A CHEPSTOW author has won a highly commended award in this year’s UK Bridport Prize Award Ceremony for her story The Yellowstone Bear.

Her winning story was selected from more than 4,500 entries by short story judge, the novelist Jane Rogers.

Alison, who grew up in north-west London, gained a first class degree and a doctorate in linguistics from the University of York, and during her early 30s developed a dual career as a linguistics lecturer and professional classical singer. She currently works at Cardiff University, where she is a professor of language and communication.

She has published numerous academic papers and textbooks, including Formulaic Language: Pushing the Boundaries (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Formulaic Language and the Lexicon (Cambridge University Press, 2002) which won the 2003 book prize of the British Association for Applied Linguistics.

Alison’s current research writing concerns the patterns of communication between people with dementia and their carers.

As a creative writer, Alison was unpublished until 2015 when, in addition to the Bridport Prize anthology, one of her stories was shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story prize and will appear in the published collection.

The Bridport Prize based in Dorset, UK, is one of the most prestigious open writing competitions in the English language with categories in poetry, short stories, flash fiction (stories of 250 words or less) and the Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a first novel, named in honour of the prize’s founder.

Established in 1973 and with over £16,000 in prize money to be won annually, the competition attracts entries from across the globe. This year almost 15,000 entries from 78 countries competed for one of the 34 winner and highly commended awards.

The Bridport Prize is the flagship project of Bridport Arts Centre and known as a tremendous literary stepping-stone. It’s kickstarted the careers of writers such as Kate Atkinson, Tobias Hill, Carol Ann Duffy and Helen Dunmore. The competition is open to anyone aged 16 or over as long as the submitted work is previously unpublished.

An anthology of this year’s winning entries, including Alison’s story, is available from the Bridport Prize website at www.brid

portprize.org.uk

The competition for 2016 is launched on Sunday 15th November with a closing date of Tuesday 31st May.

Entries can be made by post or online with full information on how to apply available on the website.