The hope prize was launched in 2024 as an annual prize that looked for story submissions about hope, courage and resilience.

I thought I'd share our family story about Henry's first few years and raising a child with special needs. 

It's a story I didn't want to just exist in my google docs.  Raising a child with special needs can be fairly lonely and almost always stressful. I thought maybe by sharing our story of hope, courage and resilience it might just help someone else.

Now be warned, like a big glass of Milo, I did heap a few extra spoonfuls of symbolism into the story.

I'm still trying different things with my writing and I felt that a story of hope, courage and resilience could cope with the amped up symbolism.

As I said in my blog post, I'm wanting to put together a collection of short stories but this one was a bit of an outlier  with all my other stories containing horror themes.

Hope you enjoy Henry's Hope (click read more below to reveal the story)

Townsville Writers & Publishers Centre were invited to take part in an evening of Spoken Word at Townsville City Galleries hosted by Townsville City Council

We were to get inspiration from an exhibition titled ‘One Foot On The Ground - One Foot In the Water’ which explores the subject of mortality and the inseparable link between life and death.

After reading through the background of the exhibit, I was inspired by the story of curator Travis Curtin and it raised the question of what if we were all endowed a physical timepiece (or ‘Lifepiece’ in this instance) from birth?

This story came together really quickly and I was lucky to have get some great feedback which helps bring it together. Unfortunately the audio of the night wasn’t any good but I really enjoyed writing this story and I really wanted to share it.
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