ANNOUNCEMENT: Winner of the Matthew Ward Pay it Forward Competition

A few months back, we announced the Matthew Ward Pay it Forward Competition because Ward–being an utter legend–refused payment for a story we acquired from him and asked that I pay it forward to an unpublished author.

So, without further ado, the winner of the Matthew Ward Pay it Forward Competition is … drumroll …

Winner of the Matthew Ward Pay it Forward Competition

Hûw Steer with his brilliant short story about a plague doctor, The Only Cure. Hûw’s story was a stand out from the pack and I cannot wait to show it to you in Grimdark Magazine #25 to be released on the 15th of January.

Runners up

In addition, the two runners up, in order of glory are Zachary Fritz for his short story Morality Aside and Jack Van Beynan for The Dead Man.

Turning the top twelve longlisted stories into just three winners was incredibly difficult. Once we had whittled down the entries to this point, I was actually left with a decent volume of really brilliant stories–more so than I can remember from any previous open window we’ve had.

Fortunately I had a bunch of experienced hands in our review team willing to put their hands up and give me some fresh and opinions sets of eyes on these stories.

Based on our discussions on both of these stories, I’ll be making publishing offers for 2021 to both of these authors as well.

A thank you to Matthew Ward

A huge thank you needs to go out to Matthew Ward for this competition. The competition was 100% his idea, and shows the kind of selflessness that makes me love being a small part of this industry. We’ve been publishing short stories by Matt for I think five years now, and I consider myself fortunate to be amongst the venues he trusts to put out his fiction.

If you have a moment, head on over and check out more about his current Legacy series beginning with Legacy of Ash in 2019, continuing with Legacy of Steel in 2020, and concluding with Legacy of Light in 2021.