The 4th Annual Ted Walters International Short Story, Poetry and Playwriting Competition 2010

I would like to take this opportunity to wish a very’ Happy and Peaceful New Year’ for 2010 to all my fellow writers throughout this big, wonderful but sadly troubled world that we all presently share. My name is Tommy McBride, and I am the Group Secretary and very proud Founder Member of ‘The University of Liverpool Creative Writing Society for Lifelong Learning’, which I set up with the kind help and support of The University of Liverpool almost a decade ago now, way back in May 2000. I spent many very enjoyable years there studying most of the different genres of creative writing there.

We are a non-funded but very successful Merseyside creative writing group who are totally independent of The University of Liverpool, but we have always had the full support, help and assistance of the University of Liverpool’s Continuing Education Centre for the last ten long but very enjoyable years.

The reason why I am contacting you all now is to tell you about our latest exciting ‘Open’ creative writing competition that is annually attracting some of the world’s best writers entitled, ‘The 4th Annual Ted Walters International Short Story, Poetry and Playwriting Competition 2010’ that was officially launched on Tuesday 19th January 2010. This will be our writing group’s fourth annual Ted Walters international writing competition that our creative group has run now, and we hope that this competition will be just as successful, or even more successful as our last three competitions have been.

Every single entry that comes into our competition; and you can send in as many entries as you wish, generates a £1 donation for our writing group’s chosen charity, which has always been the ‘Macmillan Cancer Support’. We donated a cheque to them in 2007 for the amount of £374. In 2008, Liverpool’s year as ‘The European Capital of Culture for 2008’, we proudly donated a cheque to them for the amount of £801. Last year in 2009 we donated a further £470 totalling £1645 so far. Hopefully for this year of 2010 we would like to generate even more much needed money for such a truly worthy cause that continues to help and support cancer sufferers, but to do this successfully we will need your help, co-operation, participation and support in this writing competition.

Please see our Web site address for all of our writing competition details, including an entry form to download for ‘The 4th Annual Ted Walters International Short Story, Poetry and Playwriting Competition 2010’, which also includes a list of last years successful winners, runner-ups and third placed, and those writers who were short listed, as well as a competition flyer to advertise the event. Closing date is 31st May 2010
http://www.the-village.co.uk/tedwalters.htm

This competition was set up by me with the full consent of all of our creative writing group members, to remember one of our own dearly missed and very talented writing group members, Mr Ted Walters, who was in himself an excellent writer and a wonderful compassionate, caring, human being, who sadly died of Cancer on the 15th August 2006.

I know most of you like me, after having witnessed the devastation and the tremendous loss and sufferings of both human and animal’s lives, during and after the horrendous earthquake that we saw and heard on our TV’s and Radio stations on the Island of Haiti, are deeply upset. I am sure that all of our special thoughts and prayers as well as the courageous specialised manual help and assistance from many concerned countries, will go out to all those unfortunate inhabitants of that small Island at this their very sad time of the year. The inhabitants whose lives have been deeply affected and devastated by a huge earthquake measuring 7.0 that rocked their impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti, toppling their buildings and causing widespread death, damage disaster and panic. God bless and please help them all.

Kind Regards
Tommy McBride:
Group Secretary / Founder Member.
The University of Liverpool Creative Writing Society for Lifelong Learning
Tel: 0151 291 6942 Email: thomas.mcbride2@sky.com