Top 3 Short Story (8000 max) Entries
(listed in order)

1st: Hitler’s Alligator by Camilla Smith (England)
2nd: Smoke Jumpers by Stewart Greene (England)
3rd place: Thundersnow by M.J.R. Schneider (Canada)

Here’s what our judge, Roland Watson-Grant, had to say about the winning entries.

‘The £2,000 prize-winning story Hitler’s Alligator is a sweeping, layered tale. Grounded in reality and set in one of history’s most gruesome moments, this darkly comical story offered dual perspectives of man and beast, the capturer and the captured, with such pace, it holds on and never lets go the reader right to the very end.’

Smoke Jumpers crackled off the page. The terrifying cinematic descriptions of a forest fire crackled off the page; only outdone by a powerful plot echoing loss, a failed friendship and the fragility of life itself.

‘Thundersnow is crisp writing on the page with vivid turns-of-phrase you look forward to reading. Very atmospheric. Delivered right from the title to the last rumble.’

Congrats to the winners. Sorry, if you didn’t get through to the last three this time. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and enter our NEW Short Story (5000 word max.) with literary agent, novelist, and award-winning short story writer, Annie DeWitt. Top prize: £1,000. Deadline: 30th April, 2023.

There are four more opportunities for writers to win prizes and create a platform for their work. Four more Plaza Prizes have a deadline of today, 31st March 2023. Flash Fiction (1000 word max). Microfiction (300 word max). Literary: First Chapters, and Prose Poetry. Enter to win.