And the winners are…

We would like to thank everyone who took part in the 2024-2025 Prize, and congratulate the following writers and poets whose work was selected by the judges. in no particular order they are:

Short Story

 The Robot and The Old Man, Lori Kozic
Beneath the Summit, Emilia Lun
A Walk Through Life, Alessia Häfliger
On the Road to Canossa…, Rebecca Scholler
The Fight, Leonie Haag 
Walk with Me, Kim Baumann
Clockmakers Apprentice, Vanessa Perlangeli 
Colourless Waves, Eveline Facchetti
Impressions of a Holiday Journey, Sebastian Stöckli
Hermes’ Homage to Love Letters, Kate Leetaru

Poetry Prize

Jailhouse rock, Silvan Schibli
No key, no voice, Aline Grieder
A child’s dinner, Leonie Haag
In red, Kim Baumann
E.T., Eveline Facchetti
Youth, Vanessa Perlangeli
Cnoc na Gréine, Nimue Biro
On the Brink of Eighteen, Denisa Cristiana Mihailescu
Pink dress morphs into greige suit, Celina Stiegler
Awakening Dreams at Dawn, Dhaniga Perinpanathan

We will contact everyone shortly.

2024-2025 Prize

The Swiss Creative Writing Prize was set up in 2019 to encourage students in Swiss high schools to write in English. For the 2024-2025 edition Paul Scraton will judge the short story prize and Elizabeth Boquet will judge the poetry prize

Paul was due to judge the prize in 2022-2023, but suffered an accident a few days before the workshop. His latest novel, A Dream of White Horses, is published in October 2024.

Elizabeth judged the prize in 2021-2022, She was such a great teacher that we did not hesitate to invite her again – and were delighted when she accepted.

The themes for this year are: “Journeys’ (short story) and Threshold (poetry).

We have never been comfortable with the idea of winners and losers, much less with ranking poems and short stories in order. After spending time reflecting on the structure of the competition, we have decided to make some changes.

This year we have decided to not award 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes. Instead, up to 10 finalists will be invited to the workshop on Sunday, 25th May, 2025 in Lucerne with the prize judges. Part of the workshop will focus on revising and improving their submission. After the workshop, the students will have a further two weeks to edit their submissions. Once they have been finalised, we will publish the Anthology. In preparation for the workshop, students will be asked to read each other’s work in advance.

The submission portal is now open. The deadline for submissions is noon, Sunday, 13th April, 2025.