Midland Future Manchester was the creative writing competition that we launched at MLF 2011 in partnership with Manchester Children's Book Festival. It invited writers aged 12 to 16 to write a fictional short story set at least 10 years in the future.

After much deliberation from our judging team the final winner was Josh Degenhardt with his story When the rain falls they talk of Manchester. Josh, a student from Chorlton High School, was presented with his prize (a pocket video camera) at our Science Meets Fiction event at the Museum of Science and Industry on Friday 6th July. You can read a review of the event on the Manchester Children’s Book Festival blog.

We received an astonishing 400 entries from young people across the region and the standard of entries was extremely high making the judge's job a very difficult one, but Josh’s very accomplished story stood out from the crowd. It was described by main judge Julie Bertagna as “a compelling glimpse of an apocalyptic future. It’s beautifully written, intense and gripping, with a haunting blend of terror, warning and hope.”

You can read Josh's winning story and all the other shortlisted Future Manchester stories by downloading the PDF of the anthology below.

After the great success of the competition budding writers out there will be pleased to learn that plans are afoot for another creative writing competition to be launched as part of MLF 2012. Details to follow soon.