Fifty-four people attended the presentation evening for the 2009 Short Story Competition, held at Horsham Library earlier this month, with entrants from across the region present.

Landsborough's Penny Gibson was successful in taking out the open section award from Horsham's Alan Finch and Tawney Leithhead-Craigie of St Arnaud, while Mandy Nicol of Stawell received an Honourable Mention.

In the teenage section, Stawell's Ben Allan was announced as the winner of the competition.

Guest Speaker Noelene Jenkinson from Horsham, spoke on her journey as a writer and gave an informative talk about the ups and downs of being an author, recounting how manuscripts rejected by one publisher were accepted by another, providing hints about doing research and detailing how she liked to get herself organised to write.

Noelene's journey as an author has seen her involved in writing groups, writing local histories and also writing her family history and that of her husband's family.

Competition judge, Sabrina Agee Watts of Balmoral, gave a short insight to the workshops that had been held at the beginning of the competition and the importance of developing characters and plots in short stories.

She commended each of the entrants and expressed her delight at working with the Wimmera Regional Library Corporation and her first experience of judging a competition.

In awarding prizes Sabrina gave brief comments about each story, sharing thoughts about the character or style of writing and at the difference in each of the stories.