The morning of Saturday, 14 June arrived with hushed drama, cold, grey, teasing an ever-retreating sun that wouldn’t deign to warm us anyway, deep now as it was in early winter slumber. Clouds hung low like closed books with stories untold, and the chill in the air stung the faces of our twenty finalists as they made their way up the winding road to the Nido de Águilas campus in Lo Barnechea, Santiago. Beneath the watchful gaze of the Andes, where the peaks seem to threaten us with ancient secrets, they gathered, each one carrying quiet storms of imagination.

Of all our competitions, the Creative Writing one might be the most intimate, and the most demanding. To write is to shape something deeply personal and let it go, hoping it will echo in someone else’s mind. It’s a delicate, uncertain art: half shadow, half light; part dream, part waking world. And in the case of our Finals, it must all be done in haste, during the rush of a single morning.

Over the past three years of our Creative Writing Competition, the Finals have consisted of a Writing Workshop, which we hope allows the finalists to learn something new, open hidden doors, or simply encounter like-minded individuals, since writing is so often a solitary experience. Our focus is to provide an educational opportunity. This year’s workshop was led by our very own Creative Writing Task Force Leader, Nithiya V. Balasubramaniam, with the assistance of Verónica Cordero, Claudia Hermógenes, and Elaine Choo.

Of course, this is also a competition. Finalists were prompted to write a short story on-site, either with the theme of Secrets or including the following phrase at some point in the story: ‘S… flinched as she shrieked, “Don’t touch me!”’. After the set writing time (gone in what felt like the blink of an eye) the entries were anonymised (code-named) and handed over to our judges, who were able to deliberate and select the top three places per category shortly after lunch. You can read all top three entries per category by clicking HERE.