Celebrating writing talent: Creative Writing Competition 2026
Kellogg College is delighted to announce the winners of its sixth annual Creative Writing Competition, held in association with the Kellogg College Centre for Creative Writing.
This year’s competition invited college members to respond creatively to the theme ‘Pathways’, celebrating the many personal, creative and intellectual journeys that writing makes possible. Entries were welcomed across a range of genres, including poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, drama and non-fiction.
The theme also reflected a milestone for the University’s Master of Studies in Creative Writing, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary this year. Directed by Kellogg Fellow Dr Clare Morgan, the internationally recognised programme has spent two decades nurturing writers from across the world, opening pathways into craft, confidence, collaboration and publication. The competition echoed this spirit by encouraging the wider Kellogg community to explore their own experiences, memories and imagined worlds through creative writing.
This year’s entries were judged by an expert panel comprising Dr Clare Morgan, Fellow of Kellogg College and Director of the Kellogg College Centre for Creative Writing and the MSt in Creative Writing; novelist and creative writing tutor Frank Egerton; and special guest judge Sharath Jeevan OBE, author and Kellogg alumnus from the first cohort of the MSt in Creative Writing.
The 2026 winners are as follows:
First place: The Pathway by Caroline Raphael (MSt in Literature and Arts, 2025), a beautifully observed piece blending memoir and fiction to explore family, ageing, memory and the emotional landscapes we navigate in caring for those we love.
We asked Caroline what inspired her winning entry:
“My piece was part short story, part memoir. I read the theme and at once saw the path through the wilderness that had been my father’s garden on the Somerset Levels. Like that tangled garden, the piece became a jumble of memoir and fiction. As many will know, responsibility for a very elderly person brings its own mix of emotions: love, frustration and anxiety. Creating the path was a rare moment of order and beauty. Although it didn’t lead, as in the story, to a moment of reconciliation, there were others in those difficult final months before he died. Perhaps there should have been one, so in writing this I’ve created what I wished had happened, an emotional, if not an actual, truth.”
Second place: Invisible Inheritance by Peiwen Chi (MSc in Software Engineering, 2025).
Third place: Rewrite Our Song: Notes on a Marriage by Luisa Summers, an inventive and emotionally powerful piece that tells the story of a marriage in reverse. Structured from ending to beginning and punctuated by familiar wedding vows, it invites readers to retrace the relationship’s path, revealing the tragedy with increasing emotional force.
Luisa said of her piece:
“The piece is written from end to beginning, a portrayal of a tragedy. Punctuated by familiar wedding vows, each section shows a different phase of the marriage, but does not meet the reader’s expectation of progression. Only when you reach the end do you realise you can read the story in reverse, where the tragedy unfolds with double the impact.”
An excerpt from Rewrite Our Song: Notes on a Marriage: “The flames rise from the piano. Spreading fast. Strings snap. Metal melts. Wood warps. Irreparable. Your broken nail scratches into my skin. G-O-O-D-B-Y-E.”
The judges praised the exceptionally high standard of submissions, which demonstrated the creativity, imagination and breadth of talent across the Kellogg community. The theme of Pathways inspired a wide range of interpretations, with writers exploring ideas of identity, memory, transformation, relationships and the journeys that shape our lives.
The winners and shortlisted entrants were recognised at a celebratory event held at Kellogg on 25 June, bringing together members of the College community to celebrate creativity and storytelling.