The 2023 People’s Choice Awards

The 2023 version of the Lit Fest’s popular writing competition The People’s Choice was held on Sunday June 18, with a high-quality array of fourteen four-minute readings ranging from the impassioned to the witty.

Thanks to Joel Clapham, Johanna Saunders, Alicia Gadd-Carolan, Richenda Rudman, Linnelle Gibson, Mayase Jere, Ann Rosalie Goodwin, Catherine Ryan and Shannon Catania-Mizzi for reading in the prose section.

When the audience votes were counted, Richenda was the runner-up and Shannon the winner of the coveted title. You can read her story, ‘Classroom Chronicles’ here.

The Poetry section was won by Anna Fern for ‘Why the Band Broke Up’, with Laleh Alim’s ‘Solitary Confinement’ a close second in the audience vote. Thanks to Darren Steele, Adiba Mamadolimova and Margarette Ryan, who ran them close. You can read Anna’s poem here.