It’s been a good week for Iris Anne Lewis, whose short story ‘The Cry of the Wolf’ has won first place in Writing Magazine’s weather competition.

She was also thrilled to hear that she was one of eleven commended poets on the shortlist for the Frosted Fire Firsts Pamphlet competition. Final results will be announced at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival which runs from 25th April to 4th May.

Chair of Somewhere Else, Frank McMahon was invited to talk about the inspiration behind his poetry in a podcast for the editor of The Curlew magazine, Lynn Parr. The magazine, a print periodical dedicated to writing and illustration celebrating the natural world, featured Frank’s poem ‘Wordsmiths’ in October and has just accepted a second poem ‘Flint’ for the next edition.

In the podcast Frank talks about setting himself the challenge of writing about a known but inanimate object existing over a long passage of geological time. The full interview can be listened to here:

Click here for more information about the magazine.

Many congratulations to Richard Lutwyche, whose book  ‘The Pig: A Natural History’ is being published by Princeton University Press in August and is now available to pre-order on Amazon. Beautifully designed and illustrated, it covers every aspect of pig existence – from the prehistoric “hell pig” to today’s placid porker. Evolution, domestication, anatomy, biology, behaviour, and breeds are all discussed and there are fascinating insights into the pig’s important – and sometimes strange – role in human life and culture.

Richard ran the Gloucestershire Old Spots Pig Breeders’ Club, was editor of The Ark magazine for the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, and its chief steward and organiser of one of Britain’s largest pig shows. In 2010 he received the lifetime achievement award in the BBC Food and Farming Awards for his work in pig husbandry and the conservation of rare breeds.

The Arts House Cafe in Bristol was buzzing with excitement on March 15th, when the Poetry Film Collective brought ‘Adventures in Poetry Film’, its show of a dozen or more poetry films to LYRA, Bristol’s brand new poetry festival. The show, featuring ‘Matryoshka’, by Somewhere Else writer Iris Anne Lewis, was the final event of its tour of South West England. The films have  also been shown in venues as far away as Greece and Australia.

So is it the the end of the adventure? Probably not, as plans are afoot for the collective to create more poetry films, so watch out for more shows in the future. In the meantime, click here to watch ‘Matryoshka’ on Vimeo.

To mark St Patrick’s Day this Sunday (March 17) Somewhere Else welcomes Irish guests Clare O’Sullivan and Prof Nigel McLoughlin along with Sophie Livingston and Frank McMahon in a programme celebrating Irish writing.

The programme, directed by Tina Baker and Clare Finnimore, will be broadcast on Corinium Radio at 7.30pm and then repeated at 4.30pm on Sunday March 31 and for the following three Sundays. It can also be found in our Broadcasts section.

Sophie has been waiting almost a year for this story to appear. It was based on a hike along the Ridgeway and was first accepted by Woman’s Weekly. She withdrew it when they changed their contract conditions ( beware ‘All Rights’ contracts).  People’s Friend is bucking the trend and still offering contracts that allow authors to retain copyright.

Check out our new Story of the Month, ‘Cargo’ by Stephen Connolly. It’s an unusual and moving take on refugees and childhood, first read at the 17th Stroud Short Stories event in November. It has since been published in the online literary magazine ‘Fictive Dream’.

Congratulations to Graham Bruce Fletcher and Clare Finnimore for their success in the Graffiti Magazine travel writing competition: ‘Travelling in Heaven and Hell’. Graham was Highly Commended for ‘Begging for it’ and Clare was runner up with ‘Strawberry Road’.

The short story section was judged by Jan Turk Petrie. Jan is the author of the future world thriller: ‘Until the Ice Cracks’; the first of her Eldisvik trilogy set in 2068 in a fictional state just below the Arctic circle. Volume two of the trilogy ‘No God for a Warrior’ has just been released.

Both stories, along with judges comments will be published in the next edition.