Celebrating Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award

PhD student accepts commendation for poetry ahead of graduation

University student Thomas Tyrrell has been awarded second place in the 2018 Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award for his poetry.

Established in 2009 in memory of the Welsh writer and poet, the Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award aims to provide opportunities for young people based in Wales to express themselves through creative writing, with a £1,000 prize for the overall winner.

Currently living in Cardiff, Thomas has recently completed his doctoral thesis on eighteenth-century poetry. His winning entries Sometimes in Summer and Wimbledon Sonnets mark his second time in the runner-up spot, which he also won in 2017. His work has previously appeared in Picaroon, Lonesome October, Three Drops from a Cauldron and Word for the Wild. 

As part of his award Thomas received a bursary towards the cost of an Emerging Writers course at Ty Newydd, the North Wales writing retreat, courtesy of Parthian Books.

This year’s overall winner is Katya Johnson for her story Silver Darling.

A selection of writing from this year’s entrants is published in the anthology Cheval by Parthian Books, a platform for new writing for young people in the medium of poetry and prose. All proceeds from the anthology go towards the Award.

Past winners of the celebrated prize have gone on to pursue careers in writing. Previous winners include subsequent Costa Prize winner Jonathan Edwards and Sion Tomos Owen, whose first book, Cawl, was published last year and Tyler Keevil, Creative Writing Lecturer at the School who has won numerous awards for his fiction.

The awards take place at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, with the 2018 awards bestowed on 29 June. Entrance for the 2019 competition is now open.