With the deadline for the Pen to Print Short Story, Poetry and Audio Play Competitions swiftly approaching, let’s meet the judges!
Short Story Competition
Tharik Hussain is an award-winning travel writer and author. His award-winning book, Minarets in the Mountain, won or was shortlisted for the following:
- Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year 2021
- Winner of the Adele Evans Award 2022
- Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year 2022
- Long listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction 2021
His latest book, Muslim Europe: A Journey in Search of Fourteen Hundred Years of History, was published in 2025.
Dr Charlotte Baker is an author and associate lecturer, with an interest in crime, horror, and dark romance. She has nearly 80 publications, ranging from micro-fiction to novels to academic articles. Charlotte enjoys spending time with her little boy, drinking coffee, walking, and conversing with the various monsters that float around her imagination.
Lianne Warr is a local NHS doctor. In 2025, she won annual short story competitions with Pen to Print and the Southport Writers’ Circle. Several of her stories have been performed with Liars’ League London.
Poetry Competition
Lucia Morciano is an award-winning wordsmith and a literary and audiovisual translator. In 2022, her poem-turned-short-animation was accepted to over 20 international festivals, winning a couple. In 2024, she hosted her first solo visual poetry exhibition, and in 2025, she started wandering around London with her typewriter, offering custom poetry on the spot. She also trades poetry-related goods in markets.
Neal Zetter began writing poetry when he was six years old. Since 1994, he has staged his fun poetry-writing workshops and performances in hundreds of schools and libraries in the UK and beyond, teaching 3-103-year-olds to create their own fantastic poems. He has had 14 children’s poetry books published, the latest being ‘Small Poems for Big Imaginations’ (Jan 2026). He has won the Silver Book Award, been acclaimed by the Reading Agency and Book Trust, had poems on London’s buses, in the Guardian newspaper and in many anthologies. He has performed his adult poems on radio, in the Royal Festival Hall, at a League 2 football match, festivals, weddings and funerals (really), countless top West End comedy clubs and hosted his own club for ten years. For all things Neal, see cccpworkshops.co.uk
Amaka Obioji is a writer and poet who runs a bimonthly poetry group for Pen to Print at Dagenham Library
Audio Play Competition
Chris Gregory produces our weekly Write On! podcast and has been the lead judge for our audio play competition. He’s the founder of Alternative Stories, an award-winning spoken-word production company whose work has featured on BBC radio and internationally. Chris has collaborated with many of the UK’s top writers and poets, and his team of actors have appeared across film, TV, and theatre.
Lucy Kaufman is an award-winning playwright, audio dramatist, and author who has lectured in Playwriting and Screenwriting for Pen to Print and Canterbury Christchurch University. Forty of her plays have been performed around the UK and Australia, to critical acclaim. Her psychological thriller novellas Don’t Forget the Crazy and The Heart-Shaped Box were recently published, and her audio drama The Victoria Files was shortlisted by the BBC.
Emily Inkpen is a science-fiction novelist and audio dramatist. She is the writer and co-director of the globally successful audio drama, The Dex Legacy, the second season of which recently won the BSFA Award for Best Audio Fiction. The spin-off series, Wasteland – A Dex Legacy story, is currently in release. In addition to her own projects, she is acting Social Media Officer for the British Science Fiction Association.
With a background in medical writing and copywriting for health tech, the scientific influences that feed into Emily’s work tend to be on the biological side. She is inspired by the progress being made in the pharmaceutical industry and academic research that leads to truly astonishing discoveries. Most of all, she is aware that what is possible today is only ever groundwork for what will be possible in a year, and every week brings new discoveries that have a real impact on people’s lives.
You can find more information about The Dex Legacy at http://www.thedexlegacy.com
You can find out more about Emily’s other writing projects at http://www.emilyinkpen.com
And you can follow Emily on Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram, Threads @emilyinkpen
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