Showcase: The Dividing Line + Over Time + Rainbow Plates + Plants Can Regenerate Into Life’s True Blossom

Edited by Charlotte Maddox

Hello, and welcome to November’s first Showcase!

I’m Charlotte, Prize Manager for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, awarded by The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation. Established in 2015 by the late adventure author Wilbur Smith and his wife Niso, the Foundation exists to promote literacy and champion adventure writing as a genre. We work with writers and readers around the world to ensure everyone can experience their own adventures through the words on a page.

When we think about the essential components of great adventure writing, we think of epic journeys, new horizons and themes of courage, endurance and resourcefulness. We look for stories that transport us into unfamiliar worlds and are so compelling we have no choice but to get on board: stories that reveal what it means to explore, to risk and to persevere.

This quarter’s theme of ‘(R)evolution’ lies at the very heart of adventure writing. The best adventures are stories of transformation,  of characters who drive change and, just as importantly, allow readers to emerge changed by the end. Whether it’s a shift in how we see the world or teaching us something new about ourselves, ‘adventure’ and ‘change’ are two sides of the same coin.

Over the next month, I’m thrilled to share a series of short stories, novel extracts and poems exploring this theme of ‘(R)evolution’. First up is an extract from The Dividing Line, by Abbie Englund, winner of our Author Of Tomorrow award for young writers. It’s a powerful story about a young girl determined to go where females have never been allowed to go before.

The Dividing Line 

There, before her, loomed the five towers of Durham Cathedral.

Majestic, commanding. Beautiful and immense. She quaked beneath its size, rejoiced before its radiance. She was enraptured.

It was no more than twenty meters ahead of her, but not until half an hour had passed did she find herself standing, her fervour of awe yet undimmed, in the Lady Chapel. It was the only place of worship that she, as a female, could enter; inconspicuously, it poked out of the West side of the Cathedral like the little muzzle of some gigantic dog.

Wherever she looked, her heart leaped in wonder. The paintings of Christ and His disciples, the mighty oak door made from a single tree. At the eastern end, the monks were singing and their ethereal melodies made Mary shiver. She bowed her head in prayer.

There was one object that filled her with contempt. Not a nagging displeasure or half-hearted dislike, but a raw, intense, burning loathing. As she stepped into the nave, it was there in all its ugliness.

A little black line.

A pathetic, inconspicuous little black line.

She looked down at it and grimaced.

Disdainfully, she placed her foot at the boundary. Suddenly, a voice rang out.

“Mary, Mary, lass. Won’t you remember!” It was Ezekiel, the bedesman, whose job it was to wander the aisles, muttering prayers for his benefactors. An old man whose simplicity rendered him insignificant to the adult world, but whose timidity and sincerity strangely complemented Mary’s audacity. They had been friends for as long as she could remember.

“That is the second time this week I have had to stop you. You know a lady isn’t allowed to step across the boundary line.”

“But I’m not a lady!” she replied indignantly. “My father is only a tanner. He is quite poor.”

“And that is why you are so lovely. Those ladies with their jewels, they don’t even notice poor old Ez. No, they don’t! They think they’re too important for little old Ezekiel Podge. But not you, Mary. You don’t ignore him. You like him! Always treat him as if he was a real person and he thanks you Mary, he does. But, still, you are, alas, a lady. And a lady cannot cross this line.”

“What would happen if she did?”

“Oh, well, how would I know? Something bad. Something very bad, I’m sure. Maybe the whole nave would just crumble in on top of her, who knows?”

“But why, Ezekiel, why?” Her voice trembled.

“Cuthbert’s orders.”

“What?”

“He doesn’t like women.”

“But he’s dead!”

If one of the stones above Ezekiel had fallen at his feet, he would scarcely have been more shocked.

“No, Mary, you must not say such things! You will stir up Cuthbert’s ire!”

She was hardly afraid. “Have you forgotten who it was who went to Jesus’s tomb and was the first to see Him alive? Mary Magdelene. You wouldn’t have stopped that Mary. Why do you stop this one? If a lady can go to heaven, why can’t she go to the Cathedral?”

“Stop it, stop it. If you keep saying such things something terrible will happen. And then who will they blame? Mary Tanner? No, not her! Only silly, soft-hearted Ezekiel Podge. He’ll get thrown out, he will. And he’ll die of cold. And they won’t hear his cries as he bangs on the sanctuary knocker!”

She was about to speak again when her eyes fell by chance upon a tear in his garment. Suddenly her anger seemed to dissipate and a strange expression came and took its place.

“You know something, you’re right. Oh, look at your torn garment!”

“It’s only a small tear.”

“No, Ezekiel, it is a blight on the Cathedral. The pilgrims and monks will certainly stare.”

A frantic worry overcame the poor man.

“Don’t look so afraid. I can fix it for you! Just change into your other clothes and leave these at the door of the Lady Chapel tonight at sunset.”

“Why, thank you, Mary.”  He smiled, but in his tone was a trace of distrust. “But wait, what if someone steals them?”

“Ezekiel Podge. It is the Lady Chapel. What lady would want to steal your clothes?”

With a wry smile that inexplicably unnerved the simple bedesman, she curtsied and strode haughtily out of the Cathedral.

(c) Abbie Englund, 2025

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Next is a poem by Chas, titled Over Time. It explores a more personal kind of evolution – the experience of heartbreak and the quiet strength that comes from it. Despite moments of self-doubt, this is ultimately a poem about transformation, about emerging changed – but changed for the better.

Over Time

You learn only to text occasionally
You learn not to write long emails
You learn not to be spontaneous
You learn to give space
You learn that you are friends
You learn to pull the barriers back up
You learn to be introspective
You learn that
the unbreakable thread which bound you both, is cut
You learn what it is like to be at 6’s and 7’s.
You learn how it feel to be lost
You learn that you don’t give your heart away like that again
You learn that you have moved on
You learn that you have evolved.

Over time…

(c) Chas, 2025

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Next up is Rainbow Plates by Eithne Cullen – a commentary on how the way we eat, and the foods available to us, have evolved over time. Full of nostalgia, it takes us back to an era when no children’s party buffet was complete without a tin-foil-wrapped potato with a hedgehog of cheese and pineapple cubes on cocktail sticks. Yet, despite the fond memories, I can’t help but agree with Eithne’s closing remark: Thank goodness for the evolution of our colourful plates and varied diets!

Rainbow Plates

I read that we should eat a colourful plate of food; the rainbow of colours boosts our mood and our immune systems. No wonder my generation saw so many sickly children. Food was seasonal, mainly beige. Meals were uninspiring, uninspired.

I recently attended a very nice event, where lunch was served. It was a buffet lunch and the evolution/revolution in the world of food was highlighted for me.

The buffet was mainly made up of little kebabs: salmon, chicken, beef or roasted veg, on biodegradable wooden mini-skewers. There were wraps, filled to bursting with lovely salads and vegetables, green and red. A luscious spread.

I thought back to what this would have been like a few years ago and remembered the spreads of white egg rolls alongside an array of fried delights: chicken gougons (the first time I heard the word as an adult I thought it was made up!), fishy bites, stuffed and breaded mushrooms. The buffet planners relished the world where fat and salty meant tasty, too.

Roll back another couple of decades, when the height of sophistication was a paper plate with a folded serviette on it, on a pile of similar plates. The food – cooked meats and hard boiled eggs, little pork pies and limp salad – so hard to eat with the plastic knife and fork! It was a situation like this that forms the family story of the pink serviette being mistaken for a slice of tasteless ham.

Then one more step back when sandwiches were always the only fare. In one house I knew well there was always a choice: ham with mustard or ham without mustard. No one ever complained!

Exciting foods arriving on the scene, supermarkets stocking year-round produce, new strains, freezers and refrigeration, new palates – all of these have contributed to the revolution we’ve experienced.

I came across a poem very recently by Thomas Lux: Refrigerator 1957. It evokes the pre-revolutionary dullness of our diet, and I love the lines:

childhood of dull dinners — bald meat,
pocked peas and, see above,
boiled potatoes.

Thank goodness for the evolution of our colourful plates and varied diets!

(c) Eithne Cullen, 2025

Connect on Instagram: @eithnecullen57

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Finally, we have a beautiful poem by Leanne Drain. Plants Can Regenerate Into Life’s True Blossom captures the quiet, persistent miracle of growth: how something as small and fragile as a seed can transform into a flower that offers love, solitude and peace. Leanne’s poem reminds us that change isn’t always loud or dramatic; sometimes it happens slowly and tenderly.

It’s a fitting way to end this showcase. A reminder that evolution, whether in nature or in ourselves, is a continual process of renewal. Like Leanne’s flower, we’re all capable of blooming again, no matter the season.

Plants Can Regenerate Into Life’s True Blossom

Seeds can grow
The little buds can bloom and blossom in the icy summer snow.
The flower can regenerate against the looming light.
Once it’s reached its full potential the flower can offer love, solitude and peace.
The process of the plant is a revolution.
For it starts as one tiny seed, then feeds through sunlight and water becoming a
fragrant.
The plant is special, because we look with our eyes observe with our minds more than
once.
For the flower is now in full bloom.
And that seed started the centuries evolution

(c) Leanne Drain, 2025

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