Entry time for festival’s new literary competition

The theme is a short memoir in either prose or poetry.

The deadline is August 15 and entries in English are welcome from France and around the globe.

The competition replaces this year’s bilingual Charroux Literary Festival in Vienne (charrouxlitfest.com), postponed to 2020 due to the death of co-founder Chris Colette.

The festival has been a great success and has attracted authors such as Tracey Warr and Barbara Erskine. Its co-founder Kate Rose (above) said the competition is a great opportunity for writers to get their work read and seen.

She said: “We are in contact with a number of publishers, and we want to encourage people to take part.

“This is our first year and we have two authors as judges.

“They are travel writer Susie Kelly and prize-winning poet Gordon Simms.”

The first prize in the prose and poetry categories is €150 and the winner will be announced in early October.

Ms Rose said they would like entrants to describe a moment in time in their life.

She said: “The idea is for people to write about something real that happened to them in a way that is interesting, poignant and gets the reader involved.

“An example I gave to someone who asked what was required is a photo I have of my father and myself as a child, watching the sea come to destroy our sandcastle during a holiday in Brittany.

“My father has recently died and to link the present to that time in the past would be the subject for a telling and poignant story or poem.”

The Charroux Literary Festival team is working on a revitalised event in 2020.

It has joined up with literary and marketing company Freshly Press, based in south west France, which helps authors, from proofreading to approaching publishers.