‘the prescription’ prizes in creative writing on the College collections were awarded in October 2023. There were three categories, and the winning entries can be seen by following the links below.

POETRY
AC Clarke – Phlebotomist, old-style

A C Clarke has published five collections and six pamphlets, two of the latter in collaboration with Maggie Rabatski and Sheila Templeton. She was a winner in the Cinnamon Press 2017 pamphlet competition with War Baby and has twice won the Second Light Long Poem competition. She was commended in the UK National Poetry Competition (2005) and longlisted (2014). Her most recent publication is Wedding Grief (2021), centring on the marriage of Paul Éluard and Gala. Her sixth collection, Alive Among Dead Stars, is due to be published by Out-Spoken Books in 2024.

PROSE
Lorna Fraser – Testimonies of the Lock

Lorna Fraser lives in Moray, where she finds writing inspiration in the forests, rivers and coastlines near her home. Lorna is fascinated by the potential of fiction to unlock the hidden voices of the past. She has achieved a number of successes, including winning the prose category for the RCPSG prescription competition for creative writing. In 2021, she won the Weald & Downland Living Museum Historical Short Fiction competition. She has had stories broadcast on local radio stations. Her published collection, ‘ill-divided world & other stories’ features some of her prize-winning tales. She is researching and writing a historical novel.

HYBRID
Luke ‘Luca’ Cockayne – Sir, you have forced me to speak

Luke ‘Luca’ Cockayne (he/they), (b.1990) is a conceptual artist and writer based in the Southside of Glasgow. Previously known as Ana Hine, his recent works include ‘I Didn’t Kill Myself That Day Because…’ a collaborative wall piece for OOSOOM at Summerhall, and ‘My Bed Becomes My Whole World On The Days When My Depression Hits’ a street poster campaign during lockdown. As a poet he was shortlisted for the Scottish Mental Health Writing Award 2018 and again this year, and he is currently working on a fragmented memoir about his time in psychiatric hospital. He wonders if you still smoke and would like to go for a cigarette?

JUDGES’ PRIZE
Rieve Atkinson – I am Sankel

Lives in south-west Cornwall, UK. His work has been published in literary magazines including Acumen, Envoi, Frogmore Papers, Iota, Outposts, Story Cellar, The Interpreter’s House and This England; read at many literary festivals in Britain; broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Pen to Paper’ and featured in several anthologies. His most recent collection, ‘Spaces’, was published by Gaudy Prawn Press. In 2019 he received the Gorsedh Kernow Medal for Poetry. His writing invariably reflects his interests in social history, folklore, mythology, landscape, animals, natural history, art and archaeology. Rieve is currently working on new collections of short fiction and poetry.

The following writers were shortlisted in the competition and commended for the quality of their entries.

Edward Barnfield
Lucy Carolan
Zo Copland
Sabina Dosani
Rachel Gorry
Marion McCready
Emily Munro
Sam Oakley