Richard Hillary Prize Winners Named

Trinity undergraduates Camilla Berarducci and Leelou Lapteva have shared first prize in this year's Richard Hillary Prize for creative writing, for the short story The Rock and the poetry collection The Art of Life, respectively. 

The annual competition was established in memory of the late Richard Hillary, former member of Trinity College and author of The Last Enemy, which was a bestseller after the Second World War.

The Hillary Prize, worth £500, is awarded for the best piece of creative writing by a Trinity student. This year's competition was judged by Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, Wolfson College, Dr Kantik Ghosh and Dr Stefano-Maria Evangelista, Fellows in English at Trinity College.

Camilla Berarducci is a first-year student studying English and Modern Languages; she says: ‘The Rock wasn’t conceived with a precise meaning or project. Now that I read it back, I see it can be multiple things: a reflection on loneliness and incommunicability, on people’s blindness to whimsy, or on how reality and unreality are relative. My favourite is that it is quite simply a rock which materialised itself one day in an inland apartment, but I hope each will read it as something different.

Leelou Lapteva is a fourth-year Classics student and says: ‘I’m delighted to have joint-won the Richard Hilary Prize! Writing is my true passion, and I feel honoured to win the award for this poetry anthology, it has encouraged me to keep writing more in this genre which I find a particularly emotional and philosophical form of expression! My poetry anthology, The Art of Life, consists of poems written over the years. They are cathartic reflections of my experiences and those of others, from real people to fictional characters. At its core, the collection is about making sense of what life is and expressing it through artistic imagery as art reflects life and life reflects art. I hope the poems will resonate for many.’

Both winning stories are available to read below.