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Gothic Postcard Winner is Dead Good

7th January 2013 By 0 201

Words by Claudia Conerney

Competition winner Kate Owen
Manchester Metropolitan University is delighted to announce that Kate Owen from Sir John Deane’s College in Cheshire is the winner of the 2012 Postcards from the Dead competition. Entrants were required to write a postcard in no more than 200 words based on the point of view of a fictional character from a gothic novel that they are studying at A-Level. Kate chose to write her entry from the point of view of the house in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. She told us, “the house might not strictly be a character, but when I read the short story I was inspired by the atmosphere of the house. For me, it was as if Poe had created a malevolent entity that could drive people insane and lead them to their deaths and I wanted to have fun exploring that idea.”

Andy Moore, English lecturer at MMU, certainly enjoyed reading her work, “The standard of entries was extremely high and it was very difficult to choose an overall winner. However, Kate’s entry was incredibly imaginative and very well written. The English department at MMU congratulate her on her achievement.”


In addition to a £25 Amazon voucher, Kate’s work will be professionally illustrated and designed and she will receive 100 copies of her postcard.


Congratulations also to our runners up, whose work was highly commended by our judging panel, Luke Percival from Saints Peter and Paul Catholic College in Widnes, Heather Dowling from Sir John Deane’s College in Cheshire and Victoria Waterhouse from Cronton Sixth Form College in Cheshire. 


‘Postcards from the Dead’ is a subsidiary of our main competition, ‘Postcards from the Past’. For further details about the rules and how to enter, please visit http://www.mcln.org.uk/ or visit the Postcards from the Past blog  here.

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