To encourage creativity during lockdown, the Thornbury Tatler magazine is running a short story competition.

The quarterly magazine is encouraging people to send through their stories to showcase their writing talents during the spare time they may now have.

Writers will be in with a chance of winning a cash prize, for first or second place in each of their categories — £20 for first place and £10 for runners-up.

Editor of the Tatler, Meg Galley-Taylor explained the reasoning behind creating such a competition. She said: “In common with other parishes, we have set up (via the Thornbury Parish Council) a Thornbury Covid-19 Action Group that aims to look after those who are shielding or self-isolating during the pandemic. That mostly involved shopping or collecting prescriptions, but we also want to address the well-being of our residents.

“One way, is to encourage creativity, to make good use of any spare time created by the lockdown.

“Many people say, ‘I’ve got a novel inside me waiting to get out!’ – well, we are just asking for 500 well-chosen words, that tell a short story.”

The competition will be split into four classes: child’s fiction — any subject; child’s non-fiction — ‘springtime’; fiction — any subject; and non-fiction — ‘my favourite place’.

The entrants to the child section must be aged 11-years-old and under.

Entry to the competition is free and people can enter more than once, in each of the classes.

Meg continued: “The fiction classes are open to stories of any sort – adventure, thriller, detective, — just use your imagination!

“But it must be 500 words or fewer. Of course, the other well-being benefit to the community is that we will have lots of stories for our readers to enjoy, while locked-down.”

The prizes are being jointly sponsored by The Thornbury Tatler and Thornbury Parish Council, and they would encourage entrants from anyone in the area.

The closing date of the competition is May 15 and the winning entries will be aimed to be published in the June edition of the Tatler.

To enter send stories to [email protected] or post to The Tatler, Woodruff, Thornbury, Holsworthy, EX22 7DD.