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Creative writing competition

Day of the Disappeared©Info 

The International Day of the Disappeared (30 August) commemorates people who have gone missing throughout the world in situations of violence and armed conflict. It is a reminder of the hundreds of thousands of families who are unaware of the fate of their loved ones, and organisations like the Red Cross who work to restore family contact between separated family members.

The British Red Cross would like to thank everyone who entered the International Day of the Disappeared creative writing competition. We received over 750 entries from around the UK and across the world, and the overall standard of entries was very high. Here are the results:

Overall winner

Alex Howard - Long Distance

Commended entries

Katy Wilson - Known Unto God
Jennifer Moore - The Vanishing Act
Christopher Sans Souci King - Recipe for Hallelujah
Linda Cosgriff - Look At It This Way
Ruth Irupe Sanabria - The Cardinal Delivers Us
Katie Dickerson - 'One day she was gone...'
Sarina Ganapathy - Missing
Pat Black - Disappeared
David Ford - Bone Hunter
Martin Cathcart Froden - Two Hundred Lines
Ruth Gervaise Ingamells - The Disappearing Liver Trick
Angela Croft - Isolation

Find our more about our judges, Graham Hurley and Mal Peet.

Related

Case studies

A special Red Cross service has given two young people hope that they'll be reunited with their mother.

As an adult, Terry discovered the man who raised him wasn't his birth father.

When Sylvia lost touch with her cousin Mary in Germany, she turned to our tracing service.

Therese had to flee the Ivory Coast and leave her children behind – until the Red Cross helped reunite them.