Jill Hopper’s 27th Bridge Poem, on the back of a postcard designed by Joni Brown.
Project Writer Award
By Galen O’Hanlen
Oh what a cruel task, to be a judge! I picked a panel of equal parts UK and NZ-based judges, and sent them the entries compiled by this year’s editors. That’s the easy bit.
How could we judge such a huge range of projects and formats and themes? We read postcards and essays and poems and blogs; we skipped from postcodes to bridges to neurodiversity to AI to death and back again. We let our hearts lead: every piece that made it into the shortlist moved us in some way.
Highly Commended Writers
We loved Julie Batty & Mark Easterbrook’s Albert Bridge, London (UK) and a footbridge on Landing Road, Titirangi (NZ) for the ease and effortlessness of Julie’s writing, and the camaraderie of bumbling dads in Mark’s. Two striking treatments of friendship and togetherness and loss.
If there was a prize for title alone, Leah Royden’s piece for 26 Neurodiversity would have won with Traffic Was Terrible, Parking Soon. The essay in particular was a lucid and striking exploration of what it means to live with ADHD.
Sophie Cheng and Margaret Kenna’s piece Jenga, also from 26 Neurodiversity, won a place on our list for the depth of collaboration at its heart, how interwoven it was, and the richness of the imagery it used
Winning writer
We kept coming back to one piece: an immediate, unfiltered, off-the-cuff stroke of brilliance from Jill Hopper (left). Written in a few moments on a postcard at Wordstock 2025, Vaults funnelling air is a lyrical, ephemeral piece that embodies a lot of what 26 is about. A response to a brief. An invitation to write now, not wait. And, among all the digital applications and advances of modern life, the demonstration that writing by hand still has a place – especially if you can write as beautifully as Jill.
Thanks to my fellow judges for such insightful and thoughtful discussion: Lee Ryan, Jayne Workman, and Harry Ashton-Key.
– Galen O’Hanlon
Emerging Writer Award
By Andy Hayes
I’m far from emerging, more hibernating, so I got to pass on judging duties to previous winner, Anushka Shah, and two highly commended writers, Poppy Booth and Ellie Baldwin.
The standout winner was Angela Zaher (left); a master of the “sensory memory”, using the specific, sharp details of lived experience to map the complex geography of displacement and return. Her pieces were well-written, interesting, and varied, with a demonstrable commercial aspect. She really hit the brief, writes beautifully, and told a story that really drew the judges in.
As well as winning our award, Angela was also a winner of Writer of the Year 2025, for Be Inclusive Hospitality. And a finalist for the Yan-Kit So Award 2025, for The Oxford Cultural Collective Committee of the Guild of Food Writers.
Rachan Hegde was the judges’ highly commended writer. They felt her writing was beautiful and evocative. She possesses a rare ability to transform personal and systemic trauma into “writing as justice,” using visceral, culturally grounded imagery, like the peeling of cashews or sunshine in a jar, to exhume buried narratives. Her writing balances raw vulnerability with sophisticated structural control.
Congratulations to Angela & Rachan!
– Andy Hayes