To celebrate the second anniversary of the ELT e-Reading Group, the British Council invited English Language teachers worldwide to use their imagination and become short story writers and poets themselves. WordPowered were asked to contribute as part of the selection panel.  The best three pieces of writing submitted by the ELT e-Reading Group members in the following categories are being published here on WordPowered and on the British Council Teaching English website in the e-Reading community group. Participants were asked to submit the following:

Fiction/Short story: choose one story which has been discussed in the group and write your own piece of writing inspired by it. Short stories must be 700 -1000 word long and could be possible continuations of the original story, exchanges among characters, new versions of a particular situation in the story, etc.
Poetry: write a poem inspired by one of the stories read in the group.

The chosen works selected (in no particular order) are:

Selected Short Stories:
• 'In the National Portrait Gallery' by Peter Grundy (UK). Inspired by Doris Lessing’s ‘In the
National Gallery’, from New Writing 15.
• 'On the Lnading' by Iris Devadason (India). Inspired by Anita Desai’s ‘The Landing’, from New Writing 15.
• 'The Other Side of the Coin' by Sam Down (Finland). Inspired by Melvin Burgess’ Billy Elliot,
extract published on BritLit.

Selected Poems:
• 'Scratchy' by Miriam Mascaras (Martinique)
• 'Sonnet 6/11 - On True Lust' by Sundaresh Savandhi (India)
• 'At Bus Stops' by Francisco Langa (Mozambique)

Special category (previously published on WordPowered):
'This is my poem which I feel is no longer mine' by Mostafa Mouhibe (Morocco)

Due to the number of submissions organisers have not been able to contact personally the writers of non-selected texts, but we would like to thank you all for your submissions and hope that you consider submitting your stories and poems again next year. Congratulations to the selected short story writers and poets!  To join the e-Reading Group go here.