’s Bazaar, said, “As a judge of the Orange/Harper’s Bazaar short story competition, I have been amazed and humbled by the fantastic writing talent on offer. Harper’s Bazaar is honoured to once again support this prestigious literary competition, and we congratulate Helen Barton and look forward to publishing her story in our October issue.”

The Orange Prize for Fiction was founded in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction in English by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible and is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman. The Orange Award for New Writers was founded in 2005 to celebrate first fiction – novels, novellas and short story collections – in partnership with the Arts Council of England.

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About Orange

Orange is the key brand of the France Telecom Group, one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators. With 123 million customers, the Orange brand now covers Internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the Group operates.

At the end of 2008, France Telecom had consolidated sales of 53.5 billion euros (12.7 billion euros for the first quarter of 2009) and at 29 April 2009, the Group had a customer base of almost 184 million customers in 30 countries. These include 123 million mobile customers worldwide and 13 million broadband Internet (ADSL) customers in Europe. Orange is the number three mobile operator and the number one provider of broadband Internet services in Europe and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.

In the UK, Orange provides high quality GSM coverage to 99% of the UK population. At the end of March 2009, Orange had almost 17 million customers in the UK – 15.8 million active mobile customers and close to one million fixed broadband customers.

Orange and any other Orange product or service names included in this material are trade marks of Orange Personal Communications Services Limited.

For more information: www.orange.com, www.francetelecom.com, www.orange-business.com.

For further information, call the Orange press office on 0870 373 1500 or email: Orangepr@golinharris.com or visit www.orange.co.uk/newsroom.

About Harper’s Bazaar Harper’s Bazaar, published by the National Magazine Company, is edited by Lucy Yeomans and has a circulation of 108,468. The Publishing Director is Tess Macleod-Smith. In February 2009, the magazine celebrated another record ABC – its 12th consecutive increase, up 0.4%.